Exposure to air pollution linked to increased risk of stroke within 5 days
September 28, 2023
Science Daily/American Academy of Neurology
Short-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to an increased risk of stroke, according to a meta-analysis published in the September 27, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Short-term exposure was defined as occurring within five days of the stroke.
"Previous research has established a connection between long-term exposure to air pollution and an increased risk of stroke," said study author Ahmad Toubasi, MD, of the University of Jordan in Amman. "However, the correlation between short-term exposure to air pollution and stroke had been less clear. For our study, instead of looking at weeks or months of exposure, we looked at just five days and found a link between short-term exposure to air pollution and an increased risk of stroke."
The meta-analysis involved a review of 110 studies that included more than 18 million cases of stroke.
Researchers looked at pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.
They also looked at different sizes of particulate matter, including PM1, which is air pollution that is less than 1 micron (µm) in diameter, as well as PM2.5 and PM10. PM2.5 or smaller includes inhalable particles from motor vehicle exhaust, the burning of fuels by power plants and other industries as well as forest and grass fires. PM10 includes dust from roads and construction sites.
People who had exposure to a higher concentration of various types of air pollution had an increased risk of stroke. Higher concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were linked to a 28% increased risk of stroke; higher ozone levels were linked to a 5% increase; carbon monoxide had a 26% increase; and sulfur dioxide had a 15% increase. A higher concentration of PM1 was linked to a 9% increased risk of stroke, with PM2.5 at 15% and PM10 at 14%.
Higher levels of air pollution were also linked to higher risk of death from stroke. Higher concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were linked to a 33% increased risk of death from stroke, sulfur dioxide, a 60% increase, PM2.5, a 9% increase and PM10, a 2% increase.
"There is a strong and significant association between air pollution and the occurrence of stroke as well as death from stroke within five days of exposure," Toubasi said. "This highlights the importance of global efforts to create policies that reduce air pollution. Doing so may reduce the number of strokes and their consequences."
A limitation of the meta-analysis was most of the studies were conducted in high-income countries, while limited data was available from low- and middle-income countries.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230928152634.htm
Risk of premature birth from smoking while pregnant more than double previous estimates
September 28, 2023
Science Daily/University of Cambridge
Cambridge researchers have found that women who smoke during pregnancy are 2.6 times more likely to give birth prematurely compared to non-smokers -- more than double the previous estimate.
The study, published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, also found that smoking meant that the baby was four times more likely to be small for its gestational age, putting it at risk of potentially serious complications including breathing difficulties and infections.
But the team found no evidence that caffeine intake was linked to adverse outcomes.
Women are currently recommended to stop smoking and limit their caffeine intake during pregnancy because of the risk of complications to the baby. For example, smoking during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of fetal growth restriction, premature birth and low birthweight, though it has also been linked to a reduced risk of preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy).
High caffeine intake has also been shown to be associated with lower birthweights and possibly fetal growth restriction. Caffeine is more difficult to avoid than cigarette smoke as is found in coffee, tea, chocolate, energy drinks, soft drinks, and certain medications.
Studies looking at the links between smoking, caffeine and adverse pregnancy outcomes tend to rely on self-reported data to estimate exposure, which is not always reliable. A more objective measure is to look at levels of metabolites in the blood -- chemical by-products created when substances such as tobacco and caffeine are processed in the body.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Rosie Hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, recruited more than 4,200 women who attended the hospital between 2008 and 2012 as part of the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction (POP) study. The team analysed blood samples taken from a subset of these women four times during their pregnancies.
To assess exposure to cigarette smoke, the team looked at levels of the metabolite cotinine, which can be detected in blood, urine, and saliva. Only two out of three women with detectable levels of cotinine in every blood sample were self-reported smokers, showing that this measure is a more objective way of assessing smoking behaviour.
A total of 914 women were included in the smoking analysis. Of these, 78.6% were classified as having no exposure to smoking while pregnant, 11.7% as having some exposure and 9.7% as having consistent exposure.
Compared to women who were not exposed to smoking while pregnant, those with consistent exposure were 2.6 times more likely to experience spontaneous preterm birth -- more than double the previous estimate of 1.27 from a meta-analysis of studies -- and 4.1 times as likely to experience fetal growth restriction.
Babies born to smokers were found to be on average 387g lighter than babies born to non-smokers -- that is, more than 10% smaller than the weight of an average newborn. This increases the risk that the baby will have a low birth weight (2.5kg or less), which in turn is linked to an increased risk of developmental problems as well as poorer health in later life.
Unlike in previous studies, however, the team found no evidence that smoking reduced the risk of pre-eclampsia.
Professor Gordon Smith, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge, said: "We've known for a long time that smoking during pregnancy is not good for the baby, but our study shows that it's potentially much worse than previously thought. It puts the baby at risk of potentially serious complications from growing too slowly in the womb or from being born too soon.
"We hope this knowledge will help encourage pregnant mums and women planning pregnancy to access smoking-cessation services. Pregnancy is a key time when women quit and if they can remain tobacco free after the birth there are lifelong benefits for them and their child."
Smoking cessation is offered routinely to all pregnant women and the NHS has local smoking cessation services for anyone, pregnant or not. Further information is available on the NHS website (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/nhs-stop-smoking-services-help-you-quit/).
To assess caffeine intake, the researchers looked for the metabolite paraxanthine, which accounts for 80% of caffeine metabolism and is both less sensitive to recent intake and more stable throughout the day.
915 women were included in the caffeine analysis. Of these women, 12.8% had low levels of paraxanthine throughout pregnancy (suggesting low caffeine intake), 74.0% had moderate levels and 13.2% had high levels. There was little evidence of an association between caffeine intake and any of the adverse outcomes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230928152456.htm
Wearable device data reveals that reduced sleep and activity in pregnancy is linked to premature birth risk
September 28, 2023
Science Daily/Stanford Medicine
A lack of sleep and reduced physical activity during pregnancy are linked to risk of preterm birth, according to new research led by the Stanford School of Medicine.
In the study, which will publish online Sept. 28 in npj Digital Medicine, the researchers collected data from devices worn by more than 1,000 women throughout pregnancy. With a machine learning algorithm, the scientists sifted through participants' activity information to detect fine-grained changes in sleep and physical activity patterns.
"We showed that an artificial intelligence algorithm can build a 'clock' of physical activity and sleep during pregnancy, and can tell how far along a patient's pregnancy is," said senior study author Nima Aghaeepour, PhD, an associate professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine and of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine. Normal pregnancy is characterized by progressive changes in sleep and physical activity as the pregnancy advances, he said. "But some patients don't follow that clock." When patients' sleep and activity levels don't change on a typical trajectory, the study showed, it',s a warning sign for premature birth, he added.
The study's lead author is Neal Ravindra, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar at Stanford Medicine.
As the pregnancies progressed, sleep typically became more disrupted, and women became less physically active, the study showed. However, some women's sleep and activity patterns changed on an accelerated timeline relative to how far along they were in their pregnancies. These individuals were more likely to deliver early, the study found.
"The people who look 'very pregnant' to the AI algorithm -- but are not -- end up being at significantly increased risk of preterm birth," Aghaeepour said.
A struggle to prevent early deliveries
Premature birth, when a baby is born 3 or more weeks early, affects 10.5% of births in the United States; these rates are higher in some other parts of the world. Premature newborns can suffer many medical complications, including diseases of the eyes, lungs, brain and digestive system. Prematurity is the leading cause of death for children under age 5 around the world.
Research has identified a variety of risk factors for premature delivery, including greater levels of inflammation in the pregnant person, specific immune-system changes, African American race, higher levels of stress, history of having a preterm birth and certain types of bacteria in the mother's microbiome.
But doctors still can't reliably determine which pregnancies are at risk for premature delivery. Even when they know a mom is at risk -- because she's previously had a premature delivery, for example -- they still don't have great treatments to extend the pregnancy closer to the due date. Developing medications that could do this would be complex, in part because of ethical concerns regarding testing drugs that might harm the fetus.
If researchers can identify sleep and activity patterns that lower prematurity risk, they can design interventions to help expectant mothers adopt better sleep and exercise habits, a potentially low-risk way of reducing preterm births, Aghaeepour said.
Focusing on at-risk moms
The Stanford Medicine team collaborated with scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, who collected the sleep and physical activity data from 1,083 pregnant women treated there. More than half of the cohort (706 participants) were Black. In the United States, the rate of premature birth is about 50% higher in Black women than in white women.
"Our patient population experiences a lot of adversity, and our preterm birth rates are much higher than at Stanford," said study coauthor Sarah England, PhD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study participants included women experiencing a variety of stressors linked with higher rates of preterm birth, such as racism, low socioeconomic status and living in areas with higher crime rates, England said, adding that it is important for studies of preterm birth to include populations with the greatest need. "Typically, Black women and women of color have not been included in many large cohort studies," she said.
The participants wore actigraphy devices similar to smartwatches to collect once-a-minute measurements of physical activity and light exposure starting in the first trimester of pregnancy and continuing until their babies were born. The researchers also had data from participants' electronic medical records on gestational age, or how far along each pregnancy was; maternal medical conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and depression; pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and infections; and information about the birth, including duration of the pregnancy, the baby's birth weight and newborn medical complications.
With the movement and light exposure data, the research team developed a machine learning model of activity and sleep during pregnancy. The model shows that patterns of sleep and physical activity change over the course of pregnancy, which generally is associated with more sleep disruption and less physical activity as pregnancy progresses.
"Anecdotally, lots of women will say, 'Of course!'" said study coauthor Erik Herzog, PhD, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, adding that, for example, women experience more sleep disruptions as the baby gets larger and more active. "But, surprisingly, the literature has not had a real consensus about what exactly happens to sleep in pregnancy," he said. Using imprecise methods to measure sleep habits, such as questionnaires, has not provided adequate answers.
The researchers were surprised at how strongly deviations from the normal pattern of sleep and physical activity could predict preterm birth. If the machine-learning model classified a woman as sleeping better and being more physically active than usual for her stage of pregnancy, this was linked with a 48% reduction in risk for preterm delivery. Conversely, if the model classified a woman as sleeping worse and being less physically active than usual for her stage of pregnancy, her risk for preterm delivery was 44% higher than for pregnant women with typical sleep and activity patterns.
Strong clues for preventing prematurity
"This is exciting preliminary data," Aghaeepour said. The results suggest that scientists should run studies to test whether tracking and modifying pregnant women's sleep or physical activity could their lower prematurity risk, he said, adding, "It's telling us where to go for future interventions."
The circadian clock regulates several other biological pathways implicated in premature birth, such as those regulating inflammation and the immune response, the scientists said. They plan to test whether improving sleep and physical activity in pregnancy could modify other key pathways, such as those controlling inflammation.
"Our feeling is that if we look at this overarching regulator, we may be able to control individual systems that lead to preterm birth," England said.
Although the findings are at an early stage, and more work is needed to understand their implications for preventing prematurity, there's little risk in advising pregnant women to maintain good sleep habits now, she added. For instance, women should try to maintain consistent bedtimes and wake-up times, get enough sleep, and get some natural light during the day to help regulate their body clock.
"I tell everyone who is pregnant, 'I hope you keep a regular sleep schedule,'" England said.
"If we can use sleep and physical activity to modulate biology in the right direction, it could be a great intervention for reducing the rate of preterm birth," Aghaeepour added.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230928152205.htm
Exercise and muscle regulation: Implications for diabetes and obesity
September 27, 2023
Science Daily/Deutsches Zentrum fuer Diabetesforschung DZD
Prediabetes is a condition that precedes type 2 diabetes and increases the risk of heart attack, kidney and eye disease, and several types of cancer. Currently, there is no approved drug therapy for prediabetes available. Scientists at the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) now show how and by which mechanisms prediabetes can be brought into remission, i.e. into a state in which blood glucose levels return to normal. The multicenter study of the DZD also shows that remission of prediabetes protects against type 2 diabetes and is associated with better kidney and vascular function in the long term. Interestingly, the underlying mechanisms are different from those in type 2 diabetes remission, the researchers report in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
People with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of heart attack, kidney disease and stroke, and a higher mortality risk. Type 2 diabetes was thought to be irreversible until a few years ago. We now know that type 2 diabetes can be put into remission in a significant number of individuals through substantial weight loss. However, this remission rarely lasts as most people typically develop type 2 diabetes again within a few years.
"We aimed to explore the feasibility of commencing earlier and implementing preventive measures already at a stage that precedes type 2 diabetes, namely prediabetes, with the aim of reversing it," elucidates senior author Prof. Dr. Andreas Birkenfeld, Medical Director of Medical Clinic IV at Tübingen University Hospital, and Director of the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases of Helmholtz Munich at the University of Tübingen. This could be crucial for patients with prediabetes as they are at increased risk to develop type 2 diabetes as well as heart, kidney, and eye complications among others.
But what causes prediabetes to go into remission? Scientists from the Institute of Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases (IDM) at Helmholtz Munich and the Department of Diabetology, Endocrinology, and Nephrology at the University Hospital of Tübingen, conducted a post-hoc analysis on participants with prediabetes from the Prediabetes Lifestyle Intervention Study (PLIS) to investigate this question.
In this randomized-controlled multicenter study conducted by the DZD, 1,105 individuals with prediabetes underwent a lifestyle intervention involving a healthy diet and increased physical activity for a duration of one year. The researchers then assessed the 298 participants who had achieved a minimum weight loss of five percent as a result of the intervention. Responders were the participants whose fasting blood glucose, 2-hour glucose, and HbA1c levels had normalized within twelve months, indicating that they had gone into remission. Non-responders were individuals who did not achieve remission despite losing weight and still had prediabetes.
Contrary to the researchers' initial assumptions, it was not weight loss that distinguished those who went into remission from those who did not, as there was no difference in relative weight loss between responders and non-responders. However, individuals who achieved remission demonstrated a notable improvement in insulin sensitivity compared to non-responders. In essence, they were able to enhance their sensitivity to insulin, a hormone that lowers blood glucose levels, significantly more than those who did not respond. Nonetheless, the quantity of insulin secreted remained unaltered in both groups. This difference is critical compared to type 2 diabetes remission, which depends primarily on enhanced insulin secretion.
Reducing abdominal fat mass may help reverse prediabetes
To determine the cause of increased insulin sensitivity in responders, the researchers conducted a comparative analysis of the two groups. The responders had lost more abdominal fat compared to non-responders despite losing the same amount of body weight. Visceral abdominal fat is located directly in the abdominal cavity and surrounds the intestines. Its impact on insulin sensitivity is partially attributed to an inflammatory response in adipose tissue.
Indeed, participants who went into remission also had fewer inflammatory proteins in their blood. "Since the responders showed a reduction in abdominal fat in particular, it will be important in the future to identify the factors that promote the loss of this fat depot," says Arvid Sandforth, one of the two lead-authors. Surprisingly, there were no differences between the two groups in the reduction of liver fat, which is also an important risk factor for the development of diabetes.
Participants who achieved remission showed a 73 percent reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes even two years after the end of the lifestyle intervention. They also showed reduced markers of kidney damage and better status of their blood vessels.
Currently, treatment of prediabetes consists of weight reduction and lifestyle improvement to delay the onset of type 2 diabetes -- but without glucose-based targets to guide the treatment process. The DZD's new analysis fills this gap: "Based on the new data, remission should be the new therapeutic target in people with prediabetes. This has the potential to change treatment practice and minimize the complication rate for our patients," says co-first author Prof. Dr. Reiner Jumpertz-von Schwartzenberg.
According to the study, remission in prediabetes can be considered to have occurred when fasting blood glucose falls below 100 mg/dl (5.6 mmol/l), 2-hour glucose below 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/l), and HbA1c below 5.7 percent. The likelihood of remission increases when body weight is reduced and waist circumference decreases by at least about 4 cm in women and about 7 cm in men. Researchers state that these criteria can now be used as biomarkers.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230927155347.htm
Increasing steps by 3,000 per day can lower blood pressure in older adults
This study sought to determine if older adults with hypertension could receive these benefits by moderately increasing their daily walking, which is one of the easiest and most popular forms of physical activity for this population.
September 27, 2023
Science Daily/University of Connecticut
An estimated 80% of older adults in the U.S. have high blood pressure. Maintaining healthy blood pressure can protect against serious conditions like heart failure, heart attacks, and strokes.
A new study including Linda Pescatello, distinguished professor of kinesiology in UConn's College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, found that adding a relatively minimal amount of movement, about 3,000 steps per day, can significantly reduce high blood pressure in older adults.
Pescatello worked with Elizabeth Lefferts, the lead author of the paper, Duck-chun Lee, and others in Lee's lab at Iowa State University. They published their findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease.
"We'll all get high blood pressure if we live long enough, at least in this country," Pescatello says. "That's how prevalent it is."
Pescatello is an expert on hypertension (the clinical term for high blood pressure) and exercise. Her previous research has demonstrated that exercise can have a significant immediate and long-lasting impact on lowering blood pressure in hypertensive adults.
This study sought to determine if older adults with hypertension could receive these benefits by moderately increasing their daily walking, which is one of the easiest and most popular forms of physical activity for this population.
"It's easy to do, they don't need any equipment, they can do it anywhere at almost any time," Lee says.
The study focused on a group of sedentary older adults between ages 68 and 78 who walked an average of about 4,000 steps per day before the study.
After consulting existing studies, Lee determined that 3,000 steps would be a reasonable goal. This would also put most participants at 7,000 daily steps, in line with the American College of Sports Medicine's recommendation.
"3,000 steps is large enough but not too challenging to achieve for health benefits," Lee says.
The team conducted the study during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant they had to do everything remotely.
The researchers sent participants a kit with pedometers, blood pressure monitors, and step diaries for participants to log how much they were walking each day.
On average, participants' systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased by an average of seven and four points, respectively, after the intervention.
Other studies suggest decreases of these magnitudes correspond to a relative risk reduction of all-cause mortality by 11%, and 16% for cardiovascular mortality, an 18% reduction in the risk of heart disease, and a 36% risk reduction of stroke.
"It's exciting that a simple lifestyle intervention can be just as effective as structured exercise and some medications," Lefferts says.
The findings suggest that the 7,000-step regimen the participants in the study achieved is on-par with reductions seen with anti-hypertensive medications.Eight of the 21 participants were already on anti-hypertensive medications. Those participants still saw improvements in systolic blood pressure from increasing their daily activity.
"In a previous study, we found that when exercise is combined with medication, exercise bolsters the effects of blood pressure medication alone," Pescatello says. "It just speaks to the value of exercise as anti-hypertensive therapy. It's not to negate the effects of medication at all, but it's part of the treatment arsenal."
The researchers found that walking speed and walking in continuous bouts did not matter as much as simply increasing total steps.
"We saw that the volume of physical activity is what's really important here, not the intensity," Pescatello says. "Using the volume as a target, whatever fits in and whatever works conveys health benefits."
This work was a pilot study, and the researchers hope to use these data to launch a larger clinical trial.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230927003032.htm
Saturated fat may interfere with creating memories in aged brain
Study finds DHA protects brain cells from fat-related inflammation
September 27, 2023
Science Daily/Ohio State University
New research hints at a few ways fatty foods affect cells in the brain, a finding that could help explain the link between a high-fat diet and impaired memory -- especially as we age.
The Ohio State University study in cell cultures found the omega-3 fatty acid DHA may help protect the brain from an unhealthy diet's effects by curbing fat-induced inflammation at the cellular source.
Separate experiments using brain tissue from aging mice showed a high-fat diet may lead specific brain cells to overdo cell-signaling management in a way that interferes with the creation of new memories.
The same lab found in an earlier study in aging rats that a diet of highly processed ingredients led to a strong inflammatory response in the brain that was accompanied by behavioral signs of memory loss -- and that DHA supplementation prevented those problems.
"The cool thing about this paper is that for the first time, we're really starting to tease these things apart by cell type," said senior author Ruth Barrientos, an investigator in Ohio State's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and neuroscience in the College of Medicine.
"Our lab and others have often looked at the whole tissue of the hippocampus to observe the brain's memory-related response to a high-fat diet. But we've been curious about which cell types are more or less affected by these saturated fatty acids, and this is our first foray into determining that."
The study was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.
For this work, the researchers focused on microglia, cells in the brain that promote inflammation, and hippocampal neurons, which are important for learning and memory. They used immortalized cells -- copies of cells taken from animal tissue that are modified to continuously divide and respond only to lab-based stimulation, meaning their behavior may not precisely match that of primary cells of the same type.
Researchers exposed these model microglia and neurons to palmitic acid, the most abundant saturated fatty acid in high-fat foods like lard, shortening, meat and dairy products, to observe how it affected gene activation in the cells as well as functioning of mitochondria, structures inside cells that have a primary metabolic role of generating energy.
Results showed the palmitic acid prompted gene expression changes linked to an increase in inflammation in both microglia and neurons, though microglia had a wider range of affected inflammatory genes. Pre-treatment of these cells with a dose of DHA, one of two omega-3 fatty acids in fish and other seafood and available in supplement form, had a strong protective effect against the increased inflammation in both cell types.
"Previous work has shown that DHA is protective in the brain and that palmitic acid has been detrimental to brain cells, but this is the first time we've looked at how DHA can directly protect against the effects of palmitic acid in those microglia, and we see that there is a strong protective effect," said Michael Butler, first author of the study and a research scientist in Barrientos' lab.
When it came to the mitochondria, however, DHA did not prevent the loss of function that followed exposure to palmitic acid.
"The protective effects of DHA might, in this context, be restricted to effects on gene expression related to the pro-inflammatory response as opposed to the metabolic deficits that the saturated fat also induced," Butler said.
In another set of experiments, the researchers looked at how a diet high in saturated fat influenced signaling in the brains of aged mice by observing another microglial function called synaptic pruning. Microglia monitor signal transmission among neurons and nibble away excess synaptic spines, the connection sites between axons and dendrites, to keep communication at an ideal level.
Microglia were exposed to mouse brain tissue containing both pre- and post-synaptic material from animals that had been fed either a high-fat diet or regular chow for three days.
The microglia ate the synapses from aged mice fed a high-fat diet at a faster rate than they ate synapses from mice fed a regular diet -- suggesting the high-fat diet is doing something to those synapses that gives the microglia a reason to eat them at a higher rate, Butler said.
"When we talk about the pruning, or refinement, that needs to occur, it's like Goldilocks: It needs to be optimal -- not too much and not too little," Barrientos said. "With these microglia eating away too much too soon, it outpaces the ability for these spines to regrow and create new connections, so memories don't solidify or become stable."
From here, the researchers plan to expand on findings related to synaptic pruning and mitochondria function, and to see how palmitic acid and DHA effects play out in primary brain cells from young versus aged animals.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230927155308.htm
New research adds evidence to the benefits of ginger supplements for treating autoimmune diseases
Study looked at the impact of ginger supplements on people's white blood cell function
September 22, 2023
Science Daily/University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
New research has revealed a potentially important role ginger supplements can play in controlling inflammation for people living with autoimmune diseases.
The research published today in JCI Insight focused on studying the impact of ginger supplementation on a type of white blood cell called the neutrophil. The study was especially interested in neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, also known as NETosis, and what it may mean for controlling inflammation.
The study found ginger consumption by healthy individuals makes their neutrophils more resistant to NETosis. This is important because NETs are microscopic spider web-like structures that propel inflammation and clotting, which contribute to many autoimmune diseases, including lupus, antiphospholipid syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis.
"There are a lot of diseases where neutrophils are abnormally overactive. We found that ginger can help to restrain NETosis, and this is important because it is a natural supplement that may be helpful to treat inflammation and symptoms for people with several different autoimmune diseases," said senior co-author Kristen Demoruelle, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
In a clinical trial, the researchers found that daily intake of a ginger supplement for seven days (20 mg of gingerols/day) by healthy volunteers boosted a chemical inside the neutrophil called cAMP. These high levels of cAMP then inhibited NETosis in response to various disease-relevant stimuli.
"Our research, for the first time, provides evidence for the biological mechanism that underlies ginger's apparent anti-inflammatory properties in people," said senior co-author Jason Knight, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Michigan.
The researchers say that many people with inflammatory conditions are likely to ask their health care providers whether natural supplements could be helpful for them or they already take supplements, like ginger, to help manage symptoms. Unfortunately, the precise impact on disease is often unknown. The researchers hope that providing more evidence about ginger's benefits, including the direct mechanism by which ginger impacts neutrophils, will encourage health care providers and patients to more strategically discuss whether taking ginger supplements as part of their treatment plan could be beneficial.
"There are not a lot of natural supplements, or prescription medications for that matter, that are known to fight overactive neutrophils. We, therefore, think ginger may have a real ability to complement treatment programs that are already underway. The goal is to be more strategic and personalized in terms of helping to relieve people's symptoms," Knight adds.
As a next step, the researchers hope to use this study to unlock funding for clinical trials of ginger in patients with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases where neutrophils are overactive, such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, antiphospholipid syndrome and even COVID-19.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230922141250.htm
Compound derived from hops reduces abundance of gut microbe associated with metabolic syndrome
September 21, 2023
Science Daily/Oregon State University
Researchers have shown in a mouse model and lab cultures that a compound derived from hops reduces the abundance of a gut bacterium associated with metabolic syndrome.
The findings, published today in the journal Microbiome, are important because an estimated 35 percent of the U.S. adult population suffers from the syndrome, a common and serious condition linked with cognitive dysfunction and dementia as well as being a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
A diet high in saturated fat results in chronic low-grade inflammation in the body that in turn leads to the development of metabolic syndrome.
Patients are considered to have metabolic syndrome if they have at least two of the following: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low levels of "good" cholesterol, and high levels of triglycerides.
OSU researchers for years have been studying the potential health benefits of xanthohumol, a chemical found in hops, and its derivatives including tetrahydroxanthohumol. The latter is commonly abbreviated to TXN, the former to XN.
XN is a polyphenol, a type of abundant organic compound existing in plants and used for millennia by practitioners of traditional medicine. XN is one of the flavonoids, natural products found in fruits, vegetables, grains, bark, roots, stems, flowers, tea and wine that are well known for their positive effects on health.
In the most recent study, Andrey Morgun of the OSU College of Pharmacy, Natalia Shulzhenko of the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine and Adrian Gombart of the Linus Pauling Institute and College of Science demonstrated that TXN can combat metabolic syndrome by reducing the population of Oscillibacter species within the gut microbiome.
More than 10 trillion microbial cells from about 1,000 different bacterial species comprise the human gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms in the digestive tract.
The researchers employed a novel computational method developed earlier by Morgun and Shulzhenko, transkingdom network analysis, to uncover TXN's mechanism for ameliorating metabolic syndrome. The analysis predicts which types of bacteria control the expression of mammalian genes connected to specific medical conditions.
"We found TXN mainly works by reducing the abundance of gut microbes that promote inflammation in the adipose tissue's macrophage cells, and improving glucose metabolism," Morgun said.
Macrophage cells are large cells that are part of the immune system. Glucose metabolism, the body's ability to convert the sugar into fuel, generally suffers impairment as someone becomes obese, which in turn can lead to the person becoming more overweight.
Faulty glucose metabolism also negatively affects brain physiology and is at the root of multiple medical conditions including diabetes and heart disease.
"When exposed to a high-fat diet common to metabolic syndrome, Oscillibacter bacteria help prompt the inflammation of fatty tissue that drives the syndrome," Morgun said. "TXN serves to limit Oscillibacter species' numbers."
The National Institutes of Health, the Linus Pauling Institute, the OSU College of Pharmacy, Hopsteiner, Inc., and the OSU Foundation Buhler-Wang Research Fund supported this study.
The research is a part of a larger collaborative effort spearheaded by Gombart, Fred Stevens of the OSU College of Pharmacy and Claudia Maier of the College of Science, who are exploring ways to improve human health, particularly as it pertains to diet and obesity, through hops compounds.
A little over a year ago, Morgun and Shulzhenko published research showing Oscillibacter and adipose tissue's link to type 2 diabetes, a finding that now suggests TXN may be able to help treat that condition too.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230921154434.htm
Exercise and muscle regulation: Implications for diabetes and obesity
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/Helmholtz Munich
How do our muscles respond at the molecular level to exercise? Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) have unraveled the cellular basis and signaling pathways responsible for the positive impact of physical activity on our overall health. Regulatory T cells, a type of immune cell, play a critical role in ensuring proper muscle function. These novel insights are paving the path towards precision medicines targeting metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, as well as muscle-related illnesses. Their discoveries are published in Cell Metabolism.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes pose an increasing threat to our global health. Overnutrition and physical inactivity contribute to the development of these conditions. Exercise is not only effective for preventing diseases but also offers numerous health benefits including improving the immune system. Researchers from the German Center for Diabetes (DZD) at Helmholtz Munich and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) revealed new insights on the interconnections between exercise, muscle function, and the immune system. These new findings can not only benefit people living with obesity or type 2 diabetes seeking to improve their health through exercise or patients of muscle-related diseases, but also benefit professional athletes. Importantly, a better understanding of the immune-muscle crosstalk can contribute to the future development of precision immune therapies for diabetes and other complications.
Regulatory T Cells Ensure Proper Muscle Function
Although the beneficial effects of exercise training on metabolic health and the immune system are commonly known, the exact mechanisms of how physical activity affects muscle immune cells remained unknown until now. The team of researchers unraveled the molecular mechanisms by which a specialized subset of immune cells in the human body, the regulatory T cells (Tregs), control muscle crosstalk in a steady state, in response to exercise, as well as upon muscle injury. During exercise highly functional Tregs can be found in the muscles, which are important for proper muscle function, regeneration, and repair.
By manipulating the Tregs in multiple ways, the authors uncover their pivotal role in regulating muscle function, strength, and repair after injury. The research team identifies a critical mediator of these effects. A signaling pathway involved in the immune response and various other physiological processes, the interleukin-6 (IL6) receptor (IL6R) signaling on T cells, is critical for Treg functionality. The IL6R has to be present on the surface of T cells for the Treg-mediated control of muscle function.
These new findings can additionally offer a possible mechanistic explanation as to why anti-inflammatory treatment targeting IL6R has been associated with the development of muscle weakness as a side effect in the clinic. In conclusion, the new discoveries highlight the importance of dissecting the crosstalk between the immune system and the metabolism in conditions such as diabetes and obesity. These insights will be crucial for developing precision medicines targeting Tregs within distinct niches and contexts in the future.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920152413.htm
Reducing stress on T cells makes them better cancer fighters
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/Salk Institute
Even for killer T cells -- specialized immune cells -- seeking and destroying cancer cells around the clock can be exhausting. If scientists can understand why killer T cells become exhausted, then they can create more resilient cancer-killing cells.
In a new study, Salk Institute scientists discovered a relationship between killer T cell exhaustion and the body's sympathetic stress response ("fight-or-flight") in varying cancer types in mouse and human tissue samples. What's more, the team found that the interaction between killer T cells and sympathetic stress response hormones can be inhibited with beta-blockers -- a class of drugs already used in humans for controlling blood pressure and heart rate -- to create killer T cells that fight the tumor more efficiently.
The findings, published in Nature on September 20, 2023, establish a new link between the sympathetic stress response and how the immune system responds to cancer. Additionally, they demonstrate the benefit of pairing beta-blockers with existing immunotherapies to improve cancer treatment by bolstering killer T cell function.
"There is no question immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer patient treatment -- but there are many patients for whom it's ineffective," says Professor Susan Kaech, senior author and director of Salk's NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis. "Finding that our nervous system can suppress the function of cancer-destroying immune cells opens up entirely new ways to think about how to rejuvenate T cells in tumors."
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for mediating the body's stress response, also known as the fight-or-flight response. However, little was known about how the nerves regulate the immune response to infections or cancer.
The researchers focused on sympathetic nerves that innervate our organs and produce the messenger hormone noradrenaline, which is also a stress hormone. The scientists used a variety of cancer and chronic illness models in mice and human tissue samples to study when and how killer T cells are influenced by the sympathetic nerves.
They found that the sympathetic nerves were producing noradrenaline, which was binding to killer T cells using a receptor called ADRB1. Exhausted killer T cells expressed more ADRB1 receptors than their functional counterparts, allowing the T cells to "listen" to the noradrenaline released by the nerves.
To test whether killer T cell exhaustion could be prevented, the researchers tested two approaches to intercepting noradrenaline and ADRB1 interaction: either removing ADRB1 altogether or impairing ADRB1 function with beta-blockers, which resulted in more-functional killer T cells that were better at destroying cancer cells.
The authors also found that the exhausted T cells do not just listen to nerves from afar, but cluster right around them in tissues. Surprisingly, the ADRB1 receptor provided the T cells with critical instructions to migrate near the nerves, which in turn suppressed their functions -- making them worse at fighting cancer.
"The innervation of tumors is an understudied area of tumor immunology. Our study has now uncovered that nerves contribute to the process of T cell exhaustion in tumors, where T cells become worn out and less powerful in their fight against the tumor over time," says first author Anna-Maria Globig, a postdoctoral researcher in Kaech's lab. "If we can unravel the details of how nerves suppress the body's immune response to cancer and why the exhausted T cells move towards the nerves, we can begin to target this process therapeutically."
According to Kaech, the researchers hope to expand their understanding of the exhausted killer T cell environment to learn more about why stress makes us sicker.
"We were able to find a new pathway that we can target with beta-blockers to create more resilient killer T cells that resist exhaustion and fight cancer better," says Globig.
Since beta-blockers are already clinically used, the team also hopes to implement their proposed cancer-fighting regimen soon in patients with lung cancer. By partnering with clinicians, they hope to study more human cancer tissue samples to enrich their findings and provide further evidence of the efficacy of beta-blockers in cancer treatment.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920111129.htm
Morning and afternoon slightly better than evening physical activity for diabetes prevention
September 21, 2023
Science Daily/Diabetologia
New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]) shows that morning and afternoon physical activity are associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes across all population levels of education and income, but found no statistically significant association between evening physical activity and risk type 2 diabetes. The study is by Dr Caiwei Tian, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Dr Chirag Patel, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. and colleagues.
Physical activity is a preventive factor for type 2 diabetes, but its timing and consistency (in contrast with overall sum of physical activity) has been relatively unexplored. Accelerometer-based devices that measure physical activity provide a new opportunity to objectively measure behaviour throughout the day and week. It has been shown that midday–afternoon but not evening physical activity is associated with a lower risk of mortality compared with morning physical activity, but the relationship with type 2 diabetes remains understudied. In this new study, the authors analysed the relationship between morning, afternoon, or evening physical activity and consistency (routine) and risk of type 2 diabetes.
A cohort of 93,095 UK Biobank participants (mean age 62 years) without a history of type 2 diabetes wore a wrist-worn accelerometer for 1 week. The authors converted accelerometer information to estimate metabolic equivalent of task (MET) (a common measure of physical activity), summing MET-hours of total physical activity. MET-hour physical activity captures all types of activity undertaken by an individual throughout the day and measured with the accelerometer, including chores, walking, and vigorous activity. The authors measured completed METs within three time segments (morning, afternoon, and evening), divided as 06:00–12:00 hours (morning); 12:00–18:00 hours (afternoon); and 18:00–24:00 hours (evening).
The authors quantified the consistency of physical activity by analysing the variance, or difference of each person’s activity from their own personal average. Those with smaller deviations were more consistent and vice versa. The authors also considered the intensity of exercise: moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and vigorous physical activity (VPA) in association with type 2 diabetes incidence.
The authors observed protective associations of physical activity, with each 1-unit increase in MET being associated with a 10% and 9% reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes in the morning and afternoon, respectively. However, there was no statistically significant association between evening physical activity and risk of type 2 diabetes.
The relationship with morning and afternoon physical activity was largely linear, meaning that those people with more MET-h completed had a much lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those with less (10% / 9% per MET-h, for morning and afternoon respectively).
The authors thought that lifestyle factors, such as amount of sleep and dietary intake, would influence the amount of physical activity in the morning, afternoon, and evening undertaken, and therefore the role activity has in diabetes risk. To address how these factors influence physical activity, the authors considered these factors in their analytic models. They found that when adjusting for lifestyle factors, associations for MET-hours with different times of day became more precise.
Consistency of MET-measured physical activity was not associated with type 2 diabetes; but intensity was – both MVPA and VPA were associated with decreased risk for type 2 diabetes at all times of the day. The authors say their study is the first report on the effect of consistency of activity, and explain: “The consistency or routine of physical activity was not strongly associated with type 2 diabetes. In other words, individuals who exercise a smaller amount of time more frequently are at no lesser risk for diabetes than individuals who exercise the same total amount, but with less of a routine.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230921105751.htm
Posttraumatic brain activity predicts resilience to PTSD
September 21, 2023
Science Daily/Elsevier
After a traumatic experience, most people recover without incident, but some people -- between 2% and 10%- develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition that can cause debilitating symptoms of anxiety due to emotional dysregulation. PTSD symptoms are present in up to 40% of trauma survivors in the acute aftermath of trauma, but full-blown PTSD develops in only a small subset of cases. Early identification of those at risk is critical for both early treatment and possible prevention.
A new study led by Israel Liberzon, MD, at Texas A&M University, aimed to do just that. The study appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier.
Researchers have long understood that PTSD involves altered brain processing in areas associated with emotion processing and modulation, including the amygdala, insula, and prefrontal cortex. But, it has remained unclear when the PTSD-associated differences arise. In this work, the researchers collected brain scans from 104 survivors of trauma -- usually a car accident -- at 1, 6, and 14 months after the accident. By looking at brain activity so soon after the trauma, the researchers hoped to identify predictors of who would be more at risk or resilient to developing chronic PTSD.
Dr. Liberzon said of the findings, "In this largest-to-date, prospective study of early post-trauma survivors, greater activation in right inferior frontal gyrus, a region linked to cognitive control and emotional reappraisal, predicts better recovery from early PTSD symptoms. These findings highlight the key roles of cortical/cognitive regions in regulation of fear and in PTSD development."
Importantly, the researchers saw changes in the patients' brain activity change over time, reflecting an ongoing, perhaps pathological process.
Cameron Carter, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, said of the study, "These findings highlight the key role that the prefrontal cortex may play in conferring resilience to the harmful effects of trauma, through its function representing contextual information and regulating emotional responses."
Dr. Liberzon added, "Understanding brain circuits linked to the progression of PTSD from an acute to a chronic condition is critical for understanding its pathophysiology, and eventually for the development of mechanism-informed treatment. The results might also help clinicians to start identifying and treating early trauma survivors at greater risk of developing chronic PTSD a year after the traumatic event."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230921154511.htm
College athletes experience worse post-injury outcomes for concussions suffered outside of sports
Female athletes also had more severe symptoms associated with these injuries
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that college athletes had worse post-injury outcomes related to concussions they experienced outside of sports than those they experienced while playing sports. Additionally, female athletes who sustained their injury outside of sports had more severe symptoms and more days in sports lost to injury relative to male athletes. These findings suggest the need for improved concussion recognition, reporting, and monitoring outside of sports.
The study was recently published online by the Journal of Athletic Training.
Concussions have the potential to impact the daily function and quality of life of those who sustain them. Prompt recognition of symptoms and early access to care can help minimize those effects. Most concussion research has primarily focused on injuries that occur while playing sports, but those studies often exclude concussions that can happen outside of sports, usually the result of falls or car crashes. Some research has indicated that patients with non-sports-related concussions have worse outcomes, but research into those effects in college-age patients is very limited.
"Patients who experience a concussion outside of sports may lack the resources that athletes who sustain their injury on the field have for concussion care, like immediate access to health care providers such as athletic trainers," said study first author Patricia Roby, PhD, an injury scientist who conducted this research while she was a postdoctoral fellow at CHOP.
To help address this gap in knowledge, researchers analyzed data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association-Department of Defense Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) Consortium. A total of 3,500 college athletes were included in the study, including 555 that experienced a non-sports-related concussion. More than 40% of athletes included were female so that potential differences in recovery between males and females could be explored.
The study found that athletes who experienced non-sports-related concussions were less likely to report their injuries immediately, potentially due to lack of recognition of symptoms outside of the sport setting or hesitation to report the injury caused by unusual or careless mechanisms. Athletes who sustained non-sports-related concussions reported greater severity of their symptoms, more days with symptoms, and more days in sports lost to injury relative to patients who experienced sports-related concussions, and these findings were even more true in female patients compared with male patients.
"Our findings show that non-sports mechanisms of injury for concussion are an important consideration in college age young adults, something we had already described in our research in younger children. There is an opportunity to improve clinical outcomes by increasing awareness and education around concussions that happen outside of sports and reducing healthcare reporting barriers in this older age group as well," said senior study author Christina L. Master, MD, clinical director of the Minds Matter Concussion Program at CHOP. "Additionally, our findings related to sex differences in the trajectory of these injuries warrant additional investigation to see the extent to which reporting behaviors and access to medical teams are contributing to this disparity in outcomes."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920152424.htm
September 22, 2023
Science Daily/University of Tsukuba
Trigonelline is derived from coffee; researchers have found that it improves spatial learning and memory in senescence-accelerated mice. The study also suggested that this effect results from inhibiting neuroinflammation and restoring neurotransmitter levels in the brain.
The search for functional natural compounds that can improve age-related cognitive decline has recently emerged as an important research focus to promote healthy aging. Trigonelline (TG), a plant alkaloid found in coffee, as well as in fenugreek seed and radish, was anticipated to possess cognitive enhancement properties.
In this study, researchers led by the University of Tsukuba investigated the effects of TG on memory and spatial learning (acquiring, retaining, structuring, and applying information related to the surrounding physical environment) from both a cognitive and molecular biology perspective in an integrated manner using a senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) model.
Following oral administration of TG to SAMP8 mice for 30 days, the Morris water maze test indicated a significant improvement in spatial learning and memory performance compared with SAMP8 mice that did not receive TG. Next, the researchers performed whole-genome transcriptomic analysis of the hippocampus to explore the underlying molecular mechanisms. They found that signaling pathways related to nervous system development, mitochondrial function, ATP synthesis, inflammation, autophagy, and neurotransmitter release were significantly modulated in the TG group.
Furthermore, the research team found that TG suppressed neuroinflammation by negatively regulating signaling factor Traf6-mediated activation of the transcription factor NF-κB. Additionally, quantitative protein analysis confirmed that the levels of inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-6 were significantly decreased and the levels of neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin were significantly increased in the hippocampus. These findings suggest the efficacy of TG in preventing and improving age-related spatial learning memory impairment.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230922110815.htm
A network that spreads light and the role of thalamus in our brain
September 22, 2023
Science Daily/University of Liège
New research conducted at the University of Liège, using ultra-high field 7 Tesla MRI, provides a better understanding of how light stimulates our brain and could provide new insights into how it works.
A research team at the ULiège GIGA Institute tried to understand better how light stimulates our cognition. Light acts like a cup of coffee and helps keep us awake. That's why we recommend not using too much light on our smartphones and tablets in the evening. This can disrupt our sleep. On the other hand, the same light can help us during the day. Many studies have shown that good lighting can help students in schools, hospital staff and patients, and company employees. It's the blue part of the light that's most effective for this, as we have blue light detectors in our eyes that tell our brains about the quality and quantity of light around us.
Once again, the brain regions responsible for this stimulating impact of light (also known as the 'non-visual' impact of light) are not well understood. "They are small and located in the subcortical part of the brain," explains Ilenia Paparella, doctoral student in the GIGA CRC IVI laboratory and first author of the article published in Communications Biology. The team of researchers from the GIGA-CRC-IVI was once again able to take advantage of the higher resolution of 7 Tesla MRI to show that the thalamus, a subcortical region located just below the corpus callosum (that connects our two hemispheres), plays a role in relaying non-visual light information to the parietal cortex in an area known to control attention levels. "We knew of its important role in vision, but its role in non-visual aspects was not yet certain. With this study, we have demonstrated that the thalamus stimulates the parietal regions and not the other way around, as we might have thought."
These new advances in our knowledge of the role of the thalamus will ultimately enable us to propose lighting solutions that will help cognition when we need to be fully awake and focused, or that will contribute to better sleep through relaxing light.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230922110728.htm
Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/University of Cambridge
The commonly-held belief that attempting to suppress negative thoughts is bad for our mental health could be wrong, a new study from scientists at the University of Cambridge suggests.
Researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers worldwide to suppress thoughts about negative events that worried them, and found that not only did these become less vivid, but that the participants' mental health also improved.
"We're all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and wellbeing perniciously," said Professor Michael Anderson.
"The whole point of psychotherapy is to dredge up these thoughts so one can deal with them and rob them of their power. In more recent years, we've been told that suppressing thoughts is intrinsically ineffective and that it actually causes people to think the thought more -- it's the classic idea of 'Don't think about a pink elephant'.
These ideas have become dogma in the clinical treatment realm, said Anderson, with national guidelines talking about thought avoidance as a major maladaptive coping behaviour to be eliminated and overcome in depression, anxiety, PTSD, for example.
When COVID-19 appeared in 2020, like many researchers, Professor Anderson wanted to see how his own research could be used to help people through the pandemic. His interest lay in a brain mechanism known as inhibitory control -- the ability to override our reflexive responses -- and how it might be applied to memory retrieval, and in particular to stopping the retrieval of negative thoughts when confronted with potent reminders to them.
Dr Zulkayda Mamat -- at the time a PhD student in Professor Anderson's lab and at Trinity College, Cambridge -- believed that inhibitory control was critical in overcoming trauma in experiences occurring to herself and many others she has encountered in life. She had wanted to investigate whether this was an innate ability or something that was learnt -- and hence could be taught.
Dr Mamat said: "Because of the pandemic, we were seeing a need in the community to help people cope with surging anxiety. There was already a mental health crisis, a hidden epidemic of mental health problems, and this was getting worse. So with that backdrop, we decided to see if we could help people cope better."
Professor Anderson and Dr Mamat recruited 120 people across 16 countries to test whether it might in fact be possible -- and beneficial -- for people to practice suppressing their fearful thoughts. Their findings are published today in Science Advances.
In the study, each participant was asked to think of a number of scenarios that might plausibly occur in their lives over the next two years -- 20 negative 'fears and worries' that they were afraid might happen, 20 positive 'hopes and dreams', and 36 routine and mundane neutral events. The fears had to be worries of current concern to them, that have repeatedly intruded in their thoughts.
Each event had to be specific to them and something they had vividly imagined occurring. For each scenario, they were to provide a cue word (an obvious reminder that could be used to evoke the event during training) and a key detail (a single word expressing a central event detail). For example:
• Negative -- visiting one's parents at the hospital as a result of COVID-19, with the cue 'Hospital' and the detail 'Breathing'.
• Neutral -- a visit to the opticians, with the cue 'Optician' and the detail 'Cambridge'.
• Positive -- seeing one's sister get married, with the cue 'Wedding' and the detail 'Dress'.
Participants were asked to rate each event on a number of points: vividness, likelihood of occurrence, distance in the future, level of anxiety about the event (or level of joy for positive events), frequency of thought, degree of current concern, long-term impact, and emotional intensity.
Participants also completed questionnaires to assess their mental health, though no one was excluded, allowing the researchers to look at a broad range of participants, including many with serious depression, anxiety, and pandemic-related post-traumatic stress.
Then, over Zoom, Dr Mamat took each participant through the 20-minute training, which involved 12 'No-imagine' and 12 'Imagine' repetitions for events, each day for three days.
For No-imagine trials, participants were given one of their cue words, asked to first acknowledge the event in their mind. Then, while continuing to stare directly at the reminder cue, they were asked to stop thinking about the event -- they should not try to imagine the event itself or use diversionary thoughts to distract themselves, but rather should try to block any images or thoughts that the reminder might evoke. For this part of the trial, one group of participants was given their negative events to suppress and the other given their neutral ones.
For Imagine trials, participants were given a cue word and asked to imagine the event as vividly as possible, thinking what it would be like and imagining how they would feel at the event. For ethical reasons, no participant was given a negative event to imagine, but only positive or neutral ones.
At the end of the third day and again three months later, participants were once again asked to rate each event on vividness, level of anxiety, emotional intensity, etc., and completed questionnaires to assess changes in depression, anxiety, worry, affect, and wellbeing, key facets of mental health.
Dr Mamat said: "It was very clear that those events that participants practiced suppressing were less vivid, less emotionally anxiety-inducing, than the other events and that overall, participants improved in terms of their mental health. But we saw the biggest effect among those participants who were given practice at suppressing fearful, rather than neutral, thoughts."
Following training -- both immediately and after three months -- participants reported that suppressed events were less vivid and less fearful. They also found themselves thinking about these events less.
Suppressing thoughts even improved mental health amongst participants with likely post-traumatic stress disorder. Among participants with post-traumatic stress who suppressed negative thoughts, their negative mental health indices scores fell on average by 16% (compared to a 5% fall for similar participants suppressing neutral events), whereas positive mental health indices scores increased by almost 10% (compared to a 1% fall in the second group).
In general, people with worse mental health symptoms at the outset of the study improved more after suppression training, but only if they suppressed their fears. This finding directly contradicts the notion that suppression is a maladaptive coping process.
Suppressing negative thoughts did not lead to a 'rebound', where a participant recalled these events more vividly. Only one person out of 120 showed higher detail recall for suppressed items post-training, and just six of the 61 participants that suppressed fears reported increased vividness for No-Imagine items post-training, but this was in line with the baseline rate of vividness increases that occurred for events that were not suppressed at all.
"What we found runs counter to the accepted narrative," said Professor Anderson. "Although more work will be needed to confirm the findings, it seems like it is possible and could even be potentially beneficial to actively suppress our fearful thoughts."
Although participants were not asked to continue practising the technique, many of them chose to do so spontaneously. When Dr Mamat contacted the participants after three months, she found that the benefits in terms of reduced levels of depression and negative emotions, continued for all participants, but were most pronounced among those participants who continued to use the technique in their daily lives.
"The follow up was my favourite time of my entire PhD, because every day was just joyful," she said. "I didn't have a single participant who told me 'Oh, I feel bad' or 'This was useless'. I didn't prompt them or ask 'Did you find this helpful?' They were just automatically telling me how helpful they found it."
One participant was so impressed by the technique that she taught her daughter and her own mother how to do it. Another reported how she had moved home just prior to COVID-19 and so felt very isolated during the pandemic.
"She said this study had come exactly at the time she needed it because she was having all these negative thoughts, all these worries and anxiety about the future, and this really, really helped her," said Dr Mamat. "My heart literally just melted, I could feel goosebumps all over me. I said to her 'If everyone else hated this experiment, I would not care because of how much this benefited you!'."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920152308.htm
Young children do better at school if their dads read and play with them
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/University of Leeds
Fathers can give their children an educational advantage at primary school by reading, drawing and playing with them, according to a newly published report.
Research led by the University of Leeds has found that children do better at primary school if their fathers regularly spend time with them on interactive engagement activities like reading, playing, telling stories, drawing and singing.
Analysing primary school test scores for five- and seven-year-olds, the researchers used a representative sample of nearly 5,000 mother-father households in England from the Millenium Cohort Study -- which collected data on children born 2000-02 as they grew up.
According to the research, dads who regularly drew, played and read with their three-year-olds helped their children do better at school by age five. Dads being involved at age five also helped improve scores in seven-year-olds' Key Stage Assessments.
Dr Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, who led the research, said: "Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child's life, is critical."
Dads' involvement impacted positively on their children's school achievement regardless of the child's gender, ethnicity, age in the school year and household income, according to the report.
There were different effects when mums and dads took part in the same activities -- the data showed that mums had more of an impact on young children's emotional and social behaviours than educational achievement.
The researchers recommend that dads carve out as much time as they can to engage in interactive activities with their children each week. For busy, working dads, even just ten minutes a day could potentially have educational benefits.
They also recommend that schools and early years education providers routinely take both parents' contact details (where possible) and develop strategies to engage fathers -- and that Ofsted take explicit account of father-engagement in inspections.
The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and led by Dr Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, in collaboration with co-author Dr Jeremy Davies, Head of Impact and Communications at the Fatherhood Institute, and co-investigators at the University of Manchester.
Dr Jeremy Davies, Head of Impact and Communications at the Fatherhood Institute, who co-authored the report, said: "Our analysis has shown that fathers have an important, direct impact on their children's learning. We should be recognising this and actively finding ways to support dads to play their part, rather than engaging only with mothers, or taking a gender-neutral approach."
Andrew Gwynne MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood, said: "This study shows that even small changes in what fathers do, and in how schools and early years settings engage with parents, can have a lasting impact on children's learning. It's absolutely crucial that fathers aren't treated as an afterthought."
Report: https://business.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/314/piece-report
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920111234.htm
Most people rely on parents for material support into adulthood
September 20, 2023
Science Daily/North Carolina State University
A new study finds that only a third of adults in the United States did not rely on their parents for some form of material support between their late teens and early 40s. The study highlights the extent to which parents and adult children rely on each other for financial assistance or a place to live well into the children's adult years, challenging popular conventions and expectations about adulthood.
"This work really challenges the notion that complete independence is a necessary marker of adulthood," says Anna Manzoni, co-author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. "Instead, we see a pattern of interdependency that changes over time and appears to be influenced by race and educational background."
For the study, researchers analyzed data on 14,675 U.S. adults who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, focusing on data collected from study participants between the ages of 18 and 43.
Specifically, the researchers looked at various ways in which these adults exchanged financial and residential support with their parents over time, as well as various social and demographic factors -- such as gender, race/ethnicity, and parents' educational background.
"We found that there is no single pathway that most people take regarding independence from their parents," Manzoni says. "Instead, people tend to fall into one of six different categories."
The researchers call these categories "pathways of intergenerational support":
• Complete Independence (comprising 33.44% of survey respondents) refers to children who become financially and residentially independent in their late teens or early 20s and retain that independence;
• Independent with Transitional Support (20.14%) is similar to the "Complete Independence" group, but received some financial support from parents in their 20s or early 30s;
• Gradual Independence (15.07%) refers to children who lived at home into their 20s and received significant financial support, with that support declining very gradually over time;
• High to Low Support (14.63%) refers to children who lived at home into their 20s and received significant financial support, but that support declined rapidly as the children grow older;
• Extended Interdependence (10.22%) refers to children who lived at home for extended periods of time and who not only received financial support from parents but also provided financial support to parents; and
• Boomerang (6.51%) refers to children who moved out in their late teens or early 20s, moved back in with parents in their mid-20s to early 30s, and then moved out again in their 30s or early 40s.
"We also found that these pathways are not evenly distributed across the population," Manzoni says. "For example, Complete Independence is least likely among Black families and most likely among white families, while Extended Interdependence is least likely among White families and most likely among Hispanic families.
"Educational background also appears to be a significant factor. For example, people whose parents completed less than a high school education are far more likely to experience the Extended Interdependence pathway, while people whose parents completed a graduate or professional degree are significantly more likely to experience the Complete Independence pathway.
"Ultimately, the work drives home the extent to which access to resources and structural restraints -- such as access to education -- influence which pathways to independence people have access to. It also makes clear that we need to reevaluate how we think of independence and adulthood, given that only a third of study participants were able to take the Complete Independence pathway that is often presented as being the norm."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920111144.htm
At which age we are at our happiest?
September 19, 2023
Science Daily/Ruhr-University Bochum
At what age are people at their happiest? This seemingly simple question has been studied extensively over the past decades, but a definitive answer has long been elusive. A research team has now shed light on the question in a comprehensive meta-analytic review. The findings show that the respondents' life satisfaction decreased between the ages of 9 and 16, then increased slightly until the age of 70, and then decreased once again until the age of 96.
An evaluation of over 400 samples shows how subjective well-being develops over the course of a lifespan.
More than 460,000 participants
In their study, the researchers examined trends in subjective well-being over the lifespan based on 443 samples from longitudinal studies with a total of 460,902 participants. "We focused on changes in three central components of subjective well-being," explains Professor Susanne Bücker, who initially worked on the study in Bochum and has since moved to Cologne: "Life satisfaction, positive emotional states and negative emotional states."
The findings show that the life satisfaction decreased between the ages of 9 and 16, then increased slightly until the age of 70, and then decreased once again until the age of 96. Positive emotional states showed a general decline from age 9 to age 94, while negative emotional states fluctuated slightly between ages 9 and 22, then declined until age 60 and then increased once again. The authors identified greater median changes in positive and negative emotional states than in life satisfaction.
Positive trend over a wide period of life
"Overall, the study indicated a positive trend over a wide period of life, if we look at life satisfaction and negative emotional states," as Susanne Bücker sums up the results. The researchers attribute the slight decline in life satisfaction between the ages of 9 and 16 to, for example, changes to the body and to the social life that take place during puberty. Satisfaction rises again from young adulthood onwards. Positive feelings tend to decrease from childhood to late adulthood. In very late adulthood, all components of subjective well-being tended to worsen rather than improve. "This could be related to the fact that in very old people, physical performance decreases, health often deteriorates, and social contacts diminish; not least because their peers pass away," speculates the researcher.
The study highlights the need to consider and promote subjective well-being with its various components across the lifespan, as the authors of the study conclude. Their findings could provide significant guidance for the development of intervention programmes, especially those aimed at maintaining or improving subjective well-being late in life.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230919155016.htm
Job strain combined with high efforts and low reward doubled men's heart disease risk
These psychosocial stressors are each associated with heart disease risk and the combination was especially dangerous to men, finds study in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes journal
September 19, 2023
Science Daily/American Heart Association
Men who say they have stressful jobs and also feel they exert high efforts for low reward had double the risk of heart disease compared to men free of those stressors, according to new research published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a peer-reviewed American Heart Association journal.
"Considering the significant amount of time people spend at work, understanding the relationship between work stressors and cardiovascular health is crucial for public health and workforce well-being," said lead study author Mathilde Lavigne-Robichaud, R.D., M.S., doctoral candidate, Population Health and Optimal Health Practices Research Unit, CHU de Quebec-University Laval Research Center in Quebec, Canada. "Our study highlights the pressing need to proactively address stressful working conditions, to create healthier work environments that benefit employees and employers."
Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. according to American Heart Association statistics. In 2020, nearly 383,000 Americans died of heart disease.
Research has shown that two psychosocial stressors -- job strain and effort-reward imbalance at work -- may increase heart disease risk. However, few studies have examined the combined effect.
"Job strain refers to work environments where employees face a combination of high job demands and low control over their work. High demands can include a heavy workload, tight deadlines and numerous responsibilities, while low control means the employee has little say in decision-making and how they perform their tasks," Lavigne-Robichaud explained.
"Effort-reward imbalance occurs when employees invest high effort into their work, but they perceive the rewards they receive in return -- such as salary, recognition or job security -- as insufficient or unequal to the effort. For instance, if you're always going above and beyond, but you feel like you're not getting the credit or rewards you deserve, that's called effort-reward imbalance."
The study found:
• Men who said they experienced either job strain or effort-reward imbalance had a 49% increase in risk of heart disease compared to men who didn't report those stressors.
• Men reporting both job strain and effort-reward imbalance were at twice the risk of heart disease compared with men who did not say they were experiencing the combined stressors.
• The impact of psychosocial stress at work on women's heart health was inconclusive.
• In men, the impact of job strain and effort-reward imbalance combined was similar to the magnitude of the impact of obesity on the risk of coronary heart disease.
"Our results suggest that interventions aimed at reducing stressors from the work environment could be particularly effective for men and could also have positive implications for women, as these stress factors are associated with other prevalent health issues such as depression," Lavigne-Robichaud said. "The study's inability to establish a direct link between psychosocial job stressors and coronary heart disease in women signals the need for further investigation into the complex interplay of various stressors and women's heart health."
Interventions might include different approaches, such as providing support resources, promoting work-life balance, enhancing communication and empowering employees to have more control over their work, she said.
"The U.S. workforce is among the most stressed in the world, and these workplace stressors can be as harmful to health as obesity and secondhand smoke," Eduardo J. Sanchez, M.D., M.P.H., FAHA, FAAFP, chief medical officer for prevention at the American Heart Association. "This study adds to the growing body of evidence that the workplace should be prioritized as a vehicle for advancing cardiovascular health for all. The American Heart Association remains committed to and engaged in providing employers with the resources and information they need to actively support the health of their employees and communities through science-backed changes to policy and culture."
Study background and details:
• Researchers studied nearly 6,500 white-collar workers, average age about 45 years old, without heart disease, and followed them for 18 years, from 2000 to 2018.
• They studied health and workplace survey information for 3,118 men and 3,347 women in a wide range of jobs in Quebec. The surveys included employees working in senior management, professional, technical and office workers roles. Education levels ranged from no high school diploma to university degree.
• Researchers measured job strain and effort-reward imbalance with results from proven questionnaires and retrieved heart disease information using established health databases.
One study limitation is that the researchers studied men and women in white-collar jobs primarily in Quebec, Canada, and the results might not fully represent the diversity of the American working population. However, the study findings may be relevant to white-collar workers in the United States and other high-income countries with similar job structures, according to Lavigne-Robichaud.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230919155014.htm