When young adults see their annual income plummet, more than their bank accounts may suffer: New research suggests their brains may eventually pay the price.

The study found that people in their 20s and 30s who experienced “income volatility” generally performed worse on tests of thinking and memory skills once they hit middle age.

Many influences ‘upstream’

Compared with their peers with more stable incomes, their scores on one set of tests were almost four points worse, on average.

Experts stressed that the study does not prove that income fluctuations are to blame. And it’s not clear what the ultimate impact on brain health, including dementia risk, might be.

“What this shows is that income volatility in young adulthood is related to how the brain works in middle age,” said Dr Joel Salinas, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston. “That gives signals to other researchers that this is something to look at in future studies.”

Salinas wrote an editorial published with the findings in the online edition of Neurology.

A number of studies have found that lifestyle and environment – from exercise and diet to chronic stress – may help determine how well the brain ages.

But there are many influences “upstream” of those factors, Salinas said. Things like childhood experiences, education, job opportunities, income and race can all affect whether people face chronic stress, or have a healthy diet, or exercise regularly.

Short-term strategies

Research has already uncovered links between lower income and problems with memory and thinking skills later in life. The new study focused on income instability, in part, because it’s a problem that’s becoming more common, according to lead researcher Leslie Grasset.

More than one-third of US households said their income dropped by at least 25% between 2014 and 2015.

Plus, there are relatively straightforward ways to address those income fluctuations, said Grasset, a post-doctoral associate at the INSERM Research Center, in Bordeaux, France.

“Unemployment and wage insurance have been implemented as short-term strategies to offset the burdens of income shocks,” she said.

Programmes like food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit, Grasset added, might help families deal with sudden income drops, too.

For the study, Grasset’s team analysed data on nearly 3 300 young U.S adults who entered a heart-health study in 1990. Twenty years later, the participants completed standard tests of memory, information processing and executive function (the brain’s ability to focus, regulate behaviour, get organised and achieve goals).

Overall, 399 participants had at least two income drops of 25% or more during the study period. Those people typically performed worse on the tests of executive function and processing speed (but not memory), versus participants with no significant income drops.

A key limitation

Why? In theory, highly educated people might enjoy more stable incomes and better brain function. But Grasset said the differences were not explained by education levels.

Nor were the findings solely due to physical health conditions, like high blood pressure, or lifestyle factors such as exercise and smoking.

A key limitation of the study, though, is timing. The researchers do not know whether the poorer mental acuity actually came first – before any income instability.

“‘Reverse causation’ cannot be ruled out as an explanation for our results,” Grasset said.

Future studies can try to address that question, Salinas said. They could look at repeated measures of mental abilities, and whether they change after periods of income loss.

“Maybe we’ll learn that it’s income volatility, more than total income, that’s important to brain health,” Salinas noted.

Why would income stability matter? Chronic stress could be one way, according to Grasset’s team. So could disruptions in health care – including any medications a person may be taking to manage high blood pressure or other chronic conditions that can ultimately affect brain health.

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Female firefighters are exposed to chemicals that may be linked with breast and other types of cancer, researchers say.

Compared to women working in offices, female firefighters in San Francisco are exposed to higher levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These chemicals are used in firefighting foam and uniforms, grease- and water-resistant coatings and in fabrics, furniture and food packaging.

PFAS have been linked to a number of cancers and are known to interfere with breast development as well as immune and endocrine function, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

It’s one of the first published from the Women Firefighter Biomonitoring Collaborative, a long-term investigation into chemical exposure among female firefighters.

Potential breast carcinogens

“Women firefighters actually raised concern about what they have perceived as elevated rates of breast cancer among their cohort in San Francisco,” said study lead author Jessica Trowbridge, a doctoral student in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

“As a team, we decided to conduct an exposure study looking at chemicals that are potential breast carcinogens,” Trowbridge said in a university news release.

Studies looking at PFAS-exposure cancer rates among firefighters have primarily focused on men. Assessing the specific risks faced by female firefighters is crucial in ensuring that they have the necessary protections, both for cancer prevention and for compensation if they get sick, the researchers explained.

“This is the first study, to our knowledge, that’s been done on women firefighters,” said study senior author Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley.

A variety of toxic compounds

Researchers collected blood samples from 86 female firefighters and 84 women who work in offices in downtown San Francisco. They also interviewed each woman about her workplace activities, eating habits and consumer product use.

Of the 12 types of PFAS chemicals tested, seven were found in detectable amounts in most participants’ blood samples, and four were found at detectable amounts in all participants’ samples.

Three of the seven – PFHxS, PFUnDA and PFNA – were detected at significantly higher amounts in firefighters’ blood than in the office workers’ blood.

In a companion study published online this month in the same journal, the researchers described a new way to screen blood samples quickly for a variety of toxic compounds. The new method could help identify other potentially harmful chemicals that female firefighters might be exposed to, they said.

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Young men who believe that “real men don’t cry” may be more prone to suicide, a new study suggests.

It has long been known that men are more likely than women to end their own lives: In the United States, the suicide death rate among men is about 3.5 times that of women, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The statistics raise the question of whether traditional norms about masculinity could play some role, said lead researcher Daniel Coleman.

On the face of it, he explained, it makes sense that those expectations of “manly” men – which include denying emotions, not reaching out for help, and aggressiveness – could contribute to suicide risk.

‘High traditional masculinity’

But it’s also a challenging subject to study, said Coleman, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Services at Fordham University in New York City.

To start to dig into it, his team used data from a health study that began tracking over 20 700 US teenagers back in 1995. By 2014, 22 of them had died by suicide – all but one of whom were men.

The researchers found that young men who’d scored in the “high traditional masculinity” range were 2.4 times more likely to die by suicide than other men.

That measure was based on traits like “not crying,” a resistance to being “emotional” or “moody”, staying physically fit, and “risk-taking”.

Why would men who strive for those norms be at greater risk of suicide? The findings suggest there could be an indirect “web” of influences, Coleman said.

Men who were high in traditional masculinity were also more likely in their youth to have ever used a weapon, been expelled from school or in serious fights, or run away from home. They were also more likely than other men to have a family member who’d died by suicide. And all of those factors, in turn, were related to a higher risk of suicide.

‘It’s OK to reach out and accept help’

That suggests beliefs about masculine norms could be part of what underlies those other risk factors for suicide. So if those beliefs could be addressed, Coleman said, it might be possible to sway a number of the things that drive men’s suicide risk.

For example, he noted, it’s common for men to have a generally “rigid coping style” – where they react to situations like a job loss or relationship loss in an unhealthy way, instead of seeking help.

They need to know “it’s OK to reach out and accept help”, Coleman said. “Don’t get into that short-sighted place where you start to pull away from connections to others.”

However, only an association was seen rather than a cause-and-effect link. And Coleman stressed that his findings are based on a small number of suicide deaths, and more studies are needed to back up the results.

The findings, published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, come amid a rising suicide rate among Americans overall. A 2019 study, for example, found a 41% increase in the US suicide rate between 1999 and 2016.

Suicide deaths reveal only part of the problem, however. A recent study found that over just one year – 2017 to 2018 – the number of Americans coming to the emergency room for help with suicidal thoughts shot up by more than 25%.

A difficult question

“The current suicide rate in this country is very high,” said Dr Ken Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in Arlington, Virginia.

He said it’s thought that men have far higher death rates than women because they tend to use more lethal means when they attempt suicide.

“This study starts to get at the question, ‘Are certain men more prone than others to attempt suicide by violent means?'” said Duckworth, who wasn’t part of the research.

He called the findings “interesting”, and praised the researchers for tackling a difficult question to study. But, Duckworth added, it’s not clear how, on an individual basis, mental health professionals could use the information in helping male patients.

On the other hand, he said, the findings do point to broad issues to be addressed.

“How are we enculturating our sons about what it is to be a man?” Duckworth said.

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A number of US states have ordered shutdowns in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Fresh donated eggs appear to be better for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) than frozen ones, a new study suggests.

Donor eggs provide the best chance of success for many women undergoing IVF, according to the authors.

But it wasn’t clear whether using fresh or frozen donor eggs in IVF improves the chances of success, so a team from the University of Colorado and Duke University analysed nearly 30 000 IVF cycles using donor eggs over three years.

Fresh eggs had a much higher likelihood of implantation and birth than frozen eggs, the study found. Compared to frozen eggs, fresh eggs were associated with a 25% better chance of live birth and a 10% higher odds for good outcomes.

Best chance for health

Fresh eggs were also associated with a 37% higher chance of multiple births.

The authors said that supports the increasing practice of transferring a single embryo during IVF to help avoid multiple births and the complications they often cause to mother and child, according to the authors of the study. The findings were published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

“We can now confidently say that choosing to utilize fresh donor eggs along with transferring a single embryo instead of multiple embryos will provide the best chances for a healthy mother and a healthy baby,” senior author Dr Alex Polotsky said in a University of Colorado news release. He’s chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at the university’s School of Medicine in Aurora.

Between 1% and 2% of all births in the United States occur through IVF, and more than 24 000 US women use donated eggs each year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Nagoya University scientists have developed a one-step fabrication process that improves the ability of nanocarbons to remove toxic heavy metal ions from water. The findings, published in the journal ACS Applied Nano Materials, could aid efforts to improve universal access to clean water.

A previously unknown and significant source of carbon just discovered in the Arctic has scientists both marveling at a once overlooked contributor to local coastal ecosystems and concerned about what it may mean in an era of climate change.

Work is proceeding apace on a “universal” flu vaccine capable of protecting humans from all forms of influenza, researchers report.

A single dose of a synthetic universal flu vaccine called FLU-v appears capable of providing safe long-term protection across a broad spectrum of influenza viruses, a new clinical trial has shown.

FLU-v outperformed a placebo in elevating people’s immune response, as measured by a number of different biomarkers related to the immune system, researchers found.

The experimental vaccine now awaits a phase three trial that will test how well it actually protects against the seasonal flu, said lead researcher Olga Pleguezuelos, chief scientific officer at SEEKacure, a London-based pharmaceutical development firm.

Frequent mutation

FLU-v works by targeting parts of the influenza virus that have been shown to evolve the least over time, Pleguezuelos said.

Influenza has sickened as many as 49 million Americans this season and caused up to 620 000 hospitalisations and 52 000 deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Current annual vaccines trigger the production of antibodies that target proteins found on the surface of the flu virus, Pleguezuelos said.

Unfortunately, the virus regions targeted by those vaccine-produced antibodies tend to mutate frequently, requiring the development of new vaccines to keep up with the ever-changing flu bug.

FLU-v targets proteins that don’t vary widely between different strains, reducing the ability of influenza to mask itself from the immune system by evolving into a different form, Pleguezuelos explained.

Researchers used computer algorithms to detect which protein regions in flu were likely to induce a strong immune response, and then analysed how frequently those regions mutate.

Injection site reactions

To strengthen that protection, FLU-v also trains the immune system to target multiple flu proteins that typically aren’t under evolutionary pressure to mutate, researchers added.

“FLU-v contains four different components against four different regions of the flu virus, so if one changed, three will still provide efficacy,” Pleguezuelos said.

In the latest clinical trial, the researchers found the vaccine promoted antibody responses and immune system changes in 175 healthy adults assigned to receive either the flu shot or a placebo.

Side effects were limited mainly to injection site reactions, the researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

“In order for the vaccine to reach the market, a phase three trial must be carried out to test efficacy and safety in large number of people,” Pleguezuelos said. “This type of study is complex and very costly and we are currently in discussions with regulatory bodies to determine the requirements of such study, and searching for investment and funding.”

The results from the latest clinical trial are “very encouraging”, said Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

A major advance

“It illustrates that a candidate universal flu vaccine may be possible and sufficiently immunogenic. It will be important to follow this study up with a phase three study that looks at efficacy of preventing influenza versus just looking at immunogenicity,” said Adalja, who was not part of the study.

“A universal flu vaccine would be a major advance and would change the dynamics between humans and the influenza virus in a very positive way,” Adalja concluded.

The methods used to develop FLU-v also are being utilised to develop potential vaccines against HIV, mosquito-borne pathogens, hepatitis B and C, and rotavirus, Pleguezuelos said.

The same sort of platform also could be used to develop a coronavirus vaccine, she added.

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Discuss all possible scenarios with loved ones – even uncomfortable ones, palliative care doctors say.