Tag: United Kingdom

Categories : Diet and NutritionTags :

An Eye for Wine: Alcohol May Prevent Cataracts

On By ModernMedia
Two people clinking wine glasses together. Photo by Jep Gambardella from Pexels

A study from the UK has shown that people who drink up to 14 units of alcohol a week have a reduced risk of developing cataracts, with red wine having an even more pronounced effect.

Drinking less than 14 units of alcohol (or about six pints of beer, or six glasses of wine) is in line with the British Chief Medical Officer’s low risk drinking guidelines.

Cataracts are a major cause of impaired eyesight and blindness, mainly in older people. Cataract removal is simple, and is the most common surgery carried out by the UK’s National Health Service. The NHS considers drinking to be a risk factor for cataracts.

Researchers from Moorfields eye hospital in London and University College London’s institute of ophthalmology studied the medical and lifestyle history of nearly half a million participants in either the UK Biobank or Epic-Norfolk longitudinal health studies.

The results showed that people who drank within the 14 units a week guideline were less likely to have cataract surgery. Wine drinkers were even less likely to have it, compared to those who consumed beer or spirits. In the Epic-Norfolk study, drinking wine at least five times a week meant a 23% reduced chance of cataract removal than non-drinkers, while those in the UK Biobank study were 14% less likely.

“Cataract development may be due to gradual damage from oxidative stress during ageing. The fact that our findings were particularly evident in wine drinkers may suggest a protective role of polyphenol antioxidants, which are especially abundant in red wine,” said first author Dr Sharon Chua.

Research leader Dr Anthony Khawaja added: “We observed a dose-response with our findings – in other words, there was evidence for reducing chance of requiring future cataract surgery with progressively higher alcohol intake, but only up to moderate levels within current guidelines.”

The authors emphasised that there was still not a causal link between alcohol consumption and reduced cataract surgeries despite the association.

Dr Sadie Boniface, research head at the Institute of Alcohol Studies thinktank, cast doubt on the findings. She said that longitudinal studies such as UK Biobank may not accurately represent health across the nation because many volunteers were often in good health.

“Comparing the health of moderate drinkers with that of non-drinkers also carries problems. Non-drinkers are a diverse group, including people who have stopped drinking because of health problems. This means moderate drinking can artificially look like it carries health benefits, because the moderate drinkers are compared to people on average in poor health,” said Dr Boniface.

“The bigger effect seen among wine drinkers may be because of other characteristics of this group to do with their cataract risk which weren’t accounted for. If the amount of alcohol or number of units somebody drinks was having a direct effect, you’d expect this to be similar regardless of drink type.”

Source: The Guardian

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Confusion Results in Vaccine Priority for ‘6.2cm’ Tall UK Man

On By ModernMedia

As a result of an error at his GP surgery, a healthy man aged 32 was offered an early COVID vaccination because his height was recorded as 6.2cm – giving him a calculated Body Mass Index (BMI) of 28 000.

Liam Thorp, political editor at The Liverpool Echo’s, said he was left “really confused” after he was offered the vaccine ahead of the government’s rollout, sharing the “frankly surreal” experience in a Twitter thread.  Vaccinations are not expected to begin until later in the year for the UK’s under-50s without underlying health conditions, perhaps as soon as March.

Manchester Evening News politics and investigations editor, Jennifer Williams, replied: “Should they not have been in touch before to see how the man the size of a thumb was getting on?” And palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke said: “This, for me, is the single best tweet of the entire pandemic, Liam. And may I please commend your decency in not exploiting your remarkable BMI to jump the queue?”

Despite being “on the chunky side”, Thorp didn’t think of his himself as obese. He said he was “uneasy”, thinking that he still ought to accept the invitation for vaccination, he contacted his GP about the situation whereupon he learned of the error which resulted in his height being recorded as 6.2cm – a mixup of his height as 6ft 2in (188cm). This resulted in his bizarre BMI of 28 000.

“If I had been less stunned, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of these remarkable dimensions was slithering around south Liverpool. But he was very apologetic and really nice and I think he was just relieved that I found it so funny,” recalled Thorp.

Dr Fiona Lemmens, chair of NHS Liverpool clinical commissioning group, said: “I can see the funny side of this story but also recognise there is an important issue for us to address.”

Source: The Guardian

Categories : COVIDTags :

Research Shows ‘UK Variant’ is up to 70% Deadlier

On By ModernMedia

A review of research on the COVID variant B.1.1.7, also known as ‘the UK variant’, has shown it to be 30% to 70% more deadly than the original wild-type COVID strain.

Concerns over the deadliness of B.1.1.7 were raised in January, when the UK government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) presented initial findings suggesting that B.1.1.7 cases were deadlier than non-variant cases. After this, they released an updated report which is available online. The report makes the cases that the earlier linked community testing and mortality data were all based on the same datasets, and so had the same biases. However, the group explained that the new analysis was more valid.

“More recent analyses have added a wider range of data sets and been able to control for additional confounders, increasing confidence in the association of the [variant of concern] with increased disease severity,” the group wrote.  

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found a relative hazard of mortality within 28 days was 1.58 for variant-infected individuals, while Imperial College London used a case-control weighting method to find a case fatality ratio of 1.36 for variant cases. Public Health England  found a “death risk ratio” of 1.65 in matched cohort analysis for variant cases versus non-variant cases.

A number of other studies investigated the variant’s impact on hospitalisation. Public Health Scotland used S-gene target failure as a proxy for variant case detection. They found that S-gene target failure cases had a higher risk for hospitalisation than the S-gene positive cases.
Some studies did not support the higher fatality risk, such as the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), which said that “the number of deaths are too low for reliable inference.”

A number of limitations were reported in the study, including potential bias in case ascertainment, representativeness, unmeasured confounders and secular trends. They also tried to control for nursing home status in hospital reports, but not all of these could be excluded.

“There are potential limitations in all datasets used but together these analyses indicate that it is likely that … B.1.1.7 is associated with an increased risk of [hospitalisation] and death compared to infection with non-[B.1.1.7] viruses,” the group concluded.

In mid-January, modelling by the CDC indicated that the UK variant would become the dominant strain in the United States by March. At the end of January, President Joe Biden had pledged to increase vaccinations to 1.5 million per day, a target which would still not be able to contain the spread of the variant.

Source: MedPage Today

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Categories : COVID PoliticsTags :

EU Demands AstraZeneca Vaccine Produced by UK Plants

On By ModernMedia

In another twist to the EU’s seemingly never-ending vaccine procurement problems, the EU health minister has demanded that vaccine production from AstraZeneca’s UK operations be sent to EU countries to make up for the company’s shortfall at its two European plants. 

EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides dismissed AstraZeneca’s argument that it the UK take precedence.

“We reject the logic of first come, first served,” the commissioner declared. “That may work at the neighbourhood butcher’s [shop] but not in contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements. There’s no priority clause in the purchase agreements.”

The Anglo-Swedish company had triggered fury in Brussels when it was revealed that it would only be able to deliver 25% of the agreed vaccine doses when they received approval as expected this Friday. However, AstraZeneca assured the UK government that it would meet its commitment of supplying 2 million doses a week. UK government sources insisted that only once AstraZeneca had fulfilled its order to provide the UK with 100 million doses would its vaccine production be allowed to be released to serve other countries.

The EU meanwhile is flagging far behind, with only 2% of its adult population vaccinated compared to 10% of the UK’s. Kyriakides pointed out that in its contract with AstraZeneca, four European plants were listed as suppliers and two of those were located in the UK, and she expected them to work for EU citizens.

An AstraZeneca spokesperson said: “Each supply chain was developed with input and investment from specific countries or international organisations based on the supply agreements, including our agreement with the European commission.

“As each supply chain has been set up to meet the needs of a specific agreement, the vaccine produced from any supply chain is dedicated to the relevant countries or regions and makes use of local manufacturing wherever possible.”

Kyriakides said the argument was unacceptable, emphasising that the company had a moral duty to treat the EU similarly to the UK, adding that there was no “priority clause” that would justify UK residents benefiting first from doses made there.

Germany meanwhile has said that it is facing 10 weeks of vaccine shortage.
However, there is encouraging news as Israel reported a 92% effectiveness with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outside trials. Only 31 of 163 000 Israelis caught COVID within ten days of the innoculation reaching its full strength. None were hospitalised.

Source: The Guardian