Day: September 6, 2021

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and ConditionsTags :

Use of Nicotine-containing E-cigarettes Increases Blood Clot Formation

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Toan Nguyen on Unsplash

A new study found the use of e-cigarettes containing nicotine has a number of immediate effects, which include increased blood clot formation, blood vessel dysfunction, as well as raised heart rate and blood pressure.

These effects are similar to smoking traditional cigarettes with heart attack or stroke risk with long-term use, according to researchers. The study was presented at the ERS International Congress by Gustaf Lyytinen, a clinician at Helsingborg Hospital and researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. 

Each of the 22 occasional smoker volunteers was tested before and after taking 30 puffs from an e-cigarette with nicotine, and before and after 30 puffs from an e-cigarette without nicotine. These two sets of tests were conducted on separate occasions, at least one week apart.

On each occasion, the researchers measured volunteers’ heart rate and blood pressure and took a blood sample before they used the e-cigarettes, then 15 minutes after use and again 60 minutes after use. A laser was used to measure dilation of skin blood vessels before volunteers used e-cigarettes and 30 minutes afterwards.
E-cigarettes with nicotine caused an immediate short-term change: a 23% average increase in blood clots after 15 minutes, that returned to normal levels after 60 minutes. Average heart rates also increased from 66bpm to 73bpm. as did blood pressure from 108mmHg to 117mmHg. Researchers observed temporary narrowing of blood vessels after nicotine-containing e-cigarettes use.

These effects were not observed after volunteers used e-cigarettes without nicotine. Nicotine is known to raise levels of hormones including adrenaline, which can increase blood clot formation.

Dr Lyytinen said: “Our results suggest that using e-cigarettes that contain nicotine have similar impacts on the body as smoking traditional cigarettes. This effect on blood clots is important because we know that in the long-term this can lead to clogged up and narrower blood vessels, and that of course puts people at risk of heart attacks and strokes.”

Source: European Respiratory Society

Categories : COVID Immune SystemTags :

Metabolic Changes in Plasma, Immune Cells Linked to COVID Severity

On By ModernMedia
Source: Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Analysing plasma from patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, researchers have uncovered underlying metabolic changes that regulate how immune cells react to COVID, these are associated with disease severity and could be used to predict patient survival. The findings were published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

“We know that there are a range of immune responses to COVID, and the biological processes underlying those responses are not well understood,” said co-first author Jihoon Lee, a graduate student at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “We analyzed thousands of biological markers linked to metabolic pathways that underlie the immune system and found some clues as to what immune-metabolic changes may be pivotal in severe disease. Our hope is that these observations of immune function will help others piece together the body’s response to COVID. The deeper understanding gained here may eventually lead to better therapies that can more precisely target the most problematic immune or metabolic changes.”

The researchers performed two draws on each of nearly 200 patients during the first week after being diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and analysed their plasma and single immune cells. The analysis included 1387 genes involved in metabolic pathways and 1050 plasma metabolites.

Increased COVID severity was found to be associated with metabolite alterations, which suggests increased immune-related activity. In addition, each major immune cell type was found to have a distinct metabolic signature.

“We have found metabolic reprogramming that is highly specific to individual immune cell classes (eg “killer” CD8+ T cells, “helper” CD4+ T cells, antibody-secreting B cells, etc.) and even cell subtypes, and the complex metabolic reprogramming of the immune system is associated with the plasma global metabolome and are predictive of disease severity and even patient death,” said co-first and co-corresponding author Dr. Yapeng Su, a research scientist at Institute for Systems Biology. “Such deep and clinically relevant insights on sophisticated metabolic reprogramming within our heterogeneous immune systems are otherwise impossible to gain without advanced single-cell multi-omic analysis.”

“This work provides significant insights for developing more effective treatments against COVID. It also represents a major technological hurdle,” said Dr. Jim Heath, president and professor of ISB and co-corresponding author on the paper. “Many of the data sets that are collected from these patients tend to measure very different aspects of the disease, and are analysed in isolation. Of course, one would like these different views to contribute to an overall picture of the patient. The approach described here allows for the sum of the different data sets to be much greater than the parts, and provides for a much richer interpretation of the disease.”

Source: Max Planck Institute

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

Worse Lung Function Linked to Sudden Cardiac Death

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Camilo Jimenez on Unsplash

A new study found that people with modest but measurably worse lung function are more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death (SCD).

SCD is death due to a cardiovascular cause that occurs within one hour of the onset of symptoms. A sudden cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops beating or is not beating sufficiently to maintain perfusion and life. There are often no previous warning signs, and is thought to be responsible for around 20% of all deaths in Europe.

The study was presented at the ERS International Congress by Dr Suneela Zaigham of Lund University. She said: “Although sudden cardiac deaths are common, we don’t know enough about who is at risk in the general population. There are links between lung and heart health, so we wanted to investigate whether measurable differences in lung function could offer clues about the risk of sudden cardiac death.”

The study involved 28 584 middle-aged participants with no known heart problems. All took part in spirometry tests where they were asked to blow into a machine to measure how well their lungs were working. Over the following approximately 40 years, researchers recorded any SCDs (death on the day of a coronary event) or any non-fatal coronary events (coronary events where people survived the first 24 hours)

They found that measurably lower lung function in middle-aged people (one standard deviation lower in the amount of air they could blow out in one second, which equates to around 0.8 litres) was more strongly associated with suffering a SCD (a 23% increase in risk) than a non-fatal coronary event (an 8% increase in risk) later on in life. The pattern of risk remained even in people who had never smoked.

Dr Zaigham said: “We believe this is the first study to directly compare the risk of sudden cardiac death and non-fatal coronary events and their links with lung function in the general population.

“Our findings suggest that testing people’s lungs when they are middle-aged and healthy could help spot those who have a higher risk of sudden cardiac death. This could enable people to take steps to potentially reduce the risk of this devastating event.”

A limitation of the study is that risk questionnaires were administered at the start of the study and these factors could have changed. The researchers next seek to see whether SCD could be prevented by testing lung function as part of current cardiovascular risk assessment. They plan to explore the link between lung function and SCD further to see if heart abnormalities, variable blood pressure or genetic causes are involved.

Source: European Respiratory Society

Categories : Respiratory DiseasesTags :

Bisexual People Have Over Twice the Rates of Lung Diseases

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash

A new national study found that bisexual Americans had over two times the rates of lung diseases including asthma as heterosexual adults.

The study, published in Annals of the American Thoracic Society, analysed data from 12 209 adults in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Overall, 29% of bisexual adults reported experiencing lung disease compared to 14% of heterosexual adults. There is consistent evidence that bisexual individuals are at increased risk for negative health outcomes (such as mental health, substance use, and sexual health problems) compared to monosexual (heterosexual and gay/lesbian) individuals.

“Higher levels of discrimination experienced by bisexual people could lead to more stress and lead to inflammation or stress hormones which would worsen asthma,” said lead author, Jason Nagata, MD, assistant professor of paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “Bisexual adults have been shown to have worse health outcomes across a number of physical and mental health domains, and we add to this literature by showing disparities in asthma and other lung diseases.”

Even people who identified as ‘mostly’ heterosexual had higher rates of asthma than those who identified as exclusively heterosexual. Mostly heterosexual individuals may also face discrimination but may not be ‘out’, with access to the social support and communities ‘out’ LGBTQ+ people have available.

“Medical professionals, social workers, and clinicians need to be aware of these sexual orientation disparities in health outcomes,” said co-author Kyle T Ganson, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Providing appropriate and tailored care is needed to address these disparities.”

“Some sexual minorities may be less likely to seek care due to barriers to accessing health care or experiences of discrimination at a clinician’s office. Doctors should offer materials on LGBTQ health, publicise nondiscrimination statements and have inclusive forms for sexual minorities,” Prof Nagata added, “so that they’re not discouraged from seeking care.”

Source: EurekAlert!

Categories : Diet and Nutrition GenderTags :

In Women, Avocado Consumption Reduces Abdominal Visceral Fat

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Dirk Ribbler on Unsplash

An avocado a day could help reduce abdominal visceral fat in women and result in health benefits, researchers wrote in the Journal of Nutrition.

In a randomised study, women who consumed avocado as part of their daily meal experienced a reduction in deeper visceral abdominal fat, though glucose tolerance markers were unchanged.

Study leader Naiman Khan, professor of kinesiology and community health, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said:

“The goal wasn’t weight loss; we were interested in understanding what eating an avocado does to the way individuals store their body fat. The location of fat in the body plays an important role in health,” Prof Khan said.

“In the abdomen, there are two kinds of fat: fat that accumulates right underneath the skin, called subcutaneous fat, and fat that accumulates deeper in the abdomen, known as visceral fat, that surrounds the internal organs. Individuals with a higher proportion of that deeper visceral fat tend to be at a higher risk of developing diabetes. So we were interested in determining whether the ratio of subcutaneous to visceral fat changed with avocado consumption,” he said.

The participants were divided into two groups; one received meals incorporating a fresh avocado, and the other received a meal that had nearly identical ingredients and similar calories but without avocado. At the beginning and end of the trial, the researchers measured participants’ abdominal fat and their glucose tolerance, a measure of metabolism and a marker of diabetes.

Female participants who consumed an avocado a day as part of their meal had a reduction in visceral abdominal fat and experienced a reduction in the ratio of visceral fat to subcutaneous fat, indicating a redistribution of fat away from the organs. However, in males there was no change in fat distribution, and neither males nor females had improvements in glucose tolerance.

“While daily consumption of avocados did not change glucose tolerance, what we learned is that a dietary pattern that includes an avocado every day impacted the way individuals store body fat in a beneficial manner for their health, but the benefits were primarily in females,” Prof Khan said. “It’s important to demonstrate that dietary interventions can modulate fat distribution. Learning that the benefits were only evident in females tells us a little bit about the potential for sex playing a role in dietary intervention responses.”

The next step would be to provide all of the participants’ daily meals and look at additional markers of gut health and physical health for a more complete understanding of metabolic impacts and whether this sex difference persists.

Source: University of Illinois Alabama

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Ridhwaan Suliman on Twitter: Graphs, Insight and Empathy

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Tracy le Blanc from Pexels
Photo by Tracy le Blanc from Pexels

The Daily Maverick interviewed Dr Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at CSIR who has entered the spotlight by posting his concise, easy-to-understand COVID numbers graphs on Twitter.

Trained as a mechanical engineer and with a PhD in applied mathematics, he develops computational tools to model and simulate physical systems and processes. Equations in real-world contexts and how they govern physical systems are the relationships he translates into code. And from the code and modelling he can find solutions to make things work more optimally.

As a boy, he took apart his brothers’ old toys to see how they worked, and he took the same approach with COVID data to make sense of it. He started tracking the data in early 2020, and wanted to contribute in some way amidst all the growing uncertainty.

“When I started seeing the raw numbers that were being fed to us daily I couldn’t quite make sense of it myself because the raw numbers in isolation don’t show what’s happening, actually.”

As he tweeted his analyses, he drew attention for his concise summaries of the situation, and praise for helping people to understand the trends. However, he stresses that this is all unpaid, with nobody else’s agenda and that he is not a medical expert.

https://twitter.com/rid1tweets/status/1434570126091821062
This week’s update from Dr Ridhwaan

“I’m just comfortable with the numbers.” He gratefully turns to the science experts he engages with on Twitter because “there’s so much more to learn”, he says. That, and a lot of background reading, which he readily dives into.

Dr Suliman’s tracking of the data let him identify gaps and to add to the call for open data, better data collection and smarter analysis. This allows for the factoring in of more variables and laying out of better parameters. “Sure, data can be manipulated to fit a certain narrative, but the benefits outweigh the risks,” he says.

Even in the polarising, easily toxic world of Twitter, Dr Suliman’s interactions show a great empathy.

“We’ve all had numerous moments in this pandemic when things have been depressing and that’s probably something that doesn’t come out on Twitter because you’re generally only sharing things when things are hunky-dory, you don’t share when you’re not okay. There have been many times when I’ve just wanted to stop tweeting, but I get drawn back by people who reach out and say ‘you’re helping me’ – and that’s good enough reason to continue.”

Since he first started on Twitter, he has since appeared numerous times on television to explain the data behind COVID numbers.

Despite his newfound fame however, he looks forward to the time when he can travel again.  “I’ll trade the followers any day for our lives to go back to some sense of normality,” he says.

Source: Daily Maverick