Publisher Health

A new study is highlighting a need for widespread use of better face masks and the importance of good ventilation to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 indoors.
Engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo performed experiments using a mannequin to simulate a seated person breathing in a large room. The studies showed a significant buildup over time of aerosol droplets — exhaled droplets so tiny they remain suspended and travel through the air — despite the use of common cloth and blue surgical masks.
“There is no question it is beneficial to wear any face covering, both for protection in close proximity and at a distance in a room,” said Serhiy Yarusevych, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering and the leader of the study. “However, there is a very serious difference in the effectiveness of different masks when it comes to controlling aerosols.”
Previous research has found that aerosols dispersed by infected people are a source of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, even outside the two-metre social distancing zone widely recommended by public health officials.
The study showed that most common masks, primarily due to problems with fit, filter about 10 per cent of exhaled aerosol droplets. The remaining aerosols are redirected, mostly out the top of the mask where it fits over the nose, and escape into the ambient air unfiltered.
By contrast, higher-quality, more expensive N95 and KN95 masks filtered more than 50 per cent of the exhaled aerosols that can accumulate indoors and spread the COVID-19 virus when inhaled by other people.
Yarusevych, principal investigator in the Fluid Mechanics Research Lab, said the much greater effectiveness of N95 and KN95 masks versus cloth and surgical masks makes a compelling case they should be worn in indoor settings, such as schools and workplaces, as much as possible.
“A lot of this may seem like common sense,” he said. “There is a reason, for instance, that medical practitioners wear N95 masks — they work much better. The novelty here is that we have provided solid numbers and rigorous analysis to support that assumption.”
Experiments also quantified the impact of ventilation systems, which circulate and replace air in rooms, on the accumulation of aerosols. Even modest ventilation rates were found to be as effective as the best masks in reducing the risk of transmission.
Ideally, Yarusevych said, the evidence shows that high-quality masks and proper ventilation should be used in combination to mitigate the threat posed by indoor aerosol accumulation as much as possible.
The study, Experimental investigation of indoor aerosol dispersion and accumulation in the context of COVID-19: Effects of masks and ventilation, appears in the journal Physics of Fluids.
Yarusevych collaborated with Sean Peterson, also a Waterloo professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, and engineering PhD students Yash Shah and John Kurelek.
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Since the early days of the COVID pandemic, scientists have aggressively pursued the secrets of the mechanisms that allow severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to enter and infect healthy human cells.
Early in the pandemic, University of California San Diego’s Rommie Amaro, a computational biophysical chemist, helped develop a detailed visualization of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that efficiently latches onto our cell receptors.
Now, Amaro and her research colleagues from UC San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have discovered how glycans — molecules that make up a sugary residue around the edges of the spike protein — act as infection gateways.
Published August 19 in the journal Nature Chemistry, a research study led by Amaro, co-senior author Lillian Chong at the University of Pittsburgh, first author and UC San Diego graduate student Terra Sztain and co-first author and UC San Diego postdoctoral scholar Surl-Hee Ahn, describes the discovery of glycan “gates” that open to allow SARS-CoV-2 entry.
“We essentially figured out how the spike actually opens and infects,” said Amaro, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a senior author of the new study. “We’ve unlocked an important secret of the spike in how it infects cells. Without this gate the virus basically is rendered incapable of infection.”
Amaro believes the research team’s gate discovery opens potential avenues for new therapeutics to counter SARS-CoV-2 infection. If glycan gates could be pharmacologically locked in the closed position, then the virus is effectively prevented from opening to entry and infection.

Alphaviruses — mosquito-borne viruses that can trigger brain infections and arthritis — may have met their match.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified two antibodies that protect animals from disease caused by alphaviruses. The antibodies worked for every alphavirus tested, meaning they potentially could form the basis of treatments or serve as a template for a universal vaccine.
The findings are published Aug. 19 in the journal Cell.
“In the U.S., the alphavirus we worry most about is chikungunya virus, which can cause debilitating arthritis, but we also do see cases of encephalitis caused by Eastern equine encephalitis virus,” said senior author Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine and a professor of molecular microbiology and of pathology & immunology. “Alphaviruses used to be limited to the tropics, but in recent years they’ve been spreading into new geographic areas. Most are still uncommon, but together they cause millions of infections and a considerable burden of disease, and we don’t have specific therapies or vaccines for any of them.”
The alphavirus group includes more than 30 species, split into two branches. Viruses such as chikungunya, Mayaro, O’nyong-nyong and Ross River, all of which cause fever, rash and arthritis, historically had been limited to Africa, Asia and Europe. However, beginning in 2013, chikungunya worked its way into the Caribbean and parts of North and South America. The other branch of alphaviruses, found in the Americas, includes Eastern, Western and Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses and causes brain infections.
Diamond and colleagues previously identified a group of antibodies that neutralize many members of the arthritis-causing branch of the alphavirus group. But those antibodies didn’t work against all of the viruses that cause arthritis and failed entirely against the ones that cause brain infections.
To find antibodies that would protect against the whole alphavirus group, Diamond and colleagues — including co-first authors Arthur S. Kim, PhD, then a graduate student, and Natasha M. Kafai, an MD/PhD student — screened a set of antibodies produced by two people who had been infected with chikungunya virus. They tested the antibodies against a panel of alphaviruses representing both branches of the group. Two antibodies recognized all of the alphaviruses tested.
Then, they assessed whether the antibodies could prevent arthritis or brain infection in animals. Using mice, they tested each antibody against two alphaviruses that cause arthritis and three that cause brain infections. Both antibodies protected the animals against all of the viruses.
Further experiments showed that the antibodies worked by blocking developing virus particles from exiting one cell en route to infecting another. The antibodies attach to part of a viral protein called E1 that is exposed only during the exiting process. Once the virus has fully formed and detached from the cell, the E1 protein is folded into the virus particle and hidden.
In a related paper being published in the same issue of Cell, James E. Crowe, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, also reports that antibodies targeting the E1 protein bind to a wide range of alphaviruses, prevent them from exiting cells and protect animals against both arthritis and brain infections. Crowe and Diamond are longtime collaborators, and each contributed to the other’s paper.
The two studies start from different points — Diamond began with a virus that causes arthritis; Crowe started with one that causes brain infections — but arrive at basically the same conclusion: The E1 protein could be the key to universal protection against alphaviruses.
“If we could figure out how to make a vaccine that targets the E1 protein effectively, it would be a cost-effective way to provide broad protection for people in resource-limited places, which is where most alphavirus infections occur,” Diamond said. “It’s challenging to make such a vaccine since the target is hidden most of the time. But there are techniques that can be used to make the immune system focus on E1 and generate a good antibody response against it. That’s the next step toward creating a universal vaccine.”

A team of engineers and physicians has developed a steerable catheter that for the first time will give neurosurgeons the ability to steer the device in any direction they want while navigating the brain’s arteries and blood vessels. The device was inspired by nature, specifically insect legs and flagella — tail-like structures that allow microscopic organisms such as bacteria to swim.
The team from the University of California San Diego describes the breakthrough in the Aug. 18 issue of Science Robotics.
The steerable catheter was successfully tested in pigs at the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego.
Approximately one in 50 people in the United States has an unruptured intracranial aneurysm — a thin-walled, blister-like lesion on a cerebral artery that is prone to rupture. These kinds of lesions affect over 160 million people worldwide, half of them under the age of 50. Of patients that suffer ruptured aneurysms, more than half die. Half of the survivors experience long-term disabilities. Studies show that a quarter of cases cannot be operated on because of how difficult the aneurysms are to reach.
“As a neurosurgeon, one of the challenges that we have is directing catheters to the delicate, deep recesses of the brain,” said Dr. Alexander Khalessi, chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC San Diego Health. “Today’s results demonstrate proof of concept for a soft, easily steerable catheter that would significantly improve our ability to treat brain aneurysms and many other neurological conditions, and I look forward to advancing this innovation toward patient care.”
The current state of the art in aneurysm surgery involves neurosurgeons inserting guidewires into an artery near the groin to take catheters through the aorta and all the way up into the brain. Surgeons use curved-tip guidewires to navigate the brain’s arteries and junctions. But these guidewires have to be removed before the catheter’s tip can be used to provide treatment.

Common blood-pressure drugs may improve survival for patients with colorectal cancer, a new study suggests.
After reviewing outcomes of almost 14,000 patients with colorectal cancer, researchers determined that ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and thiazide diuretics were all associated with decreased mortality. They also found that patients who took their blood-pressure drugs consistently were less likely to die from their cancer.
The researchers emphasize that more research is needed to validate the connection between blood-pressure drugs and better outcomes. But they say they are hopeful that the drugs could offer a new, low-cost way to improve care for patients with stage I-III colorectal cancer.
“Cost-effective solutions to prolong cancer survivorship in older patients may lie in commonly used medications,” said researcher Rajesh Balkrishnan, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences. “However, we need further confirmation of these findings through clinical trials.”
About Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that this year there will be 104,270 new cases of colon cancer and 45,230 cases of rectal cancer in the U.S. A troubling rise in the number of younger people developing colorectal cancer recently prompted the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to reduce the recommended age for first screening for the disease to 45 from 50. (Colon cancer killed beloved “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman last year, when he was only 43.)
High blood pressure is common among patients with colorectal cancer, but there has been little research into the potential effect of blood-pressure drugs on patients’ outcomes. Researchers at UVA Cancer Center and the Universidade de São Paulo Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo wanted to change that, so they conducted a large retrospective analysis. They used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER) Medicare database to review outcomes of 13,982 patients ages 65 and older who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer between Jan. 1, 2007, and Dec. 31, 2012.

During the COVID-19 pandemic months of March 2020 to September 2020, U.S. alcohol retail store sales increased compared to usual trends while food services and drinking places sales decreased markedly during the same period, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. These results indicate an increase in home drinking in the U.S. The findings are published online in the journal Alcohol.
The researchers used alcohol retail store sales data of beer, wine, and liquor store (BWLS) purchases from January 1992 to September 2020 from the Monthly Retail Trade Survey, which provides sales estimates at retail and food services. Alcohol sales changes in the U.S. throughout the COVID-19 pandemic were used as an indicator of at-home drinking. Calculating variations in monthly sales enabled the authors to show annual differences in monthly BWLS sales between consecutive years from 1992 to 2020.
“Our results appear to substantiate an increase in home drinking during the period, which could potentially lead to higher alcohol consumption and alcohol-related adverse health outcomes,” said João Mauricio Castaldelli-Maia, MD, PhD, NIDA-INVEST Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and first author.
There was a significant increase in retail alcohol sales during the beginning of the pandemic, reaching a plateau in the third quarter of 2020. From March 2020 to September 2020, there were 41.9 billion dollars in liquor store sales, representing an increase of 20 percent and 18 percent compared to the same period in 2019 and the previous seven-month period (i.e., August 2019 to February 2020), respectively. Likewise, food and drinking place retail sales decreased by 27 percent during the key months of the pandemic, March to September 2020.
Comparing BWLS sales in the first three quarters of consecutive years between 1992 and 2020, the highest variation was a 7.5-billion-dollar increase in these sales between the first three quarters of 2019 and 2020.
Food and drinking place retail (FSDP) sales decreased by more than 50 percent from February 2020 to April 2020. After this, sales for these establishments increased but have not reached the pre-COVID-19 levels. In September 2020, FSDP sales were approximately 15 percent below pre-COVID-19 levels while beer, wine, and liquor store sales increased by 17 percent and remained around this level during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Excessive home drinking could be a dysfunctional way of coping with stress related to the need to quarantine and worries about an uncertain future, according to the researchers. Another critical issue is that drinking at home has been associated with domestic violence.
“During the pandemic, increases in alcohol use at home could potentially exacerbate the effects of social isolation on domestic violence,” suggests Castaldelli-Maia. “For example, U.S. police department data illustrates that there was a 10-27 percent increase in calls concerning domestic violence during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders across diverse locations in the country — from Alabama and Texas to Oregon and New York, although it is unclear whether home drinking played a role in such outcomes.”
“While there is still much left to understand about alcohol use behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe it’s important to make more aggressive efforts to warn the population about the risks associated with increased home alcohol consumption during a pandemic,” said Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and senior author. “It is also important to investigate alcohol use behaviors among individuals at high risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 such as frontline workers and among those living alone for longer isolation periods.”
A co-author is Luis Segura, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.
The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health under the NIDA INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellowship.

Scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) found that 2003 SARS survivors who have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine produced highly potent functional antibodies that are capable of neutralising not only all known SARS-CoV-2 variants of concerns (VOCs) but also other animal coronaviruses that have the potential to cause human infection. This finding, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first time that such cross-neutralising reactivity has been demonstrated in humans, and further boosts hopes of developing an effective and broad-spectrum next-generation vaccine against different coronaviruses.
Among the coronavirus family, one sub-group relies on the ACE2 molecule to enter human cells. Both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 belong to this group as well as a number of coronaviruses circulating in animals such as bats, pangolins and civets. While the exact route of transmission remains unknown, these viruses have the potential to jump from animals to humans and could start the next pandemic. Collectively, this group of viruses is called sarbecovirus.
“We explored the possibility of inducing pan-sarbecovirus neutralising antibodies that can block the common human ACE2-virus interaction, which will be protective not only against all known and unknown SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, but also future sarbecoviruses,” said Dr Chee Wah Tan, Senior Research Fellow with Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Programme and co-first author of this study.
To test their hypothesis, researchers recruited eight people who recovered from SARS-CoV-1, which was responsible for the 2003 SARS epidemic, as well as ten healthy people and ten COVID-19 survivors. They then compared the immune response of the three groups before and after they were vaccinated with the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. In particular, they wanted to understand whether the neutralising antibodies developed in SARS-Vaccinated group could wipe out both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses as well as other sarbecoviruses, including potentially zoonotic sarbecoviruses that have been identified in bats and pangolins.
“Prior to vaccination, SARS-CoV-1 survivors had detectable neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-1 but no or low-level anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies. After receiving two doses of the mRNA vaccine, all displayed high levels of neutralising antibodies against both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2,” said Dr Wanni Chia, Research Fellow at the Duke-NUS EID’ programme and co-first author of this study. “Most importantly, they are the only group with a broad spectrum of neutralising antibodies against ten sarbecoviruses that were chosen to be examined.”
“Our study points to a novel strategy for the development of next-generation vaccines, which will not only help us control the current COVID-19 pandemic, but may also prevent or reduce the risk of future pandemics caused by related viruses,” said Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS EID programme, who is the senior corresponding author of this study.
“Professor Wang’s team made an astute serendipitous observation in an ongoing national multicentre immune monitoring study of COVID-19 vaccination called the Singapore COVID-19 Vaccine Immune Response and Protection Study (SCOPE), which is coordinated by NCID. As emerging variants of concern have already demonstrated some degree of immune evasion against the first-generation vaccines, this discovery has the potential to address that problem as the world continues COVID-19 vaccination to exit the pandemic. In addition, this can potentially act as a highly promising preventive vaccine against future coronavirus pandemics,” said Associate Professor David Lye, Director, Infectious Disease Research and Training Office, NCID and joint corresponding author of the study.
The team conducted their investigation using an improved version of the surrogate virus neutralisation test (sVNT) developed by Duke-NUS in early 2020. Prof Wang and his team invented the sVNT assay, trade named cPassTM, which has been granted Emergency Use Authorisation by the US FDA to determine SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralising antibodies in human sera following infection or vaccination. Dr Tan and Dr Chia are part of Prof Wang’s team and co-inventors of the sVNT. The improved multiplex sVNT allows simultaneous detection of neutralising antibodies against different sarbecoviruses in a single tube, thus playing a pivotal role in studies like this that require accurate side-by-side comparison of neutralising antibody levels against different viruses.
The team is currently conducting a proof-of-concept study to develop a third-generation vaccine against different coronaviruses (3GCoVax) as well as broad neutralising antibodies for therapy and is looking to recruit individuals who recovered from SARS infection in 2003.
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Pompe disease is a rare genetic disorder that disables heart and skeletal muscles and can lead to early death if untreated. The only available treatment for the disease is enzyme replacement therapy that must be injected regularly, sometimes every few days, for life. The treatment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Researchers from the University of Maryland developed a method that could make enzyme replacement therapy more efficient, less expensive and less frequent. A study on their new method was published on August 19, 2021, in the journal Chemical Science.
“This work holds great promise for a better, less costly treatment of the life-threatening Pompe disease,” said UMD Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Lai-Xi Wang, the corresponding author of the study.
In people with Pompe disease, the machinery inside their cells lacks a critical enzyme needed to turn glycogen into glucose, the sugar that fuels muscles. Instead of breaking down, glycogen builds up in the cells, eventually damaging muscle tissue, especially the heart.
Currently, the only treatment for Pompe disease involves injecting large amounts of the missing enzyme, known as acid alpha-glucosidase (GAA), into the bloodstream of patients — with the hope that some of it will get into the cells and clean up the built-up glycogen. But, generally, only a small amount of the enzyme reaches the cellular machinery where it is needed.
“As a result of this inefficiency, a large quantity of the enzyme needs to be injected, and the cost can go up to a half-million dollars per patient a year,” Wang said. “We have developed a simple method of modifying the enzyme that demonstrated much enhanced receptor binding, cellular uptake and glycogen degrading activity in cells.
To develop their method, Wang and his team studied the chemical synthesis and binding properties of various molecules and discovered a ligand — a binding molecule — that was easily recognized by a specific receptor in the cellular transport system. This system carries compounds from the bloodstream across the cell membrane into the machinery where glycogen is broken down into glucose.
Once they found that ligand, Wang’s team developed a simple method to attach it to the GAA enzyme. Working with colleagues from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the researchers tested their engineered GAA enzyme with the attached ligand in model cells and found that it was much more efficient at delivering GAA to the target machinery than the current enzyme replacement therapy.
“Our method could dramatically reduce the amount of enzyme and maybe also the frequency of injections needed to treat Pompe disease, because it ensures that more of the GAA enzyme gets into the cells’ machinery where it can do its job,” said Xiao Zhang, a postdoctoral associate in UMD’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the lead author of the study
The research team is now doing further studies with collaborators at the NIH to evaluate the effects of the combined GAA-ligand therapy in animals with hopes of eventually moving to human trials in the future.
Pompe disease is one of about 50 diseases known as lysosome storage diseases in which cellular machinery lacks the enzymes needed to break down various waste products in cells. The researchers say the method they developed through this work could lead to improved treatments for other similar lysosome storage diseases.
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Materials provided by University of Maryland. Original written by Kimbra Cutlip. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new preclinical study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center suggests that treating people who have aggressive cancers, including melanoma, pancreatic and colorectal cancers, with immune checkpoint inhibitors, quickly followed with mutation-targeted therapy, can help overcome treatment resistance and help people live longer.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, which work by re-energizing tumor-killing immune or T cells, and mutation-targeted therapies, which kill tumors that harbor specific mutations that turn on cancer-driving pathways, have revolutionized the way people with advanced cancers are treated. However, therapy resistance to each type of therapy is a common problem — especially when resistance develops in the brain — limiting the effectiveness of these newer therapies.
Recent studies suggest that combining immune checkpoint inhibitor targeting PD-1/L1 with MAPK-targeted therapy — which are typically used separately to treat people with cancer — may help overcome treatment resistance. In their new work, a UCLA team, however, found that simply initiating the therapies together is not optimal. Instead, starting with two doses of anti-PD-1/L1 therapy, then adding MAPK-targeted therapy, is much more effective in prolonging tumor shrinkage and preventing resistance development.
“We already have powerful drugs in our arsenal against advanced cancers,” said co-senior author Roger S. Lo, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Knowing how to rationally dose, sequence, and combine them offers physicians realistic and near-term chances to improve patient survival.”
In the study, published in Cancer Cell, the researchers tested different sequential-combinatorial regimens in multiple animal models of human melanoma, pancreatic and colorectal cancers driven by common mutations in genes such as BRAF, NF1, NRAS, and KRAS.
They found consistently that only one regimen far out-performed the rest and uncovered molecular and cellular mechanisms to explain why sequencing on top of combination maximizes treatment efficacy. They also analyzed their own clinical trial data and found that patients who unintentionally received immune checkpoint therapies, compared to those who had not, responded better subsequently to MAPK-targeted therapy.

Teenagers who use cannabis frequently may be more likely to have children born preterm, when they become parents up to twenty years later, finds a new University of Bristol-led study. The research, published in Scientific Reports, repeatedly assessed 665 participants in a general population cohort on their tobacco and cannabis use between ages 14 to 29 years, before pregnancy.
The study, led by academics at the University of Bristol in collaboration with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, is the first to identify that frequent adolescent cannabis use may also carry intergenerational risks
Maternal tobacco or cannabis use in pregnancy is linked to babies being born preterm and having low birth weight, raising the risks for health problems in these babies. Substance use in pregnancy tends to be a continuation of use that started before pregnancy, raising a question of whether use in pregnancy or before could be associated with a baby’s early growth. The collaborative research team used the prospective cohort from the Australian Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study (VAHCS) and Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study (VIHCS), with parents recruited to the study when they were in secondary school and followed up until they started having children in their late 20s and 30s; their children were then recruited into a new study.
The researchers found babies born to parents (aged 29 and over) who had used cannabis every day for a period of time between the ages of 15-17 were estimated to be considerably more likely to be born preterm or to have a low birth weight, when compared to babies born to parents who hadn’t used cannabis as teenagers. This effect was limited to people using cannabis at the highest levels of frequency.
The findings are the results of a 20-year prospective study, following parents from their teenage years into their 30s, which found that 20 per cent of all preterm births to study participants occurred in parents who had used cannabis daily during their teenage years.
Dr Lindsey Hines, Research Fellow in Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences (PHS) at the University of Bristol, said: “Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug amongst teenagers. There is already evidence that frequent adolescent cannabis use increases the risks for poor mental health, but our results indicate there may be further effects that individuals may not anticipate.
“As regulations around legal use liberalise, there is a possibility that adolescent use may increase in some countries. These findings provide additional motivation for ensuring that policy changes do not lead to greater adolescent use.”
George Patton, Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research with the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, added: “The more we study heavy cannabis use in the teens, the more problematic it looks. Given growing political and industry drivers for legalisation of use, there is a pressing need for bigger and better research into understanding harms arising from heavy adolescent use.”
This is the first study to use a prospective cohort to explore associations between pre-conception substance use and birth outcomes, and the findings need to be tested in other samples. Given the study’s participants were both mothers or fathers of the babies and that heavy teenage use is most common in boys, these findings are particularly important for males.
Further research is needed to compare outcomes for men and women, as well as to understand the biological mechanisms or social conditions that might drive these associations.
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