Tag: 15/4/21

Categories : PaediatricsTags :

Parents can Transmit Periodontitis-causing Bacteria to Children

On By ModernMedia

A study conducted by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) has found that adults can transmit the bacteria that cause periodontitis to their children, and even remain in the mouth when the children undergo various treatments. 

Periodontitis, which is preceded by gingivitis, is a bacterially caused inflammation of the periodontium, the tissue supporting the teeth. It is characterised by swollen and bleeding gums and halitosis, and can result in loss of teeth in severe cases.

Should the microorganisms responsible for the disease enter the bloodstream, they may trigger other kinds of inflammation in the body. The disease can be treated by cleaning the pockets around the teeth by a dentist or dental hygienist and administration of anti-inflammatory drugs or antibiotics.

“The parents’ oral microbiome is a determinant of the subgingival microbial colonization of their children,” the article’s wrote in their conclusion, adding that “dysbiotic microbiota acquired by children of periodontitis patients at an early age are resilient to shift and the community structure is maintained even after controlling the hygiene status”.

According to the first author of the article, dental surgeon Mabelle de Freitas Monteiro, she and her group have been researching periodontitis for ten years, and have observed both parents with the disease and their children, and noted the impact on their health.

“If the findings are applied to day-to-day dental practice, the study can be said to help design more direct approaches. Knowing that periodontal disease may affect the patient’s family is an incentive to use preventive treatment, seek early diagnosis and mitigate complications,” said Monteiro, who was supported by FAPESP via two projects.

The principal investigator for both of these projects was Renato Corrêa Viana Casarin, a professor at UNICAMP’s Piracicaba Dental School (FOP), who is the last author of the article .

In Prof Casarin’s view, parents’s care of their children’s dental hygiene should start when they are still infants.

“This pioneering study compares parents with and without periodontitis,” said Prof Casarin. “In children of the former, we found subgingival bacterial colonization at a very early age. However, ‘inheriting’ the problem doesn’t mean a child is fated to develop the disease in adulthood. Hence the importance of keeping an eye open for the smallest signs and seeking specialized help.”

According to the latest national dental epidemiological survey from 2010, 18% of children aged 12 had never been to the dentist and 11.7% had experienced bleeding of the gums. Of those in the 15-19 age group, 13.6% had never visited a dental clinic. The planned 2020 survey was postponed due to COVID. According to the São Paulo State Department of Health’s  latest oral health survey in 2019 revealed that 50.5% of adults aged 35-44 complained of toothache, bleeding gums and periodontitis.

In the FOP-UNICAMP study led by Casarin and Monteiro, the team colleclected samples of subgingival biofilm and plaque from 18 adults with a history of generalised aggressive (grade C) periodontitis, their children aged 6-12, and 18 orally healthy adults.

As well as a clinical analysis, the samples were also subjected to a microbiological analysis and genetic sequencing by Ohio State University researchers.

“Children of periodontitis parents were preferentially colonized by Filifactor alocis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Streptococcus parasanguinis, Fusobacterium nucleatum and several species belonging to the genus Selenomonas even in the absence of periodontitis,” the article states. “These pathogens also emerged as robust discriminators of the microbial signatures of children of parents with periodontitis.”

Prof Casarin told Agência FAPESP that even with bacterial plaque control and vigorous brushing, children of people with the disease still had the bacteria in their mouths, whereas the effects of dental hygiene and prophylaxis were more significant in the children of healthy subjects.

“Because the parents had periodontitis, their children assumed this community with disease characteristics. They carried the bacterial information into their adult lives,” he said, adding that the analysis of bacterial colonisation indicated the transmission was more likely from the mother. The research group’s next step is working with pregnant women to prevent bacterial colonisation of their children’s mouths.

“We’ll treat the mothers during pregnancy, before the babies are born, and try to find out if it’s possible to prevent bacterial colonization from occurring,” Casarin said, adding that studies with patients will only go ahead when the pandemic is under control.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Monteiro, M. F., et al. (2021) Parents with periodontitis impact the subgingival colonization of their offspring. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80372-4.

Categories : Injury & TraumaTags :

New Adhesive Hydrogel For Soft Tissue Repair

On By ModernMedia

Scientists have developed an injectable gel that serves as a biodegradable adhesive for various kinds of soft tissue injury.

Soft tissue tears are a common injury, and it is difficult for surgeons to secure the tissue back together, since stitches often do more harm than good. According to Dominique Pioletti, the head of the Laboratory of Biomechanical Orthopedics at EPFL’s School of Engineering, such surgeries often don’t produce the best results because the tissue doesn’t properly heal. 

Tears in tissue such as cartilage and the cornea, often fail to heal properly, and tissue repair strategies may be suboptimal. For example, loose pieces of cartilage are often excised for symptomatic relief, but the remaining cartilage in articulating joints is placed under greater burden and generates faster.

A long-standing goal for researchers around the world has been the development of an adhesive for soft tissue that can withstand the natural stresses and strains within the human body. Now, Pioletti’s group has come up with a novel family of injectable biomaterials that can adhere to various forms of soft tissue. Their gel-based bioadhesives, can be used in a variety of injury-treatment applications.
Like other hydrogels, this one has a high water content, 85%, and also has two key advantages: It is injectable anywhere in the human body, and it has high intrinsic adhesion without additional surface treatment. “What makes our hydrogel different is that it changes consistency while providing high adhesion to soft tissues,” said Peyman Karami, a postdoc at Pioletti’s lab who has developed the gel during his PhD. “It’s injected in a liquid form, but then sets when a light source is applied, enabling it to adhere to surrounding tissue.”

The hydrogel has an innovative design that allows its mechanical and adhesive properties to be tailored, making it an extremely versatile soft tissue glue that can be used throughout the human body.

To obtain these versatile properties in their hydrogel, the scientists took the base polymer and modified it with the compounds that play an important role in tissue adhesion. The first is known as Dopa and is derived from mussels. “Dopa is what lets mussels attach firmly to any kind of surface—organic or otherwise,” said Pioletti. The second is an amino acid that our bodies make naturally.

“The advantage of our hydrogel compounds is that, unlike some medical adhesives, they don’t interfere with the body’s chemical reactions, meaning our hydrogel is fully biocompatible,” said Karami.

The new hydrogel also possesses unique energy-dissipation characteristics that improve its adhesive capability. Karami added: “We had to achieve an adhesion mechanism for injectable hydrogels, through the resulting synergy between interfacial chemistry and hydrogel mechanical properties. The hydrogel is capable of dissipating the mechanical energy produced when the hydrogel deforms, so that it protects the interactions at the interface between the hydrogel and surrounding tissue.”

A further advantage of this hydrogel is that it can release drugs or cells to encourage tissue repair, which is especially beneficial for cartilage and other tissues that don’t regenerate on their own.

“Our in vitro tests showed that the hydrogel binds to many different kinds of tissue, including cartilage, meniscus, heart, liver, lung, kidney and cornea,” said Pioletti. “We’ve made a sort of universal hydrogel.”

The scientists have received a grant to research possible orthopedic applications of the gel, and hope to be able to release their innovation onto the market within the next five years.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: An intrinsically‐adhesive family of injectable and photo‐curable hydrogels with functional physicochemical performance for regenerative medicine, Macromolecular Rapid Communications, DOI :10.100 2/marc.202000660

Categories : Gastrointestinal General InterestTags :

Woman Suffered ‘Excruciating’ Pain From Rare Gastrointestinal Condition

On By ModernMedia

An undiagnosed, rare gastrointestinal condition left a 32-year old UK woman in “excruciating” pain for 16 months before a life-saving emergency operation.

In January 2020,  Rebecca Bostock started to experience stomach swelling and had difficult keeping her food down. After she was rushed into hospital on Good Friday this year, her mysterious illness was found to be Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS).

“I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through,” she said.

Ms Bostock, 32, underwent an emergency operation at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. Nurses there told her they had only treated three cases of SMAS in 27 years. She was also told that she likely survived because she had been rushed into hospital on that day.

“My stomach was swollen so much that I couldn’t breathe, I was being sick and couldn’t keep any medication down,” Ms Bestock said. “I was on a downward spiral. They took me into imaging and diagnosed SMAS and I was taken away for the operation. They said I needed the operation straight away or I wouldn’t survive even a couple more hours.”

Ms Bostock said she had been experiencing pain for 16 months, with stomach swelling, fever, sickness, diarrhoea and dizziness, and visited the GP and emergency departments several times. She was told there that the pain was likely to be caused by endometriosis or irritable bowel syndrome. 

“I was referred to a gynaecologist around the time of the first lockdown but everything shut down and I didn’t see one for months,” she said. “I was advised to change my diet, which seemed to help at first, but then the symptoms deteriorated again to the point where I struggled to walk and couldn’t breathe.”

SMAS is a rare disease, affecting some 0.1 to 0.3% of the population, and is defined as compression of the third portion of the duodenum between the abdominal aorta and the superior mesenteric artery. It is now mostly treated by laparoscopic duodenojejunostomy. The operation released the blockage, “re-plumbing” her stomach as the surgeon told her.

She is still unable to eat solid foods but hopes to introduce them to her diet soon and wants to raise awareness of the rare condition so that others can learn to spot the signs earlier.

“I want to tell my story to raise awareness I feel blessed and relieved,” she said. “I’m so thankful to the doctors and nurses who saved my life. I get so emotional thinking about it and I can’t thank them enough. It is so rare and even doctors don’t know about it, so helping people to spot the signs and be able to rule it out is so important.”

Source: BBC News

Categories : Mental HealthTags :

‘Toad Venom’ Drug for Treatment-Resistant Depression

On By ModernMedia

Dublin-based biotech company GH Research is developing an inhaled version of the psychedelic known as ‘toad venom’ be used for treatment-resistant depression.

On Monday the company announced that it had closed a Series B round to help advance its lead program, an inhalant called GH001, for psychiatric and neurological disorders. GH is beginning with treatment-resistant depression, but has two more indications which are not yet disclosed.

Treatment-resistant depression occurs when little to no success is seen from antidepressants or psychotherapy for patients with major depressive disorder. Though symptoms can be mild, they can also be severe and major depressive disorder can be life threatening.
Colloquially referred to as toad venom, it is commonly referred to as 5-MeO-DMT (5-Methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine is the official name). due to its presence in a certain toad species native to parts of North America. It can be extracted from plants, or produced artificially. The plant version used as an entheogen, a hallucinogenic drug, in some parts of Central and South America.
In the mid-2010s, the drug skyrocketed in popularity among those trying to achieve the ‘ego death’ phenomenon, a situation in which it is believed the part of the brain responsible for one’s sense of self shuts down temporarily. Users on Reddit and YouTube, engaged in an “arms race” to boast about their experiences, according to a VICE report. It is so potent that it is not considered ‘recreational’ as its effects are so strong that it needs to be taken in a safe environment. The drug is treated as a Schedule 1 narcotic in the US, with severe penalties for possession. However, there is strong interest in using it to treat anxiety and depression, with initial research showing effects similar to psilocybin, a mushroom-derived hallucinogen, but with a shorter delay in reaping the benefit.

Recently, investor interest has mounted in psychedelics-focused biotechs, most notably surrounding the Peter Thiel-backed ATAI Life Sciences, a company that uses a unique business model bringing portfolio companies under one umbrella to developing therapeutics for various mental health disorders.

GH is much more narrowly focused on its 5-MeO-DMT work, reporting that GH001 has completed a Phase I study in healthy volunteers. GH001 was shown to be well-tolerated, and it’s now in a Phase I/II trial in patients with treatment-resistant depression.

The biotech company is also working on an injectable formulation of 5-MeO-DMT, which they are calling GH002 and are also keeping quiet about its potential indications.

Source: EndPoints News

Categories : Injury & TraumaTags :

Positive Safety Evaluation for Tranexamic Acid

On By ModernMedia

A large meta-analysis upheld the safety of tranexamic acid (TXA), even at higher doses.

TXA is an antifibrinolytic agent with a short half-life that is used for bleeding prevention and treatment, as in causes of trauma with open wounds. Current TXA is applied with caution due to perceived increased risk of seizures, MI, and other thrombotic complications.

The meta-analysis looked at 216 randomised trials involving 125 550 participants. The investigators found that the incidence of thromboembolic events, which included venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, venous thromboembolism, myocardial infarction (MI) or ischaemia, and cerebral infarction or ischaemia, was 2.1% of people receiving IV TXA and a similar 2.0% of peers getting placebo or another control, which was a non-significant difference.

TXA’s safety was inconclusive in those with neurological conditions, who showed increased heterogeneity and asymmetry in funnel plots, according to Patrick Meybohm, MD, of University Hospital Wuerzburg in Germany, and colleagues.

The review confirmed that TXA was linked to a significant reduction in overall mortality and bleeding mortality, but not nonbleeding mortality.

“The results of this study suggest that use of intravenous TXA may have utility in all medical fields, with some uncertainty for patients with neurological conditions,” the investigators concluded.

“Notably, we did not detect any dose-dependent association of TEs [thromboembolic events],” they stated. The included studies had participants with IV TXA administration at doses ranging 0.5-5g or 10-100mg/kg.

“There is little doubt that when used appropriately in the various patient populations evaluated with randomized clinical trials, TXA is effective. However, reasonable questions about thrombotic complications remain,” wrote John Holcomb, MD, of University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues, in an invited commentary.

“Further research must focus on how to identify, as early as possible, the patients most likely to benefit from administration of TXA,” they urged.

One limitation mentioned by the investigators was the inclusion trials that evaluated thromboembolic events without ultrasound, so asymptomatic cases may have been excluded. Furthermore, many studies did not provide much information on thrombosis prophylaxis.

For Holcomb’s group, study’s main caveat was that it included “a notably heterogeneous population”, including a range of demographics and clinical conditions. Since the pooled studies were not “clinically homogeneous”, they violated “one of the cardinal tenets of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.”

Source: MedPage Today

Journal information (primary article): Taeuber I, et al “Association of intravenous tranexamic acid with thromboembolic events and mortality: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression” JAMA Surg 2021; DOI: 10.1001/jamasurg.2021.0884.

Journal information (commentary): Holcomb JB, et al “Tranexamic acid and safety in the right patient” JAMA Surg 2021; DOI: 10.1001/jamasurg.2021.0929.

Categories : COVIDTags :

Department of Health COVID Vaccine Rollout Phase 2 Outlined

On By ModernMedia

The Department of Health’s COVID vaccine rollout has been fleshed out in a presentation, including details on how the vaccines will be distributed, and the jobs earmarked for the shots.

A presentation from the department indicates that the government has secured around 51 million vaccine doses, with 20 million from Pfizer and 30 million from Johnson & Johnson (J&J). However, it is unclear how the current pause in J&J administration in South Africa due to concerns about rare blood clots will affect immunisation schedules.

However, health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced that South Africa has secured a further 10 million Pfizer vaccines.

“We can now guarantee that the number of people that will be vaccinated with Pfizer has increased from 10 to 15 million,” he said.

With the 30 million of the single-dose shots from J&J, the current planned rollout will cover about 45 million South Africans.

Dr Mkhize said that both the Pfizer and J&J agreements cost around $10 (R145) per vaccine, with non-refundable clauses.

“The agreements state that down-payments that have been made in advance by the department shall not be refundable by the manufacturer to us in any circumstances. This is another onerous term that we had to settle for,” Dr Mkhize told the committee.

Meanwhile, government was sent an email from J&J, which stated that the company will not sign off the 20 million doses until they receive a letter from the Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, expressing support for the local investment that they made in Aspen Pharmacare.

“We’ve been taken aback by this, as there are clauses in the agreement that express this support and acknowledge that this production will not just be limited to South Africa and the continent, but also targeted for the global market,” said Dr Mkhize.

The department indicated that the Pfizer vaccine will likely go to major metropolitans due to its larger pack size and refrigeration requirements, while the J&J vaccine with its less stringent refrigeration needs would be allocated to rural areas.

South Africa’s Phase 2 of the vaccine rollout is planned to begin in May and run until October, with essential workers over 40 and the elderly to be targeted in the programme. This is to include a focus on old age homes and care facilities, plus identifying those with co-morbidities.

The department provided an overview of occupations covered under the vaccine rollout, to include, among others, the police, army, social and municipal workers, and faith and traditional leaders. Private sectors could include mining, retail, transport, and manufacturing.

Source: BusinessTech