Publisher Health

Published27 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesThe government has said it will introduce a new tax on vaping products. It has already announced plans to ban disposable vapes, to help cut the number of children vaping.Is vaping dangerous?Vaping is nowhere near as harmful as smoking cigarettes.But health experts agree that anyone who doesn’t smoke should not start vaping.Children’s doctors say vaping may cause long-term damage to young people’s lungs, hearts and brains.The vapour inhaled contains a small amount of chemicals, including the addictive substance nicotine. More research is needed to fully understand the health effects. Another issue is that illegal vapes are widely available and are much more likely to contain harmful chemicals or drugs, such as cannabis.Never start vaping, says girl with lung damageWhat is the new tax on vaping products?The government will introduce a new tax on vaping products, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in the Budget.At the moment, vaping products are subject to value added tax (VAT) – but unlike tobacco, do not also attract a separate levy. The vaping products duty will start in October 2026. The government has launched a consultation.According to the proposals, the amount of duty will depend on how much nicotine is in the vaping liquid:£1 per 10ml for nicotine-free liquids£2 per 10ml for liquids that contain 0.1-10.9mg £3 per 10ml for liquids that contain 11mg or more (roughly more per ml than a cigarette)Duty on cigarettes will go up at the same time to ensure that vaping remains cheaper.Budget: Key points at-a-glanceWhat does the Budget mean for you?When will disposable vapes be banned? Health Secretary Victoria Atkins told the BBC she was confident the ban would come into force in early 2025.Once the timing is confirmed, retailers will have six months to make the changes.The government also plans to make all vapes less attractive to young people by:reducing the use of flavours designed to appeal to children introducing plain packagingchanging the way vapes are displayed in shops – moving them behind the counterIt is already illegal to sell vapes to under-18s, but the government will increase fines for retailers which do so.How many children vape?Nearly 8% of 11-17 year olds vape, according to figures from an online survey of 2,000 children by health charity ASH (Action on Smoking and Health). That’s up from 4% in 2020.It said 20% have tried vaping, with cheap, brightly-coloured disposable vapes driving up the increase from 14% three years ago.Older teenagers are more likely to have tried vaping or be current vapers.Vaping is now twice as common as smoking among children.What are the vaping rules in other countries?Many countries have seen a rise in vaping among children and young people.In response, the US has banned some vape flavours like mint and fruit in particular e-cigarettes.It also said it would ban products from Juul, one of the country’s most popular vaping companies.Australia has announced e-cigarettes will only be available on prescription, for smokers who want to give up tobacco.New Zealand brought in new rules in 2023, banning most disposable vapes and targeted flavours which appeal to children.Countries including South Korea, India and Brazil have brought in very strict vape rules, while China has announced restrictions. However, 88 countries have no minimum age for buying vapes, and 74 have no laws in place for e-cigarettes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).Why is vaping better than smoking?Cigarettes contain tobacco, tar and a host of cancer-causing toxic chemicals and are the largest preventable cause of illness and death in the UK.About half of all life-long smokers will die early, losing on average about 10 years of life. Smoking age should rise until it is banned – SunakThat’s why people who smoke are urged to stop, with nicotine vapes the most effective quit tool – better than nicotine patches or gum. Recent research also suggests people having face-to-face support while using vapes can be up to twice as likely to stop smoking than those using other methods.But vaping is not harmless, so it’s only recommended for adult smokers.They are offered free vape kits on the NHS to help them quit as part of its “swap to stop” programme.More than two million smokers and ex-smokers who use disposable vapes would be affected by a ban, according to research by UCL.Thousands of people have given up smoking using vaping as an alternative. Fewer people in the UK are smoking than ever before – around 13%.Why are disposable vapes bad for the environment?Campaigners say the materials and chemicals used to make vapes – including their lithium batteries – make them difficult to dispose of safely.They can be recycled, but only 17% of vapers do so. An estimated five million disposable vapes are thrown away each week in the UK.

The
inquiry is shown a briefing that PHW prepared on 11 March
making the case for the Welsh government to declare a major incident.It outlined predictions that Wales would see 1.5 million symptomatic cases, 200,000 requiring hospital admission, an estimated 18,000 needing mechanical ventilation and 25,000 predicted deaths.The
briefing also said that a “recurring theme of lessons learned” from past
situations was that “major incidents are not declared soon enough”.Sandifer tells the hearing: “I
just felt we needed to lay our cards on the table and say to Welsh government
‘this is how we see it, are you going to use emergency legislation’?”He confirms that the response relayed to him from Welsh government was that such
a declaration “would not be helpful”.The first death from Covid in Wales was recorded on 15 March.

Published5 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Ivan PhilpottsBy Andrew TurnerBBC News, NorfolkA patient says he felt ignored and that NHS care was lacking after he spent 14 hours on a bed in a hospital corridor.Ivan Philpotts, 77, from Norwich, was transferred between wards at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), having contracted pneumonia.He said he was left in a bed in a corridor with no access to water, was unable to eat and that his wife was unable to visit.The hospital said it had experienced a high number of patients last week.”I felt very vulnerable,” Mr Philpotts said.”Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of you and you were sitting there, people walking by you.”I was there from 8.30 in the morning until 9.10 at night before I actually got into a bay. We got no communication whatsoever.”He said for much of the day he had nowhere to put water and found it difficult to eat his lunch because there was no table by his bed.’Not OK to normalise’His wife Averil, 77, said she was unable to visit.”I thought there was no point in me going up if there was no chair for me to sit in a corridor because I’m disabled as well,” she said.”I was keeping in touch. He’s started off on FaceTime, but then he couldn’t use FaceTime any more because he was running out of charge on his phone and there was nowhere to charge their phone. “I was getting worried.” In November, the hospital trust introduced a “corridor care” model that was first piloted in Bristol.The Royal College of Nursing’s eastern regional director Teresa Budrey said: “We’re starting to normalise it and that’s not OK.”There are patients who are suffering for hours, without proper privacy or equipment and you’ve also got nurses dealing with an expanded number of patients.”We need government minsters and employers to come together for some bigger solutions across the system.”Image source, Andrew Turner/BBCDr Bernard Brett, the hospital’s interim medical director, said: “We are very sorry to hear of Mr Philpotts’ experience and we would be happy to speak with him further to answer any questions.”The NHS across Norfolk and Waveney is extremely busy, and the NNUH is experiencing record numbers of emergency department attendances and acute admissions. “Placing extra beds on our in-patient wards and assessment units is something we only do in extreme circumstances to reduce pressure on the ambulance service and emergency department.”He added that work done to improve the management of patients had increased the number of daily discharges, but “we have further to do to ensure we are able to manage the high admission numbers”.The average time ambulances wait outside the NNUH before patients are admitted has been reduced by two hours since the new corridor care model was introduced, the hospital’s chief executive said at a board meeting last month.Speaking in that meeting, Sarah Jane Marsh, NHS England director, said: “We have moved risk from people’s houses and from the back of ambulances.”In some cases we have moved that into emergency departments and into wards that have to take the pressure of taking additional patients.”Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp 0800 169 1830More on this storyPatients treated in corridors as hospital strugglesPublished9 FebruaryPatients ‘treated in corridors’Published13 May 2012

A specific gene may play a key role in new treatments that prevent muscle in the body from breaking down in serious muscle diseases, muscular dystrophies. This is shown in a new study at Umeå University, Sweden. Protein expressed by the gene naturally prevents the muscles around the eye from being affected when other muscles in the body are broken down during muscular dystrophies. In the study, the so-called genetic scissors were used and the gene is expressed in all muscles. The effects were that muscular dystrophin was alleviated throughout the body.
“You could say that the eye muscles function as both an eye-opener for understanding the disease and as a door opener to a treatment for the whole body,” says Fatima Pedrosa Domellöf, professor of eye diseases at Umeå University and one of the study’s authors.
Muscular dystrophies are a group of congenital genetic diseases that affect muscle tissue and often lead to severe disability and greatly reduced life expectancy. Despite intensive research, there are still no effective treatments for patients suffering from muscular dystrophy.
It has previously been discovered that the muscles that control eye movements are not affected by muscular dystrophy, even in otherwise severe disease processes. In people affected by muscular dystrophies, the muscles in the body atrophy while the muscles of the eye remain resistant despite having the same gene defect. However, it has been unclear what this resistance of the eye’s musculature is due to.
A study at Umeå University now sheds light on this phenomenon. It turns out that a specific gene plays a key role. This gene, fhl2b, is expressed in eye muscles throughout life, but not in other muscles on the body. In addition, this gene expression in the eye muscles was increased in experiments on zebrafish affected by muscular dystrophy, suggesting that this protects against muscle breakdown. To test the hypothesis, the researchers tested overexpressing the fhl2b gene in all muscle tissue of zebrafish with the serious muscle disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The results showed that the zebrafish’s muscles were saved and became significantly stronger, and that the fish survived longer.
“There is a long way to go before we arrive at new treatment methods. But the results mean that we have a clear track for further research on how we can use the specific gene and protein to slow down this painful disease progression,” says Jonas von Hofsten, associate professor at Umeå University and researcher in the study.
In the study, the researchers used genetically modified zebrafish to investigate how muscular dystrophies affect eye muscles compared to other body muscles. By using the Nobel Prize-winning Crispr/Cas9 genetic scissors, new genetic disease models were created that were used on zebrafish.

Published26 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingBy Catherine BurnsHealth correspondent Nearly 70 healthcare workers with long Covid will take their fight to the High Court later to sue the NHS and other employers for compensation.The staff, from England and Wales, believe they first caught Covid at work during the pandemic and say they were not properly protected from the virus.Many of them say they are left with life-changing disabilities and are likely to lose income as a result.The Department of Health said “there are lessons to be learnt” from Covid.The group believe they were not provided with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, which includes eye protection, gloves, gowns and aprons.In particular, they say they should have had access to high-grade masks, which help block droplets in the air from patient’s coughs and sneezes which can contain the Covid virus.But the masks they were given tended to be in line with national guidance. I first met Rachel Hext in September 2022, as part of a BBC Panorama documentary on long Covid among NHS workers. Ms Hext, who is 36, has always insisted that she caught Covid in her job as a nurse in a small community hospital in Devon.She tells me she loved her work, but now feels like she has lost her career.”It’s devastating. I live an existence rather than a life. It prevents me doing so much of what I want to do. And it’s been four years.”Her list of long Covid symptoms includes everything from brain fog and extreme fatigue to nerve damage, and deafness in one ear. Long Covid, a chronic condition following a Covid infection, affects an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK and can lead to heart palpitations, joint pain and concentration problems.Many people, including those in this group, say their symptoms have left them disabled. NHS staff with long Covid risk losing their paySimilar storiesMembers of the group each say long Covid has destroyed their lives. A number of them can only manage to work reduced hours. Peter Easton, 41, is among this group – he worked in emergency theatres in Cardiff. Julie Taylor, who’s 45, was a community nurse in Hull.During the pandemic they had different jobs to Rachel, but their stories are similar. They are all convinced they caught Covid at work. Mr Easton says he had “amazing” health before the pandemic. He loved running – often half-marathons or 10k races. “Now, I get up, take the kids to school. I come home and I sit on the chair with a heated blanket because that helps my legs. Another thing is, I can’t deal with the cold,” he says. “That’s it. That is my life. I’ve tried going back to work. I just can’t.”Image source, Peter EastonMs Taylor’s experience echoes this – she says she used to do 12 gym classes a week. However, she now considers herself as disabled. Asked why they want to sue their employers, they all give a similar response.”We were not protected while working on the frontline, while doing our jobs,” Ms Taylor says.She wants an acknowledgement and an apology.Mr Easton also wants someone to take responsibility – but says there is a financial aspect too.He said he estimates he would have earned about £1.5m during his working life, which he believes will now not be possible. Ms Hext, too, feels she has been robbed of a chunk of her career: “I had 30 years of working life ahead of me. And now I don’t…I’m really sad that it’s come to this.”‘Quite harrowing’The group members are trying to sue their individual employers – which are mostly NHS trusts in England, some Welsh health boards and some other health providers. Ms Hext, Ms Taylor and Mr Easton’s employers all told the BBC that they are not allowed to go into details because of the legal case. But they stress that the health and wellbeing of staff is a priority. Solicitor Kevin Digby, who represents more than 60 members of the group, describes their case as “very important”.He says: “It’s quite harrowing. These people really have been abandoned, and they are really struggling to fight to get anything. “Now, they can take it to court and hope that they can get some compensation for the injuries that they’ve suffered.”The High Court hearing on Wednesday will be the first stage in this process, which the group hopes will lead to a full trial in 2025 or 2026.And on the horizon, another group of health workers is looking for compensation. But they are not ready to go to court yet.A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the government acted to save lives and prevent the NHS being overwhelmed during the pandemic and was committed to learning from the ongoing COVID-19 inquiry.”We have always said there are lessons to be learnt from the pandemic,” said the spokesperson. “We will consider all recommendations made to the department in full.”It is not known how many health workers are off sick due to long Covid. However, Panorama last year estimated it to be between 5,000 and 10,000 in the UK. That figure was based on official data for Northern Ireland and Scotland.Unions such as the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association have called on the government to improve financial and workplace support for health staff affected by long Covid.More on this storyNurse fears losing job due to Covid after-effectsPublished27 November 2023NHS staff with long Covid face losing their payPublished30 January 2023What are the symptoms of long Covid?Published10 March 2022Long Covid midwife’s anger over new no-pay rulePublished7 July 2022Related Internet LinksDepartment of Health and Social Care – GOV.UKNHS EnglandThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Every year, more than one million deaths globally occur because of exposure to short-term (hours to days) fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in air pollution, according to a new report, with Eastern Asia reporting more than 50% of deaths attributable to short-term PM2.5 globally.
To date most studies have focused on the health impacts of living in cities where pollution levels are consistently high, ignoring the frequent “spikes” in pollution that can impact smaller urban areas that occur for instance landscape fires, dust, and other intermittent extreme air-pollution concentration events.
The Monash University study, looking at mortality and pollution levels of PM2.5 in over 13,000 cities and towns across the globe in the two decades to 2019, is published today in The Lancet Planetary Health.
Led by Professor Yuming Guo, the study is important because it is the first to look at short-term exposure globally — rather than the long-term impacts of persistent exposure such as for people living in cities with high pollution levels.
The researchers found that breathing in PM2.5 for even a few hours, and up to a few days, results in more than one million premature deaths occurring worldwide every year, particularly in Asia and Africa, and more than a fifth (22.74%) of them occurred in urban areas.
According to Professor Guo, the short-term health effects of being exposed to air pollution have been well documented, “such as the megafires in Australia during the so-called Black Summer of 2019-20 which were estimated to have led to 429 smoke-related premature deaths and 3230 hospital admissions as a result of acute and persistent exposure to extremely high levels of bushfire-related air pollution,” he said.
“But this is the first study to map the global impacts of these short bursts of air pollution exposure.”
The authors add that because of the high population densities in urban areas together with high levels of air pollution, “understanding the mortality burden associated with short-term exposure toPM2.5 in such areas is crucial for mitigating the negative effects of air pollution on the urban population.”

According to the study: Asia accounted for approximately 65.2% of global mortality due to short-term PM2.5 exposure Africa 17.0% Europe 12.1% The Americas 5.6% Oceania 0.1%The mortality burden was highest in crowded, highly polluted areas in eastern Asia, southern Asia, and western Africa with the fraction of deaths attributable to short-term PM2.5 exposure in eastern Asia was more than 50% higher than the global average.
Most areas in Australia saw a small decrease in the number of attributable deaths, but the attributable death fraction increased from 0.54% in 2000 to 0.76% in 2019, which was larger than any other subregions. One potential reason could be the increasing frequency and scale of extreme weather-related air pollution events, such as bushfire events in 2019.
The study recommends that — where health is most affected by acute air pollution — implementing targeted interventions — such as air-pollution warning systems and community evacuation plans — to avoid transient exposure to high PM2.5 concentrations could mitigate its acute health damages.

In good news for office workers, a new study from the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre (Australia) has found increasing your step count may counteract the health consequences of too much sedentary time each day.
The study of over 72,000 people, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found every additional step up to around 10,000 steps a day was linked to reduced risk of death (39 percent) and cardiovascular disease (21 percent) regardless of how much remaining time was spent sedentary.
Previous studies have shown an association between greater daily step count and lower levels of death and CVD, and separate studies have linked high levels of sedentary behaviour with increased risks of CVD and death. However, this is the first to objectively measure, via wrist-worn wearables, if daily steps could offset the health risks of high sedentary behaviour.
Lead author and research fellow, Dr Matthew Ahmadi said: “This is by no means a get out of jail card for people who are sedentary for excessive periods of time, however, it does hold an important public health message that all movement matters and that people can and should try to offset the health consequences of unavoidable sedentary time by upping their daily step count.”
Senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, Director of the Mackenzie Wearables Research Hub at the Charles Perkins Centre, said this growing body of physical activity research using device-based measurement provided huge opportunities for public health.
“Step count is a tangible and easily understood measure of physical activity that can help people in the community, and indeed health professionals, accurately monitor physical activity. We hope this evidence will inform the first generation of device-based physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines, which should include key recommendations on daily stepping,” said Professor Stamatakis.
How the study was conducted
Researchers used data on 72,174 individuals (average age 61; 58% female) from the UK Biobank study — a major biomedical database — who had worn an accelerometer device on their wrist for seven days to measure their physical activity. The accelerometer data were used to estimate daily step count and time spent sedentary, that is sitting or lying down while awake.

The research team then followed the health trajectory of the participants by linking hospitalisation data and death records.
The median daily step count for participants was 6222 steps/day, and 2200 steps/day (the lowest 5 percent of daily steps among all participants) was taken as the comparator for assessing the impact on death and CVD events of increasing step count.
The median time spent sedentary was 10.6 hours/day, so study participants sedentary for 10.5 hours/day or more were considered to have high sedentary time while those who spent less than 10.5 hours/day sedentary were classified as low sedentary time.
Adjustments were made to eliminate biases, such as excluding participants with poor health, who were underweight or had a health event within two years of follow-up. Researchers also took into account factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, education, smoking status, alcohol consumption, diet and parental history of CVD and cancer.
Findings
Over an average 6.9 years follow up, 1633 deaths and 6190 CVD events occurred.

After taking account of other potential influences, the authors calculated that the optimal number of steps per day to counteract high sedentary time was between 9000 to 10000 steps/day, which lowered mortality risk by 39 percent and incident CVD risk by 21 percent.
In both cases, 50 percent of the benefit was achieved at between 4000 and 4500 steps a day.
Study limitations
This is an observational study so can’t establish direct cause and effect. And although the large sample size and long follow-up allowed the risk of bias to be reduced, the authors acknowledge the possibility that other unmeasured factors could affect results. As steps and sedentary time were obtained in a single time point, this could also lead to bias, they add.
Nevertheless, they conclude, “Any amount of daily steps above the referent 2200 steps/day was associated with lower mortality and incident CVD risk, for low and high sedentary time. Accruing between 9000 and 10,000 steps a day optimally lowered the risk of mortality and incident CVD among highly sedentary participants.”

Next time you’re packing lunch for your kid or reaching for a healthy afternoon bite, consider this: only three types of fruit snacks — dried fruit, fruit puree and canned fruit with juice — meet the latest recommendations for high-nutrition snacks set by federal dietary guidelines, according to research by University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientists.
Of all the commercially available fruit snacks, defined by the USDA as “products made with fruit and fruit juices, which may or may not contain added sugar, artificial colors and flavors, and preservatives,” the UMass Amherst team found that dried fruit has the best overall nutritional profile — the highest nutrient density and fiber content, and the lowest added sugar.
Conversely, fruit-flavored snacks such as gummies have the lowest nutrient density and fiber content and the highest amount of added sugar. Other fruit snack options with low nutrient density include canned fruit packed in something other than juice, and dried flavored fruit, both of which contain higher amounts of added sugar. The food comparison study, led by food scientists Amanda Kinchla, extension professor, and Alissa Nolden, assistant professor, was published recently in the journal Nutrients.
While eating a piece of fresh fruit is undoubtedly the healthiest option, 80% of the U.S. population does not consume the daily amount of fruit servings (five) recommended by federal dietary guidelines. So, one strategy for consumers to increase fruit in their diet is to choose nutrient-dense fruit snacks.
“It’s not fresh fruit but the snacking products that people are more customarily consuming,” Kinchla says.
The researchers decided to investigate which fruit snacks are the most nutritious — the first time this type of study was undertaken. They collected and analyzed nutritional content for 1,497 fruit snacks, using the Mintel Global New Products Database, accessed through UMass Libraries. For their study, the team defined fruit snacks as “non-frozen, non-beverage food products mainly made with fruit ingredients.”
They used the Nutrient Rich Foods (NRF) Index, which calculates an overall nutrition quality score based on the nutrient profile of foods, to compare the healthfulness of fruit snacks. This model considers nutrients that are desirable — protein, dietary fiber, potassium, vitamin D, calcium, iron — as well as those that are recommended to be limited in the diet — saturated fat, cholesterol, added sugar and sodium — to assess the overall nutrient quality of each fruit snack.

“We were trying to connect the dots between all the nutrients, which is the advantage of the NRF — to be able to look at multiple nutrients at the same time,” Nolden says.
The team classified the fruit snacks into nine different categories: dried fruit, fruit-based bar, dried flavored fruit, canned fruit, fruit-flavored snack, fruit puree, fruit chips, formed fruit and canned fruit with juice.
In addition, they looked not only at the nutritional value per serving size but also calculated added sugar and fiber content based on the FDA’s Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC) per eating occasion to balance the serving variability among different fruit snack categories.
Their goal was to determine the healthfulness of fruit snacks and see where improvements could be made.
“With Alissa’s consumer insight and understanding of perceptions and sensory analysis, we can try to understand consumers’ acceptance and limitations and then design foods that would better cater to that, so that we can then bolster health and wellness platforms,” Kinchla says.
The paper concludes, “Reformulation of fruit snacks is needed… Formed fruit and fruit-based bars could be lower in added sugar to become a more nutritious fruit snack option. Canned fruit [with added sugar] and fruit-flavored snacks need more reformulation, as they are low in nutrient density and fiber content and high in added sugar. Improving the nutritional quality of fruit snacks can facilitate smart snacking choices.
“Future direction for the fruit snack category should consider decreasing added sugar content, increasing fiber content and enhancing sensory profile to improve the overall nutrient density.”

The hacking shut down the nation’s biggest health care payment system, causing financial chaos that affected a broad spectrum ranging from large hospitals to single-doctor practices.An urgent care chain in Ohio may be forced to stop paying rent and other bills to cover salaries. In Florida, a cancer center is racing to find money for chemotherapy drugs to avoid delaying critical treatments for its patients. And in Pennsylvania, a primary care doctor is slashing expenses and pooling all of her cash — including her personal bank stash — in the hopes of staying afloat for the next two months.These are just a few examples of the severe cash squeeze facing medical care providers — from large hospital networks to the smallest of clinics — in the aftermath of a cyberattack two weeks ago that paralyzed the largest U.S. billing and payment system in the country. The attack forced the shutdown of parts of the electronic system operated by Change Healthcare, a sizable unit of UnitedHealth Group, leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of providers without the ability to obtain insurance approval for services ranging from a drug prescription to a mastectomy — or to be paid for those services.In recent days, the chaotic nature of this sprawling breakdown in daily, often invisible transactions led top lawmakers, powerful hospital industry executives and patient groups to pressure the U.S. government for relief. On Tuesday, the Health and Human Services Department announced that it would take steps to try to alleviate the financial pressures on some of those affected: Hospitals and doctors who receive Medicare reimbursements would mainly benefit from the new measures.U.S. health officials said they would allow providers to apply to Medicare for accelerated payments, similar to the advanced funding made available during the pandemic, to tide them over. They also urged health insurers to waive or relax the much-criticized rules imposing prior authorization that have become impediments to receiving care. And they recommended that insurers offering private Medicare plans also supply advanced funding.H.H.S. said it was trying to coordinate efforts to avoid disruptions, but it remained unclear whether these initial government efforts would bridge the gaps left by the still-offline mega-operations of Change Healthcare, which acts as a digital clearinghouse linking doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to insurers. It handles as many as one of every three patient records in the country.The hospital industry was critical of the response, describing the measures as inadequate.Beyond the news of the damage caused by another health care cyberattack, the shutdown of parts of Change Healthcare cast renewed attention on the consolidation of medical companies, doctors’ groups and other entities under UnitedHealth Group. The acquisition of Change by United in a $13 billion deal in 2022 was initially challenged by federal prosecutors but went through after the government lost its case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Scientists discover a new way to disarm a deadly protein that also appears in cancers of the lung, breast and colon.
UC San Francisco researchers have designed a candidate drug that could help make pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, a treatable, perhaps even curable, condition.
The new molecule permanently modifies a wily cancer-causing mutation, called K-Ras G12D, that is responsible for nearly half of all pancreatic cancer cases and appears in some forms of lung, breast and colon cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is less common than these other cancers, but the lack of treatment options makes it more deadly, and it claims more than 50,000 lives each year in the United States.
“We’ve worked for ten years to bring pancreatic cancer therapies up to speed with therapies for other cancers,” said Kevan Shokat, PhD, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology who led the work. “This breakthrough is the first to target G12D and gives us a firm foothold to fight this devastating mutation.”
The findings appear March 5, 2024, in Nature Chemical Biology.
Shokat and his colleagues developed the first cancer drugs to stop a different K-Ras mutation, G12C, in 2013. Since then, two therapies have been approved for use in lung and breast cancer, but the advance didn’t move the needle for treating pancreatic cancer.

An extremely common mutation
K-Ras mutations are extremely common in pancreatic cancer, explaining 90% of cases. About half of these mutations are G12D, which differs from most other K-Ras mutations by a single amino acid substitution.
This slight difference between healthy and cancer-causing proteins, in which glycine (G) becomes aspartate (D), presented a monumental challenge for chemists.
“There are very few molecules out there that can sense the difference between the cancer-causing aspartate and the glycine,” Shokat said. “To make good therapies, we need drugs that work on the tumor cells only, without affecting healthy cells.”
Shokat’s team envisioned a molecule that fit into a pocket of the K-Ras protein, then firmly — and irreversibly — bound to the rogue aspartate. The explosion of research that followed Shokat’s 2013 discovery enabled them to develop a template for chemicals that reliably found their way into that corner of the protein.
“Once we had that structure for our molecules, we knew they were sitting in the protein at the right spot,” Shokat said. “Then we could explore the little nooks and crannies that we needed to discover the chemistry of the aspartate.”
Could a bend in a molecule lead to a cure?

The scientists went through dozens of chemicals.
“It’s like climbing a new route on a mountain, you may be strong but the lengths of your arms limit what you can do,” Shokat said. “It was a lot of trial and error, tweaking the branches of these molecules to position them in this incredibly tight space around G12D. Some got close, then failed, and we would start over.”
Eventually, they found a winning molecule. It settled into the appropriate corner of K-Ras and bent into a new shape that reacted strongly with the aspartate.
The molecule put the brakes on tumor growth from G12D in cancer cell lines, as well as an animal model of human cancer. And it never attacked healthy proteins.
The scientists are now optimizing the molecule to be durable enough to fight cancer in the human body. With the traction gained from this study, Shokat said, new therapies for pancreatic cancer could enter clinical trials in as little as two to three years.
“We’ve learned a lot from other targeted therapies and know how to quickly translate discoveries like these for the clinic,” said Margaret Tempero, MD, director of the UCSF Pancreas Center. “An effective drug targeting K-RAS G12D could be transformative for patients with pancreatic cancer.”