Publisher Health

Amid a deep residue of mistrust, Western cautions on the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines risk igniting an explosion of damaging anti-vaccine fervor in the global south.Far beyond the United States and Europe, the safety scares engulfing the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have jeopardized campaigns to inoculate the world, undercutting faith in two sorely needed shots and threatening to prolong the coronavirus pandemic in countries that can ill afford to be choosy about vaccines.With new infections surging on nearly every continent, signs that the vaccination drive is in peril are emerging, most disconcertingly in Africa.In Malawi, people are asking doctors how to expunge the AstraZeneca vaccine from their bodies.In South Africa, health officials have paused giving the Johnson & Johnson shot, the only one they have, a repeat blow after dropping AstraZeneca from their arsenal in February.And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not a single person has been vaccinated, despite 1.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot languishing in the country since March 2.In those countries and others, Western colonialism and unethical medical practices have left a residue of mistrust in vaccines, which could harden if the perception takes hold that rich countries are dumping second-rate shots on the global south.Already, doctors say, the recent pauses have vindicated vaccine skeptics and made many others feel duped.“People, especially those who were vaccinated, felt like they had been tricked in a way — they were asking, ‘How do we get rid of the vaccine in our body?’” said Precious Makiyi, a doctor and behavioral scientist in Malawi, where health workers have been racing to empty their shelves of nearly expired AstraZeneca doses. “We fought so hard with vaccine messaging, but what has happened this past week has brought us back to square zero.”Police officers guarding AstraZeneca vaccines after a shipment arrived last month in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi.Thoko Chikondi/Associated PressAfrican health officials have reacted with fury at the breezy reassurances of American and European lawmakers that people denied the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson shots could be given another vaccine. In much of the world, there are no other vaccines.And even as American health officials stressed that they paused use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Tuesday in “an abundance of caution,” they forced global health officials to begin crafting the difficult case that shots unsafe for the world’s rich were still suited to its poor. “It’s sending vaccine confidence into a crater,” Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance, said of rich countries’ actions. “It’s irresponsible messaging, and it speaks to the selfishness of the moment that there wouldn’t be more consultation and communication.”What rich countries call caution, poorer nations will experience as a devastating gamble with the survival of their citizens against Covid-19. “Out of an abundance of caution, let us not destroy vaccine confidence in places that only have access to one type of vaccine,” Dr. Alakija said.The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, cheaper and easier to store than the alternatives, are mainstays of global inoculations. AstraZeneca’s shot is being used in at least 118 countries. Lately, amid shortages of that vaccine, some regions have pivoted to Johnson & Johnson’s: Two weeks ago, the African Union acquired 400 million doses.Together, the two vaccines account for a third of the portfolio of Covax, the international effort to procure and distribute vaccines.But it is becoming more apparent by the day that those shots, built on a relatively rugged vaccine platform, are becoming afterthoughts in wealthy nations. After canceling Johnson & Johnson appointments over concerns about rare blood clots, American states offered people the pricier Pfizer or Moderna vaccines instead. The European Union said on Wednesday that it had acquired another 50 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, allowing it to curb use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine and phase it out altogether next year.Those decisions, intended for domestic audiences, have nevertheless reverberated in countries where variants are spreading, physical distancing is a luxury and there is no choice of shots. Health officials fear that any setbacks in vaccinations could sow the seeds of the next calamitous outbreak, one that deluges hospitals and exports new mutations around the world. In those places, doctors said, the math is obvious: Many more people will die without the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines than with them.Amid the clotting concerns, the World Health Organization and African Union have not wavered in recommending the use of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines. In Britain, AstraZeneca’s vaccine remains the backbone of the country’s speedy inoculation campaign, despite people under 30 being offered alternatives. Congo, after spurning the AstraZeneca shot in light of unease in Europe, said on Tuesday that it would launch the much-delayed inoculations next week.A vaccination center inside Salisbury Cathedral, in Salisbury, England, in January. Britain has forged ahead with the AstraZeneca vaccine, though restricting its use to people aged 30 and above.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesAnd in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, people continued to line up on wooden benches on Wednesday for the AstraZeneca shot as they watched their children run through the corridors of a medical center.“We don’t have a choice,” said Alioune Badara Diagne, 34, who lives in the city’s lively Ouakam neighborhood. Despite talk of vaccination pauses in wealthy nations and rumors of vaccine makers using Africans as “guinea pigs,” he said, Westerners themselves were continuing to be injected. He added, “The vaccine is our only hope.”But in much of the world, the American regulators who endorsed Tuesday’s pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations act as sort of surrogate decision makers on drugs and vaccines, giving their hesitation extra weight in African nations.“I became even more skeptical when I heard that the United States suspended Johnson & Johnson,” said Lawmond Lawse Nwehla, 32, an engineer in Dakar. “They said it was effective and then they stopped it. So I wonder why.”In immediately pausing the use of Johnson & Johnson’s shot, American regulators reacted more aggressively than did their British counterparts, who backed the AstraZeneca vaccine even as they investigated clotting cases..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The costs of the American approach were already evident in Europe, where many nations stopped and then restarted AstraZeneca vaccinations, only to find that it had become a pariah. Most people in France, Germany and Spain distrusted the vaccine.“Once you take the cork out of the bottle, I’m not sure you can get it back in particularly easily,” said Anthony Cox, a vaccines safety expert at the University of Birmingham in England. South Africa immediately copied the American pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations, infuriating doctors who are still clamoring for shots, especially in remote parts of the country. In February, health officials dropped the AstraZeneca vaccine over its limited efficacy against a dangerous variant there.To date, only half of 1 percent of the population is vaccinated, and a mere 10,000 shots are being given each day. At that rate, it could take weeks, if not longer, for a single rare blood clotting case to emerge, said Jeremy Nel, an infectious disease doctor in Johannesburg. He was dismayed by the decision to pause shots, given the risk to vaccine confidence in a country where two-fifths of the people say they have no intention of being vaccinated.“The slower you go, that failure is measured in death,” Dr. Nel said. “Even if you delay for a week, there is a non-trivial chance that will cost lives.”The solution in many European countries — to stop using seemingly riskier vaccines in younger people, who are at lower risk from Covid-19 — would be unworkable in Africa, where the median age in many countries is below 20.And any further restrictions would compound the hurdles facing Covax, among them a paucity of funding for every part of inoculation programs beyond the touchdown of doses at airports.Mali, in western Africa, has administered 7 percent of the AstraZeneca doses that Covax has delivered. Sudan, in eastern Africa, has given 8 percent of the doses it has received.Skittishness over the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, analysts fear, could stoke demand for Russian- and Chinese-made shots about which far less is known. As it is, some global health officials have turned their attention to the Novavax vaccine, which is not yet authorized but makes up a third of Covax’s portfolio.“Even at this stage of the pandemic, we have our fingers crossed that some vaccine will work to help vaccinate developing countries, instead of ramping up production of vaccines we know work,” said Zain Rizvi, an expert on medicines access at Public Citizen, an advocacy group.In Kenya, where enthusiasm for vaccines is high in cities but perilously low in rural areas, “the story about blood clots from Europe could not have come at a worse time,” said Catherine Kyobutungi, the director of the African Population and Health Research Center there. “Even those who were perhaps on the fence, and leaning toward getting vaccinated, all of a sudden had second thoughts,” she said.The American pause on Johnson & Johnson shots promised a second media furor.“When the F.D.A. suspends, it makes headlines for days,” she said. “When it lifts the suspension, it doesn’t make as many headlines.”Mady Camara contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.

Bruising caused by physical abuse is the most common injury to be overlooked or misdiagnosed as non-abusive before an abuse-related fatality or near-fatality in a young child. A refined and validated bruising clinical decision rule (BCDR), called TEN-4-FACESp, which specifies body regions on which bruising is likely due to abuse for infants and young children, may improve earlier recognition of cases that should be further evaluated for child abuse. Findings were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“Bruising on a young child is often dismissed as a minor injury, but depending on where the bruise appears, it can be an early sign of child abuse,” said lead author Mary Clyde Pierce, MD, a pediatric emergency medicine physician and the Research Director for the Division of Child Abuse Pediatrics at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We need to look at bruising in terms of risk. Our new screening tool helps clinicians identify high-risk cases that warrant evaluation for child abuse. This is critical, since abuse tends to escalate and earlier recognition can save children’s lives.”
According to the study findings, the bruising screening tool TEN-4-FACESp reliably signals high risk for abuse when bruising appears on any of the following regions. “TEN” stands for torso, ear, and neck. “FACES” specifies facial features — frenulum (skin between upper lip and the gum, lower lip and the gum, and under the tongue), angle of jaw, cheeks (fleshy), eyelids, and subconjunctivae (red bruise on white part of the eye). The “p” is for patterned bruising, when, for example, bite marks or the shape of the hand is visible on the child’s skin. The “4” represents any bruising anywhere to an infant 4.99 months of age or younger. Importantly, the rule only applies to children with bruising who are younger than 4 years of age. This screening tool is a refined version of TEN-4, previously developed by Dr. Pierce.
This multi-center study was made possible through a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In the study, Dr. Pierce and colleagues screened for bruising in over 21,000 children younger than 4 years of age at five pediatric emergency departments. They enrolled 2,161 patients with bruising. Researchers found that the TEN-4-FACESp screening tool had a sensitivity of 95 percent and specificity of 87 percent, which means that it distinguished potential abuse from non-abuse with high level of accuracy.
“It was very important to us to make sure that the screening tool captures potential abuse without over-capturing innocent cases of children with bruising caused by accidental or incidental injury,” said Dr. Pierce. “We are excited that it proved to be highly reliable, and it is simple enough to be applied during any clinical encounter. A skin exam in infants and young children is essential.”
The evidence behind the TEN-4-FACESp BCDR will soon be available as an app developed by Dr. Pierce and co-author Kim Kaczor, expected to launch by October 2021. The app will present a rotatable 3-D image of a child’s body. When a clinician clicks on an area of a patient’s bruise, a summary of study results will appear that allows comparison of the clinicians patient with the actual data from this large scale study with the goal of helping the user decide whether the bruise is a red flag for abuse. The app is in no way meant to supplant judgment but to provide evidence-based guidance to inform decision making.
Dr. Pierce cautions that TEN-4-FACESp is not negative for abuse in children without bruising. It is simply not relevant in those circumstances and other methods of identifying abuse would be needed.
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Materials provided by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new state-by-state analysis shows a statistical association between high adherence to mask wearing and reduced rates of COVID-19 in the U.S. Charlie Fischer and colleagues at the Boston University School of Public Health in Massachusetts present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 14.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, different states have enacted different policies on mask wearing, with some states having no mask requirements and others requiring masks in all public spaces. Understanding the link between mask wearing and COVID-19 rates could help inform policies to mitigate stress on healthcare systems, economic instability, and death.
To help clarify the effects of mask wearing, Fischer and colleagues examined publicly available data on mask-wearing policies, people’s self-reported habits on mask wearing in public, and COVID-19 rates for all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. They accounted for a one-month delay between mask wearing and its subsequent potential impact on COVID-19 rates from May through October 2020. For this analysis, they considered rates of more than 200 cases per 100,000 residents to be high.
The analysis showed that, out of 15 states that did not require people to wear masks in public, 14 had high COVID-19 rates. Meanwhile, eight states had self-reported adherence rates of 75 percent of greater, and none of these states had a high COVID-19 rate. States with the lowest adherence rates had the greatest likelihood of high COVID-19 rates in the subsequent month.
The eight states with at least 75-percent adherence to mask wearing had a mean COVID-19 rate of 109.26 per 100,000 residents in the subsequent month, while the mean COVID-19 rate was 239.99 for states with less than 75 percent adherence.
These findings provide new evidence in support of mask-wearing as a major factor that contributes to reduced COVID-19 rates. They suggest that policies and public health efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19 should include a focus on improved mask adherence throughout the U.S.
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Materials provided by PLOS. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The extent to which the composition of the microbiome of apples and oil pumpkins depends on the geographical location and what insights can be derived from this for breeding, health and shelf life of the fruits is shown in two recent publications by researchers at TU Graz.
We refer to the microbiome as the community of microorganisms that exist in or on all organisms, including bacteria and fungi. A team from the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) led by Institute head Gabriele Berg has now investigated the microbiomes of apples and oil pumpkins in two independent studies. The researchers have found that bacteria useful to plants are largely “inherited,” i.e., passed on to the next generation, while the community of fungi in the microbiome is highly dependent on the particular soil microbiome and thus on the locality.
Microbiome-guided breeding of oil pumpkins
The breeding of the Styrian oil pumpkin is relatively recent — it started about 150 years ago and is well documented. Through selective breeding of resistant, increasingly tasty and high-yielding pumpkins, the seed microbiome of the oil pumpkin has changed over the generations. Using a well-documented breeding line, the environmental biotechnologists at TU Graz were able to demonstrate for the first time that the microorganisms on the seeds of the pumpkin are inherited and probably crucial for certain plant traits. Peter Kusstatscher, one of the study authors, explains: “We studied bacteria and fungi on oil pumpkin seeds and found that the plant passes on much of its bacteria on the seed — up to 60 percent, in fact — to the next generation, while fungal diversity on the seed depends largely on the local soil microbiome.” Kusstatscher continues, “It’s mainly microorganisms that are useful for the plants that are inherited. In this respect, the plant behaves in a similar way to humans: babies also get their microbiome from their mothers.”
The results published in Frontiers in Plant Science pave the way towards a microbiome-controlled breeding of oil pumpkins. Selective breeding of a beneficial seed microbiome results in plant traits that have a positive impact on yield, health and storability of oil pumpkins.
On the tracks of the universal apple microbiome
Apples are among the most popular and widely consumed fruits in the world. Fruit quality, yield, and storability are important factors for fruit growers, fruit trade, and consumers. In a worldwide study, the apple of the variety “Royal Gala” was examined for the first time with regard to the composition and possible local differences of its microbiome. An international team was able to show that the nature and structure of the fungal and bacterial communities of the apple at the time of harvest vary from region to region, i.e. they are strongly dependent on the geographical location and thus on the prevailing climatic conditions and management practices. In particular, the fungal diversity of the fruit is significantly dependent on the locality and suggests a relationship to the type and frequency of post-harvest diseases. On the other hand, a continental pattern can be drawn especially for the bacterial community which indicates adaptation of the apple microbiome to local environments.
Ahmed Abdelfattah, Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at TU Graz and lead author of the study explains: “Despite the variations we observed in the apple microbiome, we were still able to identify a so-called ‘core’ microbiome i.e. members of the microbiome that are shared globally among the apples. This global ‘core’ microbiome is represented by several beneficial microbial indicators and makes up a large portion of the fruit’s microbial community.”
Similar to the study results on oil pumpkin, this study lays another foundation for new approaches to improving fruit quality and health, in this case of apples. Furthermore, the results form the basis for investigations of complex microbial interactions on the surface of apple fruits. The study results were published in Environmental Microbiology.
Both studies highlight the importance of the microbiome for health issues from the crop in the agro-ecosystem to humans who consume the food. At the same time, new avenues for microbiome management are opening up for environmentally friendly pest control.
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Materials provided by Graz University of Technology. Original written by Barbara Gigler. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Supplementation of cocoa powder in the diet of high-fat-fed mice with liver disease markedly reduced the severity of their condition, according to a new study by Penn State researchers, who suggest the results have implications for people.
Cocoa powder, a popular food ingredient most commonly used in the production of chocolate, is rich in fiber, iron and phytochemicals reported to have positive health benefits, including antioxidant polyphenols and methylxanthines, noted study leader Joshua Lambert, professor of food science in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
“While it is typically considered an indulgence food because of its high sugar and fat content, epidemiological and human-intervention studies have suggested that chocolate consumption is associated with reduced risk of cardio-metabolic diseases including stroke, coronary heart disease and Type 2 diabetes,” Lambert said. “So, it made sense to investigate whether cocoa consumption had an effect on non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease, which is commonly associated with human obesity.”
This study has several strengths, Lambert explained. It used a commercially available cocoa product at a “physiologically achievable dose” — meaning its equivalent could be duplicated by humans. “Doing the calculations, for people it works out to about 10 tablespoons of cocoa powder a day,” he said. “Or, if you follow the directions on the Hershey’s box of cocoa powder, that’s about five cups of hot cocoa a day.”
The high-fat-fed mouse is a well-established, diet-induced model of obesity, Lambert added. By waiting until mice were already obese before beginning cocoa treatment, researchers were able to test the protective effects of cocoa in a model that better simulates the current public health situation related to non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease.
That’s important, Lambert pointed out, because a significant proportion of the world’s population has preexisting obesity and non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease. “Given the high proportion of people in the United States and other parts of the world with obesity, there is a need to develop potentially effective dietary interventions rather than just preventive agents,” he said.

Eating red meat may have a bad reputation for being bad for the heart, but new research found that lean beef may have a place in healthy diets, after all.
In a randomized controlled study, researchers found that a Mediterranean diet combined with small portions of lean beef helped lower risk factors for developing heart disease, such as LDL cholesterol.
Jennifer Fleming, assistant teaching professor of nutrition at Penn State, said the study suggests that healthy diets can include a wide variety of foods, such as red meat, and still be heart friendly.
“When you create a healthy diet built on fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based foods, it leaves room for moderate amounts of other foods like lean beef,” Fleming said. “There are still important nutrients in beef that you can benefit from by eating lean cuts like the loin or round, or 93% lean ground beef.”
David J. Baer, research leader at the United States Department of Agriculture — Agricultural Research Service, and study co-principal investigator, added, “This study highlights the importance of including lean beef in a Mediterranean dietary pattern that can yield heart-healthy benefits.”
According to the researchers, red meat such as beef has been associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease in previous studies. But it has remained unclear whether red meat actually causes these effects or if they actually are caused by other diet and lifestyle choices that people engage in alongside red meat consumption.

A new study, led by the University of California, Irvine (UCI), reveals how chronic inflammation promotes muscle fibrosis, which could inform the development of new therapies for patients suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a fatal muscle disease.
Titled, “A Stromal Progenitor and ILC2 Niche Promotes Muscle Eosinophilia and Fibrosis-Associated Gene Expression,” the study was published today in Cell Reports. Chronic inflammation is a major pathological process contributing to the progression and severity of several degenerative disorders, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Studies directed at establishing a causal link between muscular dystrophy and muscle inflammation have revealed a complex dysregulation of the immune response to muscle damage.
During muscular dystrophy, chronic activation of innate immunity causes scarring of skeletal muscle, or fibrosis, compromising motor function. How immunity is linked to the molecular and cellular regulation of muscle fibrosis was not well defined, until now.
“In our study we found the interaction between two types of cells — a novel stromal progenitor, which is similar to a stem cell, and group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2), which are a type of immune cell that reside in skeletal muscle — promotes the invasion of white blood cells in muscle. This condition is associated with the elevation of genes that promote muscle tissue scarring found in DMD,” said lead author Jenna Kastenschmidt, PhD, an assistant specialist in the UCI School of Medicine Department of Physiology & Biophysics.
The new study not only reveals the interaction of cells contributing to DMD, but it illuminates how muscle eosinophilia is regulated. Eosinophils are white blood cells that infiltrate dystrophic muscle causing fibrosis. In this study, researchers found that eosinophils were elevated in DMD muscle compared to control patients. In addition, researchers found the deletion of ILC2s in dystrophic mice mitigated muscle eosinophilia, reducing the expression of genes associated with muscle fibrosis. These findings contribute to the understanding of the complex regulation of muscle inflammation and fibrosis during muscular dystrophy.
“By further defining the interaction between skeletal muscle-resident immune and stromal cells, we can better understand how chronic inflammation promotes muscle fibrosis and, more importantly, we can facilitate development of novel therapies for DMD,” said senior author Armando Villalta, PhD, assistant professor in UCI’s Department of Physiology & Biophysics.
Ongoing work from Villalta’s lab continues to focus on how distinct facets of the immune system regulate DMD pathogenesis and how these processes influence the efficacy and long-term stability of gene replacement therapy.
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Materials provided by University of California – Irvine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a tiny wireless implant that can provide real-time measurements of tissue oxygen levels deep underneath the skin. The device, which is smaller than the average ladybug and powered by ultrasound waves, could help doctors monitor the health of transplanted organs or tissue and provide an early warning of potential transplant failure.
The technology, created in collaboration with physicians at the University of California, San Francisco, also paves the way for the creation of a variety of miniaturized sensors that could track other key biochemical markers in the body, such as pH or carbon dioxide. These sensors could one day provide doctors with minimally invasive methods for monitoring the biochemistry inside functioning organs and tissues.
“It’s very difficult to measure things deep inside the body,” said Michel Maharbiz, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. “The device demonstrates how, using ultrasound technology coupled with very clever integrated circuit design, you can create sophisticated implants that go very deep into tissue to take data from organs.”
Maharbiz is the senior author of a new paper describing the device, which appears in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Oxygen is a key component to cells’ ability to harness energy from the food that we eat, and nearly all tissues in the body require a steady supply in order to survive. Most methods for measuring tissue oxygenation can only provide information about what is happening near the surface of the body. That is because these methods rely on electromagnetic waves, such as infrared light, which can only penetrate a few centimeters into skin or organ tissue. While there are types of magnetic resonance imaging that can provide information about deep tissue oxygenation, they require long scanning times, and so are unable to provide data in real time.
Since 2013, Maharbiz has been designing miniaturized implants that use ultrasonic waves to wirelessly communicate with the outside world. Ultrasonic waves, which are a form of sound too high in frequency to be detected by the human ear, can travel harmlessly through the body at much longer distances than electromagnetic waves and are already the basis of ultrasound imaging technology in medicine. One example of such a device is Stimdust, designed in collaboration with UC Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences assistant professor Rikky Muller, which can detect and stimulate electrical nerve firings in the body.

A group of researchers from Kobe University and Chiba University has successfully developed a flexible and simple method of artificially producing genetic switches for yeast, a model eukaryotic organism. The group consisted of Researcher TOMINAGA Masahiro*1, Associate Professor ISHII Jun*2 and Professor KONDO Akihiko*3 (of Kobe University’s Graduate School of Science, Technology and Innovation/Engineering Biology Research Center), and Professor UMENO Daisuke et al. (of Chiba University’s Graduate School of Engineering).
Genetic switches are gene regulatory networks that control gene expression. The researchers established a platform for creating genetic switches that could be applied to the development of sophisticated, artificially controlled yeast cells to produce large quantities of valuable compounds. These research results were published in ‘Nature Communications’ on March 23, 2021.
*1 Technology Research Association of Highly Efficient Gene Design (TRAHED) researcher.
*2 Ibid. Vice Director of the Kobe Center.
*3 Ibid. Director of the Kobe Center.
Main Points Genetic switches are necessary in order to artificially generate new functions in an organism. These switches control the amount of proteins produced by a gene (i.e. gene expression (*1)) and the timing of this production. There has been a lag in the development of genetic switches for eukaryotic organisms in particular, as well as a significant limitation on the number of genes that can be controlled at the same time. The researchers developed a new selection platform in which the cutoff threshold can be set. This enabled them to succeed in creating highly functional, artificial genetic switches for yeast that can be produced easily and flexibly. The developed platform is expected to have a wide range of applications in situations that require precise control of expression levels and timing for a large number of genes. This includes optimizing the balance of metabolic enzyme expression in the construction of cells for producing useful substances that have complex intracellular metabolisms.Research Background

Most young women already know that tanning is dangerous and sunbathe anyway, so a campaign informing them of the risk should take into account their potential resistance to the message, according to a new study.
Word choice and targeting a specific audience are part of messaging strategy, but there is also psychology at play, researchers say — especially when the message is telling people something they don’t really want to hear.
“A lot of thought goes into the content, but possibly less thought goes into the style,” said Hillary Shulman, senior author of the study and an assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
“That’s the argument we’re trying to put out there for people to consider.”
In the study, participants who read a message that combined the most lay-friendly phrasing with references to the specific audience — young women in college — were the most likely to acknowledge the severity of tanning-related risk for skin cancer and say they would curb their own sunbathing behavior.
And that’s because the researchers considered what the young women already thought about soaking in the sun.