Publisher Health

A team of researchers from the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern and the Federal Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) have assessed virus growth and activation of the cellular defense mechanisms in the respiratory tract. They have shown that natural temperature differences that exist in the upper and lower respiratory tract have a profound influence on SARS-CoV-2 replication and subsequent innate immune activation in human cells. The findings can help to develop antiviral drugs and preventive measures.
“SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV are highly similar genetically, generate a homologous repertoire of viral proteins, and use the same receptor to infect human cells. However, despite these similarities, there are also important differences between the two viruses,” says Ronald Dijkman from the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern. For example, SARS-CoV infection is characterized by severe disease and inflammation in the lower respiratory tract and infected individuals are only contagious after the onset of symptoms, making it easier to identify and interrupt infection chains.
In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 preferentially replicates in the upper airways (nasal cavity, pharynx, trachea) and can be efficiently transmitted from one individual to another before the appearance of disease symptoms. Moreover, the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection varies widely from person to person, and can manifest as asymptomatic, mild, or severe disease. Older people as well as individuals with certain underlying medical conditions (heart conditions, diabetes, cancer) are at greater risk of developing severe illness, which is often associated with infection of lower respiratory tissues, high levels of inflammation, and lung failure.
Temperature is key
To better understand why infections with SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 result in such different clinical outcomes, researchers from the University of Bern used specialized human airway cell cultures to investigate the impact of respiratory tract temperatures on SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 replication. The cells originate from human samples and mimic the complexity of the cells found in the respiratory tract. They grow in special containers, are nourished from the bottom side and are exposed to air on the top side, just like the cells in the human trachea. The cultures also make mucus and have cilia that beat very quickly. “Because the organization of these cells greatly resembles the cells found in human tissues, they are a relevant system that can be used in a laboratory to study respiratory viruses,” Dijkman explains.
The researchers have now used this existing model for the first time to study the effects of respiratory temperatures on SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 replication. They found that temperature plays an important role as SARS-CoV-2 preferred to replicate at temperatures typically found in the upper airways (33°C). Colder incubation temperatures allowed the virus to replicate faster and to a higher extent than when infections were carried out at 37°C to mimic the lower lung environment. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, replication of SARS-CoV was not impacted by different incubation temperatures. The experiments were conducted both in the high security laboratory of the IVI in Mittelhäusern and in the biosafety laboratory of the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern in the building of sitem-insel, the Swiss Institute for Translational Medicine and Entrepreneurship.

Scientists have developed vaccines for COVID-19 with record speed. The first two vaccines widely distributed in the U.S. are mRNA-based and require ultracold storage (-70 C for one and -20 C for the other). Now, researchers reporting in ACS Omega have developed a tamper-proof temperature indicator that can alert health care workers when a vial of vaccine reaches an unsafe temperature for a certain period, which could help ensure distribution of effective mRNA vaccines.
The two COVID mRNA vaccines contain instructions for building harmless pieces of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Once the vaccine is injected into the body, human cells use the mRNA instructions to make the spike protein, which they temporarily display on their surface, triggering an immune response. But mRNA is highly unstable, requiring ultracold storage and transport conditions for the vaccines to remain effective. Sung Yeon Hwang, Dongyeop Oh, Jeyoung Park and colleagues wanted to develop a time-temperature indicator (TTI) to identify mRNA vaccines that are exposed to undesirable temperatures during storage or transport, so that they could be discarded.
To make their TTI, the researchers added a mixture of ethylene glycol (antifreeze), water and blue dye to a small tube and froze it in liquid nitrogen. Then, they added a white cellulose absorbent to the top of the frozen coolant, turned the tube upside down, and adhered it to a larger glass vial containing simulated vaccine at -70 C. At temperatures above -60 C, the antifreeze mixture melted, and the dye diffused into the white absorbent, turning it light blue. The color change happened about 2 minutes after the simulated vaccine was exposed to a higher temperature. Importantly, exposures of less than 2 minutes — which are unlikely to impair vaccine efficacy — did not turn the TTI blue. The color change persisted if the tube was refrozen at -70 C, making the system tamper-proof. By changing the coolants or their mixing ratio, or by using different absorbents, the TTI could be tailored to monitor the ideal storage conditions of different mRNA vaccines, the researchers say.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology.
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Increased consumption of flavanols — a group of molecules occurring naturally in fruit and vegetables — could protect people from mental stress-induced cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart disease and thrombosis, according to new research.
Researchers have discovered that blood vessels were able to function better during mental stress when people were given a cocoa drink containing high levels of flavanols than when drinking a non-flavanol enriched drink.
A thin membrane of cells lining the heart and blood vessels, when functioning efficiently the endothelium helps to reduce the risk of peripheral vascular disease, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, tumour growth, thrombosis, and severe viral infectious diseases. We know that mental stress can have a negative effect on blood vessel function.
A UK research team from the University of Birmingham examined the effects of cocoa flavanols on stress-induced changes on vascular function — publishing their findings in Nutrients.
Lead author, Dr. Catarina Rendeiro, of the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, explains: “We found that drinking flavanol-rich cocoa can be an effective dietary strategy to reduce temporary impairments in endothelial function following mental stress and also improve blood flow during stressful episodes.”
“Flavanols are extremely common in a wide range of fruit and vegetables. By utilizing the known cardiovascular benefits of these compounds during periods of acute vascular vulnerability (such as stress) we can offer improved guidance to people about how to make the most of their dietary choices during stressful periods.”
In a randomized study, conducted by postgraduate student Rosalind Baynham, a group of healthy men drank a high-flavanol cocoa beverage 90 minutes before completing an eight-minute mental stress task.
The researchers measured forearm blood flow and cardiovascular activity at rest and during stress and assessed functioning of the blood vessels up to 90 min post stress — discovering that blood vessel function was less impaired when the participants drank high-flavanol cocoa. The researchers also discovered that flavanols improve blood flow during stress.
Stress is highly prevalent in today’s society and has been linked with both psychological and physical health. Mental stress induces immediate increases in heart rate and blood pressure (BP) in healthy adults and also results in temporary impairments in the function of arteries even after the episode of stress has ceased.
Single episodes of stress have been shown to increase the risk of acute cardiovascular events and the impact of stress on the blood vessels has been suggested to contribute to these stress-induced cardiovascular events. Indeed, previous research by Dr Jet Veldhuijzen van Zanten, co-investigator on this study, has shown that people at risk for cardiovascular disease show poorer vascular responses to acute stress.
“Our findings are significant for everyday diet, given that the daily dosage administered could be achieved by consuming a variety of foods rich in flavanols — particularly apples, black grapes, blackberries, cherries, raspberries, pears, pulses, green tea and unprocessed cocoa. This has important implications for measures to protect the blood vessels of those individuals who are more vulnerable to the effects of mental stress,” commented Dr. Rendeiro.
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Nagoya University researchers have identified a gene that plays a crucial role in regenerating neurons of African clawed frog tadpoles, which has an unusually high capacity for nerve regeneration. Their study, recently published in the journal iScience, showed that introducing the gene into mice with spinal cord injury (SCI) led to a partial recovery of their lost motor functions. These findings could contribute to the development of a new therapy for SCI, which often causes a person to experience permanent and severe physical and neurological disabilities.
Repairing spinal cord injuries in humans and other mammals is difficult, partly because of their limited ability to repair and regenerate neural tissues in the spinal cord. In contrast, there are animals with a high capacity for nerve regeneration, such as the African clawed frog. “As a tadpole, it is fully capable of functional recovery after a spinal cord injury,” said Drs. Dasfne Lee-Liu and Juan Larrain from the P. Universidad Catolica de Chile in their study, “Genome-wide expression profile of the response to spinal cord injury in Xenopus laevis reveals extensive differences between regenerative and non-regenerative stages,” published in 2014.
In this context, the Nagoya University research team conducted a collaborative study with Drs. Lee-Liu and Larrain to identify transcription factors that regulate nerve regeneration in the African clawed frog tadpole, with the aim of inducing regenerative effects in mammals. The team comprehensively analyzed the gene expression profiles of tadpoles in response to SCI, and found that a gene called Neurod4 was expressed predominantly during nerve regeneration. The team thus hypothesized that this gene is a key factor in the regeneration of neural tissues after an injury.
In this study, the team also focused on the fact that in mammals, neural stem cells (known as self-renewing cells) derived from the ependymal cells lining the central canal of the spinal cord are activated and proliferate in the early stage of SCI, although these types of neural stem cells eventually transform into astrocytes — a type of cell that forms rigid glial scars.
“Taking these things together, we thought that introducing Neurod4 into activated neural stem cells may help regenerate neurons,” said Associate Professor Atsushi Natsume of the Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, the corresponding author of the study.
To that end, the team conducted experiments in which the Neurod4 gene was introduced to activated neural stem cells in mice just after SCI. The researchers observed that the neural stem cells were successfully converted into neurons and, interestingly, the mice occasionally moved their paralyzed hind legs. Dr. Natsume explained, “Neurod4 introduced into activated neural stem cells facilitates the production of relay neurons, which project to motor neurons of the hind legs. As a secondary effect, glial scar formation was suppressed after the subacute phase of spinal cord injury. This effect allows an environment that was conducive for axons to elongate beyond the injury site and form synapses, thereby improving the motor function of the hind legs.”
“Our method is to introduce a neuro regenerative gene directly into neural stem cells that are already present in the spinal cord. This could lessen the problems of rejection and tumor formation, which often occur in conventional stem cell transplantation methods. We believe this study will contribute to the development of new therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injury,” he added.
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The faster-spreading B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 first detected in the United Kingdom, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is quickly on its way to becoming the dominant variant of the virus in the United States, according to a study from scientists at Scripps Research and the COVID-19 test maker Helix.
The findings, which appear today in Cell, suggest that future COVID-19 case numbers and mortality rates in the United States will be higher than would have been otherwise. The analysis suggests that the variant, which has been detectable in an increasing proportion of SARS-CoV-2 samples, is 40-50 percent more transmissible than SARS-CoV-2 lineages that were previously dominant. Other studies have found evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant may be about 50 percent more likely to cause fatal COVID-19.
“B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant in the U.K. and other countries after its emergence late last year, and the U.S. is now on a similar trajectory,” says study co-senior author Kristian Andersen, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Research Translational Research Institute. “We need immediate and decisive action to minimize COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”
In addition to Andersen, the other senior author was William Lee, PhD, vice president of science at Helix, which provides PCR-based COVID-19 testing to organizations across the United States. The study was also authored by Nicole Washington, PhD, associate director of research at Helix, and Karthik Gangavarapu of the Andersen Lab.
“B.1.1.7 has a doubling rate of a little over a week and an increased transmission rate of 40-50 percent, which means it could have a meaningful impact on public health,” says Lee. “It is critical that we continue to monitor the spread of this and other emerging variants, but our current level of surveillance is inadequate and lags behind that of other countries. We need a more comprehensive national SARS-CoV-2 genomics surveillance program to address this.”
The B.1.1.7 variant emerged in southern England last year and has since become the dominant variant in the U.K. In December, Andersen’s team at Scripps Research with colleagues at University of California, San Diego confirmed the first evidence of the variant in California.

Children with a common but regularly undiagnosed disorder affecting their language and communication are likely to be finding the transition back to school post-lockdown harder than most, according to a team of psychologists.
Two children in every class of 30 are estimated to have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) (around 8%), yet public awareness, diagnosis and referral to speech and language therapists all remain low in the UK.
DLD is a condition where children have problems acquiring their own language for no obvious reasons. Unlike temporary language delay (which reflects the natural variation of age at which children learn to speak and communicate), DLD is a lifelong condition with significant impacts for individuals in childhood and in later life, in particular their mental health.
Common challenges for children include difficulty understanding what others say and struggling to articulate their ideas through speech. This can result in problems interacting and learning to play with peers, which researchers believe exacerbates mental health concerns and was the focus of a new study from the psychologists at the University of Bath.
Published today [Wednesday 31 March 2021], the new research which drew on insights from specialist schools around the UK, focused on social challenges experienced by children with Language Disorders. It highlights regular struggles for young people in resolving disagreements and accessing group play, which the researchers say might be mitigated by adjusting / adapting playtimes according to children’s specific needs. This might include space for quieter reflection, potentially with options for drawing or board games.
Lead researcher, Dr Vanessa Lloyd-Esenkaya from the University of Bath, who used to work as a learning assistant in primary schools helping young people with language and communications challenges, explains: “We think of playtime as being a period of release for kids and a chance for them to relax with friends, and it is, but it can also create new challenges for children to deal with.
“This study finds children with Language Disorders can struggle to keep up with group games that have multiple rules — the type you’ll often see forming spontaneously and at a fast pace on a school playground. They also frequently misinterpret social cues, have difficulties resolving conflicts independently, and find it hard to understand and regulate emotions, according to parents and specialist school staff.
“This year, more than ever, children have had to adapt to changing environments. Protecting children from mental health difficulties is at the forefront of all our minds. This study is timely because children with Language Disorders, such as DLD, were already at risk of developing mental health difficulties before the pandemic hit. It’s important we find ways to better help children with their peer relationships to enhance their wellbeing.”
The researchers say that early referrals for DLD are particularly important in order to help put the right support in place for young people and stress the positive impacts such interventions can make.
Dr Lloyd-Esenkaya adds: “Research shows that for every £1 spent on Enhanced Speech and Language Therapy £6.43 is returned in savings over children’s lifetimes. Language is engrained into every aspect of our lives and so DLD has a huge impact on everyday functioning, but with the right support people with DLD can thrive. It’s likely that teachers will have kids in their class who have DLD but don’t have a diagnosis. Schools can support children with Language Disorders by providing alternative spaces to play at lunchtime such as drawing or board game clubs and using visual resources, such as wall charts and social stories, to help children work through their emotions and any peer conflicts.”
Dr Yvonne Wren, Director of Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit comments: “It is easy to mislabel children with DLD but it is vital that these children are identified to ensure they get the right help and support. This hidden disability can have a major impact on children’s progress at school, both socially and academically.”
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New research by the University of Kent has found that using low-cost psychological interventions can reduce vehicle engine idling and in turn improve air quality, especially when there is increased traffic volume at railway level crossings.
A team of psychologists led by Professor Dominic Abrams, Dr Tim Hopthrow and Dr Fanny Lalot at the University’s School of Psychology, found that using carefully worded road signage can decrease the number of drivers leaving engines idling during queues at crossing barriers.
The research, which was funded by Canterbury City Council following a successful grant bid to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), observed 6,049 drivers’ engine idling at the St Dunstan’s and St Stephen’s level crossings in Canterbury, Kent. The researchers tested the effects of three intervention signs fixed to lampposts, which amplified existing signs to request drivers to switch off their engines. These were: ‘Join other responsible drivers in Canterbury. Turn off your engine when the barriers are down’ (Social norm messaging). ‘Turn off your engine when the barriers are down. You will improve air quality in the area’ (Outcome efficacy messaging). ‘Think about your actions. When the barriers are down please turn off your engine’ (Self-regulation messaging).The social norm and outcome efficacy messages successfully increased the proportion of drivers who turned off their engines, by 42% and 25%, respectively. This reduction in vehicle idling significantly reduced concentrations of atmospheric particulate matter (PM2.5) two metres above ground level.
The presence of larger numbers of other drivers boosted the impact of the social norm road signage. These findings demonstrate that drivers may feel a stronger urge to conform to the norm of turning their engines off when those ahead of them in traffic do too. This reduces harmful emissions when it is most urgent to do so.
This research, published by the Journal of Environmental Psychology, is the first of its kind to show that behavioural change induced by persuasive messages translates into observable changes in air quality and pollutant concentration levels.
As a result of the research, Canterbury City Council has installed permanent road signage at the St Dunstan’s, St Stephen’s and Sturry railway level crossings.
Professor Abrams said: ‘People have many creative ideas about how to improve air quality, but how do we know which will work? This research used a scientific method that enabled us to design effective messages to change people’s behaviour, improving the air quality for themselves and others. Just as importantly, we have also discovered types of messages that do not work so well. This approach should also work when planning ways to encourage other behaviours that can improve air quality, health and quality of the environment.’
Kelly Haynes, Environmental Health Officer — Air Quality at Canterbury City Council, said: ‘Improving air quality in the district is a major focus of the council and research like this is vital to that work.
‘The results clearly show the right messages in the right locations can be really effective in reducing the number of people leaving their engines running which is one of the main contributors to poor air quality in our city.
‘These signs are just one of many things we’re doing to tackle air quality including the introduction of a new hybrid car club in Canterbury and plans to install more electric vehicle charging points across the district.’
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As with any complex machine, sometimes a simple crossed wire or short circuit can cause problems with how it functions. The same goes for our brains, and even when the short circuit is uncovered, sometimes experts don’t have a quick fix.
A new study reveals that an evidence-based treatment may “fix” this human short circuit and, with the help of brain imaging, might predict treatment outcomes for adolescents with anxiety disorders. University of Cincinnati researchers say this could determine medication effectiveness more quickly to help patients.
Study results showed that brain imaging was able to predict — after just two weeks of treatment with almost 80% accuracy — how much a patient would improve.
“We also see [through imaging] that the medication in this study increases the strength of the connection between a brain area that generates anxiety and an area that serves as a ‘brain brake’ for the fear center,” says Jeffrey Strawn, MD, associate professor and anxiety expert in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at UC, who is the senior author on this study. “In essence, the medication allows the brain to dampen the overactivity of fear areas, and we see this dampening very early in the course of treatment using imaging.”
In this National Institutes of Health-sponsored study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers used brain imaging (MRI) to see how 41 adolescents, ages 12-17, with anxiety disorders responded to a medication called escitalopram, versus a placebo, over eight weeks. Escitalopram is a medication known as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for depression in adolescents and for both depression and anxiety in adults.
Strawn, who is also a physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and UC Health, says SSRIs work by boosting the activity of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is one of the chemical messengers that nerve cells use to communicate with one another and one that is involved in anxiety disorders. These medications block the recycling of serotonin into nerve cells, making more serotonin available to improve transmission of messages between neurons.
“These medications are an effective treatment for many adolescents with anxiety disorders. However, how much a specific patient will benefit is difficult to predict,” he continues.
He says clinicians typically need six to eight weeks of the patient being on the medication in order to evaluate whether or not the treatment is going to work. “But with the brain imaging in this study, doctors could determine — after just two weeks — if they would need an alternative treatment. Knowing this early in treatment could greatly improve outcomes for patients,” he adds. “This study helps clinicians understand how the medication — even early in treatment — changes brain circuits that are involved in anxiety and can help to get patients back to their normal lives more quickly.”
Larger studies are needed to further test this, but the results are promising and, as Strawn notes, are really important for better treating adolescents with anxiety disorders.
“Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the U.S., with approximately 4.4 million children and adolescents affected,” he says. “These disorders are not only common in children and teens, but, if untreated, result in considerable personal and economic cost over the lifetime.
“This study uncovers a way to predict how effectively a medication will treat anxiety in kids and reveals that brain changes occur within two weeks of starting the medication. Additionally, the changes that occur in the brain can predict treatment response and improvement over time which is incredibly beneficial for physicians and can help us determine promising biomarkers for drug development. While not necessarily a quick fix, this could be a quicker fix that could help patients tremendously and improve their quality of life.”
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Materials provided by University of Cincinnati. Original written by Katie Pence. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A targeted opioid that only treats diseased tissues and spares healthy tissues relieves pain from inflammatory bowel disease without causing side effects, according to new research published in the journal Gut.
The study, led by researchers at New York University College of Dentistry and Queen’s University in Ontario, was conducted in mice with colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease marked by inflammation of the large intestine.
Opioids, which are used to treat chronic pain in people with inflammatory bowel disease, relieve pain by targeting opioid receptors, including the mu opioid receptor. When opioids activate the mu opioid receptor in healthy tissues, however, they can cause severe and life-threatening side effects, including difficulty breathing, constipation, sedation, and addiction.
“We wanted to understand whether it is possible to activate this receptor only in diseased tissues and not in normal tissues,” said senior study author Nigel Bunnett, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at NYU College of Dentistry. “Essentially, can you control pain without triggering these devastating side effects?”
The answer may lie in a novel opioid called NFEPP, discovered by Christoph Stein, MD, of Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a collaborator on the Gut study. NFEPP is a reengineered form of the opioid fentanyl; an added fluorine atom helps the drug to only bind to the mu opioid receptor in an acidic environment. This steers NFEPP to diseased tissues — sites of inflammation or injury — which become acidic due to changes in the tissues’ metabolism.
The researchers investigated the use of NFEPP and fentanyl in mice with colitis, which caused their gut tissue to be mildly acidic. Both NFEPP and fentanyl inhibited colon pain in mice with colitis. However, in sharp contrast to fentanyl, NFEPP did not cause side effects such as constipation, suppressed breathing, and altered movement. In healthy mice without inflammatory bowel disease, NFEPP did not alter pain activity or cause side effects.
“The preference of NFEPP for activating opioid receptors in acidic tissues accounts for its ability to selectivity relieve pain in the inflamed but not healthy colon,” said Bunnett. “By sparing healthy tissues, we avoided the detrimental side effects seen with fentanyl use.”
The researchers are now collecting tissue samples from people with inflammatory bowel disease to determine whether their colons, like those in mice, are also acidic environments. If so, they plan to test NFEPP’s ability to inhibit pain in the human gut and ultimately conduct clinical trials.
“Treatments designed to preferentially engage opioid receptors in diseased tissues could offer the potential for effective pain relief without the side effects. These drugs would represent a major advance in the treatment of painful diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and cancer,” said Bunnett. “More broadly, engineering drugs beyond pain treatments that target only diseased tissues could open the door to more effective and precise therapies for a wide range of disorders.”
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A global study led by Hamilton scientists has found a link between eating processed meat and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. The same study did not find the same link with unprocessed red meat or poultry.
The information comes from the diets and health outcomes of 134,297 people from 21 countries spanning five continents, who were tracked by researchers for data on meat consumption and cardiovascular illnesses.
After following the participants for almost a decade, the researchers found consumption of 150 grams or more of processed meat a week was associated with a 46 per cent higher risk of cardiovascular disease and a 51 per cent higher risk of death than those who ate no processed meat.
However, the researchers also found moderate levels of consumption of non-processed meats had a neutral effect on health.
“Evidence of an association between meat intake and cardiovascular disease is inconsistent. We therefore wanted to better understand the associations between intakes of unprocessed red meat, poultry, and processed meat with major cardiovascular disease events and mortality,” said Romaina Iqbal, first author of the study and an associate professor at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.
“The totality of the available data indicates that consuming a modest amount of unprocessed meat as part of a healthy dietary pattern is unlikely to be harmful,” said Mahshid Dehghan, investigator for the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences.
The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study was launched in 2003 and is the first multinational study that provides information on the association between unprocessed and processed meat intakes with health outcomes from low, middle and high-income countries.
“The PURE study examines substantially more diverse populations and broad patterns of diet, enabling us to provide new evidence that distinguishes between the effects of processed and unprocessed meats,” said senior author Salim Yusuf, executive director of the PHRI.
Participants’ dietary habits were recorded using food frequency questionnaires, while data was also collected on their mortality and major cardiovascular disease events. This allowed researchers to determine the associations between meat consumption patterns and cardiovascular disease events and mortality.
The authors believe that additional research may improve current understanding of the relationship between meat consumption and health outcomes. For example, it is unclear what study participants with lower meat intakes were eating instead of meat, and if the quality of those foods differed between countries.
Non-meat food substitutes may have implications in further interpreting the associations between meat consumption and health outcomes. Nonetheless, the study’s authors believe their findings “indicate that limiting the intake of processed meat should be encouraged.”
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