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Health24.com | Do boys born to obese mothers have ‘worse motor skills and lower IQ scores’?
How much a woman weighs when she’s expecting can affect her health and that of her unborn baby. And now researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and the University of Texas (UT) at Austin found a “significant” link between maternal obesity during pregnancy and foetal development – particularly IQ and motor skills. However, this link was only found in boys.
The study analysed 368 mothers and their children during pregnancy, and looked at the children at ages three and seven years. Children at age three years were measured for motor skills, and it was discovered that maternal obesity during pregnancy was strongly associated with lower motor skills.
Motor skills that were tested included dexterity, coordination, movement and speed, and the results indicated that girls had higher scores compared to boys: an average of 102.3, compared to 97.2, and boys whose mothers were obese during pregnancy had a lower score by around eight points compared to boys whose mothers maintained a healthy weight during pregnancy.
At the age of seven, researchers found that the boys who were born to mothers who were overweight or obese during pregnancy had scores of five or more points lower on a full-scale IQ test, compared to boys whose mothers had kept a normal weight. The findings were published in BMC Pediatrics.
‘Not meant to shame mothers’
Co-author of the study Elizabeth Widen, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at UT, said the purpose of the study was not to shame mothers.
“These findings aren’t meant to shame or scare anyone. We are just beginning to understand some of these interactions between mothers’ weight and the health of their babies,” she said in the article.
However, researchers of the study also pointed out that it’s early research and that the mechanisms behind the findings are not clear. The research team advised women who are overweight during pregnancy to consume a well-balanced diet that consists of plenty of fruits, vegetables, fish oils and appropriate supplements.
Not the first study
Although there is previous research suggesting that a baby’s cognition is connected to what the mother eats, the mothers in this study were not asked about their diets.
However, past studies have found that boys appear to be more vulnerable than girls while developing in the womb. A 2010 study notes that boys grow faster than girls in the womb and are therefore at greater risk of becoming undernourished, and that “foetal undernutrition leads to small size at birth and cardiovascular disorders, including hypertension, in later life”.
Another 2013 study published in Pediatric Research found that boys are 14% more likely to be born prematurely than girls.
Underweight and obesity during pregnancy: the risks
Being both underweight and overweight or obese can pose risks to your pregnancy. While overweight during pregnancy is associated with several pregnancy and childbirth complications, such as high blood pressure and preeclampsia, and an increase in the risk of birth defects, being underweight is similarly dangerous.
Problems that could arise include the chance of preterm birth and giving birth to a low-birth-weight baby, who may develop health and behavioural problems that could last into childhood and adulthood.
Healthy nutrition during pregnancy
Factors such as a woman’s body weight; her nutrient intake (including folic acid, omega-3 fatty acids, iron and vitamin B12); exposure to toxins; smoking; drinking and excessive intake of caffeine can all have striking effects on the future of her baby’s health and mental development, dietitian Dr Ingrid van Heerden told Health24.
Van Heerden explained that there are certain steps one can take to ensure that thin women gain more weight, and obese women put on less weight during the nine months of their pregnancy. This will ensure that they and their babies have the best chance of future health.
This includes, among others, a sensible approach to physical activity, sufficient protein, appropriate daily energy intake, and the personalised dietary advice of dietitians. You can read more on factors that influence pregnancy outcomes here.
Image: iStock
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Health24.com | New breakthrough in cancer research promises better immune therapy
In 2017 we reported on an experimental immunotherapy cancer treatment which showed extraordinary results in clinical trials. This type of treatment is known as T-cell cancer therapy.
How exactly does T-cell cancer therapy work?
The field of immunotherapy aims to “supercharge” the body’s own immune system, better enabling it to fight cancer.
T-cells are white blood cells that form part of the immune system, detecting and attacking abnormal or foreign cells in the body.
In cancer patients, T-cells normally aren’t able to completely rid the body of cancer.
In T-cell therapy, immune cells are engineered to better recognise and fight cancer cells. Researchers extract these cells from blood and “edit” them with gene transfers to produce a potent receptor that can more effectively fight cancer. The cells are then placed back into the patient’s body
While this type of treatment was initially used in patients with an advanced form of leukaemia, a new breakthrough meant that T-cell therapy could be used for many other types of cancer.
What does the new research entail?
According to a news report, in 2020, researchers discovered a new immune cell receptor. This means that T-cell therapy as we know it can work much, much better and fight more cancers as it was only able to recognise a handful of cancers in the past.
This meant that, because of a T-cell receptor called human leukocyte antigen (HLA), the treatment had to be personalised for every single patient. This is the receptor that enables the cells to detect and fight the cancer.
Usually HLA varies from person to person, but that is where the new discovery could be a breakthrough.
The new study was led by scientists from Cardiff University in the UK who used the CRISPR-Cas9 screening to discover a new type of receptor called MR1. The full study can be found in the journal Nature Immunology.
These receptors do exactly what HLA does, but there is one big difference – the treatment doesn’t differ from person to person, resulting in a much better basis for T-cell therapy.
Too soon to tell, but prospect is exciting
There is, however, one caveat. The research is still very new and was conducted in a lab, which means that positive results first need to be achieved in clinical trials.
Experts remain optimistic and call this discovery an exciting new frontier.
“This research represents a new way of targeting cancer cells, which is really quite exciting, although much more research is needed to understand precisely how it works,” says research and policy director Alasdair Rankin from the blood cancer charity Bloodwise, who was not involved in the research
Image credit: iStock
East Kent hospitals: Baby death parents’ heartbreak over errors
At least seven babies have died since 2016 at one of the largest hospital groups in England, the BBC finds.
Here, there and everywhere: Large and giant viruses abound globally
While the microbes in a single drop of water could outnumber a small city’s population, the number of viruses in the same drop — the vast majority not harmful to humans — could be even larger. Viruses infect bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, and they range in particle and genome size from small, to large and even giant. The genomes of giant viruses are on the order of 100 times the size of what has typically been associated with viruses, while the genomes of large viruses may be only 10 times larger. And yet, while they are found everywhere, comparatively little is known about viruses, much less those considered large and giant.
In a recent study published in the journal Nature, a team led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) uncovered a broad diversity of large and giant viruses that belong to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) supergroup. The expansion of the diversity for large and giant viruses offered the researchers insights into how they might interact with their hosts, and how those interactions may in turn impact the host communities and their roles in carbon and other nutrient cycles.
“This is the first study to take a more global look at giant viruses by capturing genomes of uncultivated giant viruses from environmental sequences across the globe, then using these sequences to make inferences about the biogeographic distribution of these viruses in the various ecosystems, their diversity, their predicted metabolic features and putative hosts,” noted study senior author Tanja Woyke, who heads JGI’s Microbial Program.
The team mined more than 8,500 publicly available metagenome datasets generated from sampling sites around the world, including data from several DOE-mission relevant proposals through JGI’s Community Science Program. Proposals from researchers at Concordia University (Canada), University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Georgia Institute of Technology focused on microbial communities from freshwater ecosystems, including, respectively, the northern Lakes of Canada, the Laurentian Great Lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Lanier were of particular interest.
Sifting Out and Reconstructing Virus Genomes
Much of what is known about the NCLDV group has come from viruses that have been co-cultivated with amoeba or with their hosts, though metagenomics is now making it possible to seek out and characterize uncultivated viruses. For instance, a 2018 study from a JGI-led team uncovered giant viruses in the soil for the first time. The current study applied a multi-step approach to mine, bin and then filter the data for the major capsid protein (MCP) to identify NCLDV viruses. JGI researchers previously applied this approach to uncover a novel group of giant viruses dubbed “Klosneuviruses.”
Previously known members of the viral lineages in the NCLDV group infect mainly protists and algae, and some of them have genomes in the megabase range. The study’s lead and co-corresponding author Frederik Schulz, a research scientist in Woyke’s group, used the MCP as a barcode to sift out virus fragments, reconstructing 2,074 genomes of large and giant viruses. More than 50,000 copies of the MCP were identified in the metagenomic data, two-thirds of which could be assigned to viral lineages, and predominantly in samples from marine (55%) and freshwater (40%) environments. As a result, the giant virus protein space grew from 123,000 to over 900,000 proteins, and virus diversity in this group expanded 10-fold from just 205 genomes, redefining the phylogenetic tree of giant viruses.
Metabolic Reprogramming a Common Strategy for Large and Giant Viruses
Another significant finding from the study was a common strategy employed by both large and giant viruses. Metabolic reprogramming, Schulz explained, makes the host function better under certain conditions, which then helps the virus to replicate faster and produce more progeny. This can provide short- and long-term impact on host metabolism in general, or on host populations impacted by adverse environmental conditions. Function prediction on the 2,000 new giant virus genomes led the team to uncover a prevalence of encoded functions that could boost host metabolism, such as genes that play roles in the uptake and transport of diverse substrates, and also photosynthesis genes including potential light-driven proton pumps. “We’re seeing that this is likely a common strategy among the large and giant viruses based on the predicted metabolism that’s encoded in the viral genomes,” he said. “It seems to be way more common than had been previously thought.”
Woyke noted that despite the number of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) reconstructed from this effort, the team was still unable to link 20,000 major capsid proteins of large and giant viruses to any known virus lineage. “Getting complete, near complete, or partial giant virus genomes reconstructed from environmental sequences is still challenging and even with this study we are likely to just scratch the surface of what’s out there. Beyond these 2,000 MAGs extracted from 8,000 metagenomes, there are still a lot of giant virus diversity that we’re missing in the various ecosystems. We can detect a lot more MCPs than we can extract MAGs, and they don’t fit in the genome tree of viral diversity — yet.”
“We expect this to change with not only new metagenome datasets becoming available but also complementary single-cell sorting and sequencing of viruses together with their unicellular hosts,” Schulz added.
What it’s like to live without a sense of smell
The smell of cut grass, freshly baked bread, childhood memories, lost loved ones, Christmas. What happens when it’s all gone?
A new study from the University of East Anglia reveals the huge range of emotional and practical impacts caused by a loss of smell.
It finds that almost every aspect of life is disrupted — from everyday concerns about personal hygiene to a loss of sexual intimacy and the break-down of personal relationships.
The researchers hope that their findings will help motivate clinicians to take smell problems more seriously, with better help and support offered to patients.
Prof Carl Philpott, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Smell disorders affect around five per cent of the population and cause people to lose their sense of smell, or change the way they perceive odours. Some people perceive smells that aren’t there at all.
“There are many causes — from infections and injury to neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and as a side effect of some medications.
“Most patients suffer a loss of flavour perception which can affect appetite and can be made even worse if distortions in their sense of smell also co-exist.
“Previous research has shown that people who have lost their sense of smell also report high rates of depression, anxiety, isolation and relationship difficulties.
“We wanted to find out more about how a loss of smell affects people.”
The researchers worked with the Smell and Taste clinic at the James Paget University Hospital, Gorleston-On-Sea. The clinic opened in 2010 and was the UK’s first clinic dedicated to taste and smell.
The study involved 71 participants aged between 31-80 who had written to the clinic about their experiences. It was carried out in collaboration with Fifth Sense, the charity for people affected by smell and taste disorders.
The research shows that sufferers experience wide-ranging impairments to their quality of life. These included a negative emotional impact, feelings of isolation, impaired relationships and daily functioning, impacts on physical health and the difficulty and financial burden of seeking help.
Prof Philpot said: “One really big problem was around hazard perception — not being able to smell food that had gone off, or not being able to smell gas or smoke. This had resulted in serious near misses for some.
“But smell is not just a life-saving sense — it is also life-enhancing.
“A large number of the participants no longer enjoyed eating, and some had lost appetite and weight. Others were eating more food with low nutritional value that was high in fat, salt and sugar — and had consequently gained weight.
“Participants had lost interest in preparing food and some said they were too embarrassed to serve dishes to family and friends which had an impact on their social lives.
“The inability to link smells to happy memories was also a problem. Bonfire night, Christmas smells, perfumes and people — all gone. Smells link us to people, places and emotional experiences. And people who have lost their sense of smell miss out on all those memories that smell can evoke.
“We found that personal hygiene was a big cause for anxiety and embarrassment, because the participants couldn’t smell themselves.
“Parents of young children couldn’t tell when their nappies needed changing, and this led to feelings of failure. One mother found it difficult bonding with her new baby because she couldn’t smell him.
“Many participants described a negative impact on relationships — ranging from not enjoying eating together to an impact on sexual relationships,” he added.
All of these problems led to diverse range of negative emotions including anger, anxiety, frustration, depression, isolation, loss of confidence, regret and sadness. And the problems were compounded by a lack of understanding about the disorder among clinicians.
Prof Philpott said: “The participants described a lot of negative and unhelpful interactions with healthcare professionals before coming to the James Paget Smell and Taste clinic. Those that did manage to get help and support were very pleased — even if nothing could be done about their condition, they were very grateful for advice and understanding.”
Duncan Boak, Founder and Chair of Fifth Sense, said: “Anosmia can have a huge impact on people’s quality of life in many ways, as this research demonstrates. An important part of Fifth Sense’s work is giving our beneficiaries a voice and the opportunity to change the way society understands smell and taste disorders, whether through volunteering or participating in research studies like this one. The results of this study will be a big help in our ongoing work to improve the lives of those affected by anosmia.”
Despite less ozone pollution, not all plants benefit
Breathe easy: Concentrations of ozone in the air have decreased over large parts of the country in the past several decades.
But not too easy.
Policies and new technologies have reduced emissions of precursor gases that lead to ozone air pollution, but despite those improvements, the amount of ozone that plants are taking in has not followed the same trend, according to Florida State University researchers. Their findings are published in the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.
“Past studies of plant damage from ozone have been overly optimistic about what the improving ozone air quality means for vegetation health,” said Christopher Holmes, the Werner A. and Shirley B. Baum assistant professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science.
Ozone is a gas made of three oxygen molecules. In the upper levels of the atmosphere, it is helpful for life on Earth because it keeps too much ultraviolet radiation from reaching the planet’s surface. But when it’s found at ground level, ozone is a pollutant that can damage the lungs. It’s also toxic for plants, and present-day levels of the pollutant have cut global grain yields by up to 15 percent, resulting in global losses of soybean, wheat, rice and maize valued at $10 billion to $25 billion annually.
The falling levels of ozone pollution are good news for human health, but FSU researchers wanted to know if plants were seeing benefits too. To answer this question, Allison Ronan, a former graduate student, and Jason Ducker, a postdoctoral researcher at FSU, worked with Holmes and another researcher to track the amount of ozone plants sucked up through pores on their leaves over 10 years at more than 30 test sites. They compared those trends to measurements of atmospheric ozone.
As they expected, the ozone concentrations in the air decreased at most of their study sites, but, surprisingly, the ozone uptake into plants at the sites didn’t necessarily go down at the same time. In fact, at many sites, atmospheric ozone concentrations fell while the ozone uptake into plants rose.
The different trends happen because plants can open and close the stomata pores on their leaves in response to weather, especially light, temperature, moisture, drought and other environmental conditions. If the stomata close, the plants cease taking up ozone, regardless of the concentration in the surrounding air. That means the ozone uptake into leaves doesn’t exactly track the amount of ozone in the air. The FSU scientists found that these environmental factors have more impact on the ozone dose the plants receive than the amount of ozone in the atmosphere.
“We know that weather and growing conditions vary a lot from year to year, and that variability in weather turns out to be more important for driving the trends and variability in ozone uptake into plants than the concentrations in the surrounding air,” Holmes said. “With decreasing ozone concentrations, we’re moving in the right direction, but the benefits for crops and vegetation may not be apparent until the air quality improvements have persisted longer.”
The FSU team identified the differing trends by using a dataset developed by Holmes’ research group. The dataset, called SynFlux, fuses measurements from air quality networks with data from field sites that monitor energy flows between vegetation and the atmosphere. It enabled the team to study ozone uptake trends at many more sites than has previously been possible.
Future studies of plant damage and accompanying economic losses need to avoid relying primarily on measures of ozone concentration in the atmosphere and look at ozone uptake instead, researchers said.
“With the SynFlux dataset that we have developed, we’ve now got the information to do that on a large scale at many sites across multiple continents,” Holmes said. “We’re just scratching the surface of what we can learn about air pollution impacts on vegetation using this tool.”
Jordan L. Schnell at Northwestern University contributed to this research. This work was supported by the Winchester Fund at Florida State University, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Florida State University. Original written by Bill Wellock. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Coronavirus: Wuhan to shut public transport over outbreak
Wuhan, a city of nearly nine million, is to temporarily shut public transport amid the outbreak.
Scientists discover ‘why stress turns hair white’
Acute stress damages stem cells that control hair and skin colour, a study suggests.
Health24.com | Brain waves offer insight into sleep struggles that accompany autism
Shallower-than-normal brain waves may play a role in serious sleep problems in children with autism, a new study suggests.
Previous research has shown that between 40% and 80% of children with autism have sleep issues, such as trouble falling asleep or waking frequently during the night and rising early. These problems can be significant challenges for the children and their families.
Shallow and superficial sleep
Identifying the causes of these sleep disturbances is an important step in finding ways to ease them, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
For the study, the researchers recorded the brain activity of 29 children with autism and 23 children without autism during an entire night’s sleep.
“For the first time, we found that children with more serious sleep issues showed brain activity that indicated more shallow and superficial sleep,” said study leader Ilan Dinstein, head of the National Autism Research Center of Israel.
Normal sleep begins with periods of deep sleep marked by high amplitude slow brain waves, the study authors explained in a university news release.
Promoting deeper sleep
But this study found that the brain waves of children with autism are, on average, 25% weaker (shallower) than those of children without autism.
That indicates that children with autism have trouble entering deep sleep, the most crucial aspect of achieving rest and rejuvenation, according to the report published recently in the journal Sleep.
The next step is to determine ways to promote deeper sleep and larger brain waves in children with autism, the researchers said.
This could include increased physical activity, behavioural therapy and drug treatment, such as medical cannabis, the team suggested.
Image credit: iStock
