In the first analysis of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws for the group of synthetic chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Additives and Contaminants, found.

PFAS are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant to water, heat and stains. They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment.

They break down very slowly over time and can persist over thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as “forever chemicals.”

They have been associated with a number of health problems, including lower response to vaccines, lower birth weight, thyroid disease, increased cholesterol levels, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer.

“Straws made from plant-based materials, such as paper and bamboo, are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly than those made from plastic,” says researcher Dr Thimo Groffen, an environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, who is involved in this study.

“However, the presence of PFAS in these straws means that’s not necessarily true.”

A growing number of countries, including the UK and Belgium, have banned sale of single-use plastic products, including drinking straws, and plant-based versions have become popular alternatives.

A recent study found PFAS in plant-based drinking straws in the US. Dr Groffen and colleagues wanted to find out if the same was true of those on sale in Belgium.

To explore this further, the research team purchased 39 different brands of drinking straw made from five materials — paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic.

The straws, which were mainly obtained from shops, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, then underwent two rounds of testing for PFAS.

The majority of the brands (27/39, 69%) contained PFAS, with 18 different PFAS detected in total.

The paper straws were most likely to contain PFAS, with the chemicals detected in 18/20 (90%) of the brands tested. PFAS were also detected in 4/5 (80%) brands of bamboo straw, 3/4 (75%) of the plastic straw brands and 2/5 (40%) brands of glass straw. They were not detected in any of the five types of steel straw tested.

The most commonly found PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been banned globally since 2020.

Also detected were trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS), “ultra-short chain” PFAS which are highly water soluble and so might leach out of straws into drinks.

The PFAS concentrations were low and, bearing in mind that most people tend to only use straws occasionally, pose a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.

“Small amounts of PFAS, while not harmful in themselves, can add to the chemical load already present in the body,” says Dr Groffen.

It isn’t known whether the PFAS were added to the straws by the manufacturers for waterproofing or whether were the result of contamination. Potential sources of contamination include the soil the plant-based materials were grown in and the water used in the manufacturing process.

However, the presence of the chemicals in almost every brand of paper straw means it is likely that it was, in some cases, being used as a water-repellent coating, say the researchers.

The study’s other limitations include not looking at whether the PFAS would leach out of the straws into liquids.

Dr Groffen concludes: “The presence of PFAS in paper and bamboo straws shows they are not necessarily biodegradable.

“We did not detect any PFAS in stainless steel straws, so I would advise consumers to use this type of straw — or just avoid using straws at all.”

Reports of plastics pollution contaminating all parts of the Earth and in all living things has accelerated a shift to alternative materials. The coffee latte you take with you from the kiosk on the corner now comes in paper cups, sometimes even with paper lids. But that cup can also harm living organisms if it ends up in nature. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg show this in a study testing the effect of disposable cups made of different materials on the larvae of the butterfly mosquito.

“We left paper cups and plastic cups in wet sediment and water for a few weeks and followed how the leached chemicals affected the larvae. All of the mugs negatively affected the growth of mosquito larvae,” says Bethanie Carney Almroth, Professor of Environmental Science at the Department of Biology and Environmental Science at the University of Gothenburg.

A thin plastic film lines paper cups

Paper is neither fat nor water resistant, so paper that is used in food packaging material needs to be treated with a surface coating. This plastic protects the paper from the coffee in your hand. Nowadays, the plastic film is often made of polylactide, PLA, a type of bioplastic. Bioplastics are produced from renewable resources (PLA is commonly produced from corn, cassava or sugarcane) rather than fossil-fuels as is the case for 99% of plastics on the market today. PLA is often regarded as biodegradable, meaning that it can break down faster than oil-based plastics under the right conditions, but the researchers’ study shows that it can still be toxic.

“Bioplastics does not break down effectively when they end up in the environment, in water. There may be a risk that the plastic remains in nature and resulting microplastics can be ingested by animals and humans, just as other plastics do. Bioplastics contain at least as many chemicals as conventional plastic,” says Bethanie Carney Almroth.

Potential health hazard of food packaging

“Some chemicals in plastics are known to be toxic, others we lack knowledge about. Paper packaging also presents a potential health hazard compared to other materials, and it’s becoming more common. We are exposed to the plastics and the associated chemicals via contact with food.”

Bethanie Carney Almroth and her research colleagues report their results in a scientific article in Environmental Pollution. In the article, they reason about the major shifts that are required to mitigate the continuing damage to the environment and threat to our health caused by the plastics pollution crisis.

“When disposable products arrived on the market after the Second World War, large campaigns were conducted to teach people to throw the products away, it was unnatural to us! Now we need to shift back and move away from disposable life styles. It is better if you bring your own mug when buying take away coffee. Or by all means, take a few minutes, sit down and drink your coffee from a porcelain mug,” says Bethanie Carney Almroth.

Binding agreements to reduce plastic use

Right now, work is underway through the UN where the world’s countries are negotiating a binding agreement to end the spread of plastics in society and nature. Professor Carney Almroth is a member of a council of scientists, SCEPT — Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which contributes scientific evidence to the negotiations. The council calls for a rapid phasing out of unnecessary and problematic plastics, as well as vigilance to avoid replacing one bad product with another.

“We at SCEPT are calling for transparency requirements within the plastics industry that forces a clear reporting of what chemicals all products contain, much like in the pharmaceutical industry. But the main goal of our work is to minimize plastic production,” says Bethanie Carney Almroth.

Analysis of the health records of more than 70,000 patients newly diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF) showed that mortality from related cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases more than halved over the 16-year study period.

AF is associated with an increased risk of stroke.

The research showed that dementia now accounts for more deaths within one year of an AF diagnosis than acute stroke, heart attack and heart failure combined, demonstrating the need for more research into the link between dementia and AF.

The study team believe the lower mortality rate can be attributed to better detection and treatment for AF, which, according to the British Heart Foundation, affects more than 1.5 million people in the UK.

But the findings reveal significant health inequalities, showing that the most socioeconomically deprived patients were 22% more likely to die from AF-related conditions than people from the most affluent group.

Additionally, patients are now more likely to be diagnosed with coexisting health conditions such as diabetes, cancer and chronic kidney disease, which have greater health implications for them than AF.

Senior author Chris Gale, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Honorary Consultant Cardiologist, and Co-Director of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics at the University of Leeds said: “Atrial fibrillation is a common and often undetected heart rhythm disorder that increases the risk of stroke. Advances in health care have now reduced the chance of having a stroke related to AF, and from dying as result of it, if AF is detected and treated.

“However, our study also reveals important disparities in care associated with deprivation and the co-existence of other illnesses. Proactively diagnosing and treating AF in these groups will likely further reduce death and disability from cardiovascular disease. Equally, for many people, AF is a marker of co-existent disease — identifying and treating these additional disease states could further improve outcome for people with AF.”

The team is now calling for randomised clinical trials to determine whether the earlier identification and treatment of AF and associated co-morbidities could effectively improve cardiovascular health.

Data analysis

The research examined data from electronic health records of 72,412 patients from a representative sample of the UK population, who had been diagnosed with AF between 2001 and 2017. The team assessed the health outcomes in patients in the first year after their AF diagnosis, and analysed changes in cause-specific mortality and hospitalisation over time and by sex, age, socioeconomic status and diagnostic care setting.

The average patient was aged 75.6. Some 48.2% of patients were women, and 61.8% had three or more comorbidities.

Over the study period, coexisting health concerns became more common, with almost 70% of newly diagnosed AF patients also having at least three comorbidities.

Mortality rates at one year post diagnosis were investigated, as well as the number of hospital admissions with an overnight stay within 1 year of diagnosis.

Over the study period, 20% of patients died from any cause within a year of being diagnosed with AF — but this declined over time.

However the researchers found that deaths due to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events (strokes) more than halved over the study period. Cardiovascular deaths declined from 7.3% in 2001/02 to 3% in 2016/2017, while cerebrovascular deaths declined from 2.6% to 1.1%.

The researchers say that the lower rates of cardiovascular deaths among AF patients in the study may be partly explained by improvements in strategies to prevent heart disease, and by changes in clinical practice that could lead to people being diagnosed earlier.

By contrast, there was an increase in mortality rates from mental and neurological disorders, from 2.5% in 2001/02 to 10.1% in 2016/17. Of these deaths, 87.2% were caused by dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The research team say that while this could be partly due to greater awareness

of dementia, it also strengthens the evidence that the relationship between AF and dementia is a pressing research priority.

Other findings include:

• Hospitalisation is common within a year of AF diagnosis, with almost two further admissions experienced by patients

• Hospitalisation rates have increased by 17% due to increasing admissions from non-cardio/cerebrovascular causes, especially in older patients

• Hospitalisation for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular causes have decreased by 38% and 28%, respectively, but for non-cardio/cerebrovascular causes hospitalisation has increased by 42%

• Older people have experienced the greatest rise in hospitalisation, with those aged 80 years or more experiencing a 39% rise in hospitalisation within a year of AF diagnosis

Health inequalities

Professor Gale said: “Patients diagnosed in hospital or from the most deprived group had worse outcomes compared with those diagnosed in the community or from the most affluent group.

“Although increased burden of comorbidities might partly explain the increased frequency of death in these groups, the persisting difference after full adjustment for these factors suggests other social and health-care factors might also contribute.

“Our previous research showed that the most deprived individuals in the UK experience an AF diagnosis at a younger age than the most affluent individuals. This discrepancy in outcomes warrants targeted strategies and healthcare resource planning.”

Lead author Jianhua Wu, Professor of Biostatistics and Health Data Science in the Queen Mary University of London’s Wolfson Institute of Population Health said: “AF is one of the most prevalent heart conditions in the UK and as such it is crucial that we understand whether or not the current management of the condition is successful. Our findings provide vital evidence about the effectiveness of treatments for this condition, while also showing that other conditions are becoming more prevalent among AF patients — potentially providing avenues for exploration of more targeted treatments.”

“Code Interpreter is a good thing and it’s helpful in an educational setting as it makes coding in the STEM fields more accessible to students,” said Gangqing “Michael” Hu, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology at the WVU School of Medicine and director of the Bioinformatics Core. “However, it doesn’t have the features you need for bioinformatics. These are technical issues that can be overcome. Future developments of Code Interpreter are likely to extend its use to many fields such as bioinformatics, finance and economics.”

Since its release in December 2022, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has gained the attention of businesses, educators and the general public. However, it didn’t quite live up to the needs of people working in biomedical research including bioinformatics — the field where computer science meets biology — who eagerly awaited OpenAI’s Code Interpreter plugin hoping it would fill the gaps.

Hu and his team put Code Interpreter to the test on a variety of tasks to evaluate its features. Their findings, published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering, show the plugin breaks down some of the barriers, but not all of them.

For example, people without a science background will have an ease of access to coding, or computer programming, with Code Interpreter. Hu said it’s also cost-effective and sparks a curiosity for students to explore data analysis and boosts their interest in learning. He points out, though, users will need to understand how to interpret data and recognize whether the results are accurate and know how to interact with the chatbot.

Bioinformaticians rely on precise coding, computer software programs and internet access to store, analyze and interpret biological data such as DNA and human genome used for advancements in modern medicine.

Despite the need for improvements specific to bioinformatics, Hu said, Code Interpreter helps users determine whether a response is accurate or if it is a fictitious answer presented with confidence, known as a hallucination.

“People know that ChatGPT can do many impressive things, but it is not good at providing a citation or reference to support its answer. If it is asked about the source to support the claim of a response, it may start to make up references,” Hu explained. “Code Interpreter provides a solution to minimize hallucinations. For questions that can be addressed through coding, the code itself serves as the source or citation. That is a significant step forward.”

Working with Hu were Lei Wang, a postdoctoral fellow in the WVU Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology; Xijin Ge, of South Dakota State University; and Li Liu, of Arizona State University.

The team found positive results in Code Interpreter’s ability to convert data to charts and graphs.

Suggestions for upgrades to Code Interpreter include internet access for downloading genome data, installation of software specific to bioinformatics, expansion of storage capacity and support for additional programming languages. In addition, researchers found a need for privacy and security applications to comply with regulations such as HIPAA.

In testing data analysis, they discovered several limitations. The plugin supports only one computer program, Python, and few of its software packages are dedicated to bioinformatics. In addition, it doesn’t allow access to internet data and lacks the capacity to work with large files.

“It allows for 100 megabytes or so, but the files we’re handling are at a gigabyte level,” Hu said. “Also, it doesn’t support parallel processing needed for large datasets which results in slow performance.”

Hu said that while he anticipates more upgrades for Code Interpreter, he plans to help students learn more about the advantages of the current plugin.

“In my class next spring, I plan to introduce this plugin to help students learn about data visualization,” Hu said. “AI is a fast-moving field. I hope by that time OpenAI may overcome some of the limitations so it can be used for a broad range of bioinformatics coding.”

Earlier this year, Hu led another study to prepare high school and college students to harness the power of ChatGPT by learning more about coding. The process employed OPTIMAL — Optimization of Prompts Through Iterative Mentoring and Assessment — to improve communication with a chatbot.

In the long run, Hu said he will continue to monitor and test new AI programming and features.

“As new products develop, I’ll just keep going,” Hu said. “There are certainly many other innovative uses awaiting to be discovered.”