Public Health Archives - Page 4 of 52 - Dr Amin Azhari

Air pollution linked to depressive symptoms in adolescents

Exposure to ozone from air pollution has been linked to an increase in depressive symptoms for adolescents over time, even in neighborhoods that meet air quality standards, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Ozone is a gas that is produced when various pollutants from motor vehicle exhaust, power plants and other sources react to sunlight. Higher ozone levels have been linked to various physical ailments, including asthma, respiratory viruses and premature death from respiratory causes. This study is the first to link ozone levels to the development of depression symptoms symptoms in adolescents over time. Those symptoms may include persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, difficulty with concentration, sleep disturbances and thoughts about suicide.

Adolescents who lived in areas with relatively higher ozone levels showed significant increases in depressive symptoms over time, even though the ozone levels in their neighborhoods didn’t exceed state or national air quality standards. The findings weren’t affected by the participants’ sex, age, race, household income, parental education or socioeconomic characteristics of their neighborhoods. The research was published online in Developmental Psychology.

Release date: 14 March 2022
Source: American Psychological Association

Neurologic disorders, Public Health, Sport Medicine

Physical activity may protect your brain as you age

Even just a few more steps a day benefits cognitive function

We all know we should exercise and eat healthy. But doing that isn’t just good for maintaining your figure as you age.

New research from the University of Georgia shows that physical activity could help protect your cognitive abilities as you age. And it doesn’t have to be intense exercise to make an impact.

Exercise improves brain function
Published in Sport Sciences for Health, the study followed 51 older adults, tracking their physical activity and fitness measurements. The participants performed tests specifically designed to measure cognitive functioning and underwent MRIs to assess brain functioning.

They also wore a device that measured the intensity of the wearer’s physical activity, number of steps taken and distance covered. The researchers assessed fitness through a six-minute walking test, during which participants walked as quickly as they could to cover the most distance possible within the time limit.

Release date: 08 March 2022
Source: University of Georgia

Public Health

Common houseplants can improve air quality indoors

Ordinary potted house plants can potentially make a significant contribution to reducing air pollution in homes and offices, according to new research.

Ordinary potted house plants can potentially make a significant contribution to reducing air pollution in homes and offices, according to new research led by the University of Birmingham and in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).

During a series of experiments monitoring common houseplants exposed to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – a common pollutant – researchers calculated that in some conditions, the plants could be able to reduce NO2 by as much as 20 per cent. The results are published in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health.

The researchers tested three houseplants commonly found in UK homes, easy to maintain and not overly expensive to buy. They included Peace lily (Spathiphyllum wallisii), Corn plant (Dracaena fragrans) and fern arum (Zamioculcas zamiifolia).

Each plant was put, by itself, into a test chamber containing levels of NO2 comparable to an office situated next to a busy road.

Over a period of one hour, the team calculated that all the plants, regardless of species, were able to remove around half the NO2 in the chamber. The performance of the plants was not dependent on the plants’ environment, for example, whether it was in light or dark conditions, and whether the soil was wet or dry.

Release date: 07 March 2022
Source: University of Birmingham

Neurologic disorders, Public Health

LEAD EXPOSURE IN LAST CENTURY SHRANK IQ SCORES OF HALF OF AMERICANS

In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being.

A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the United States.

The findings, from Aaron Reuben, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University, and colleagues at Florida State University, suggest that Americans born before 1996 may now be at greater risk for lead-related health problems, such as faster aging of the brain. Leaded gas for cars was banned in the U.S. in 1996, but the researchers say that anyone born before the end of that era, and especially those at the peak of its use in the 1960s and 1970s, had concerningly high lead exposures as children.

The team’s paper appeared the week of March 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead is neurotoxic and can erode brain cells after it enters the body. As such, there is no safe level of exposure at any point in life, health experts say. Young children are especially vulnerable to lead’s ability to impair brain development and lower cognitive ability. Unfortunately, no matter what age, our brains are ill-equipped for keeping it at bay.

Release date: 07 March 2022
Source: Duke University

Neurologic disorders, Public Health

One alcoholic drink a day linked with reduced brain size

The research, using a dataset of more than 36,000 adults, revealed that going from one to two drinks a day was associated with changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Heavier drinking was linked with an even greater toll.

The science on heavy drinking and the brain is clear: The two don’t have a healthy relationship. People who drink heavily have alterations in brain structure and size that are associated with cognitive impairments.

But according to a new study, alcohol consumption even at levels most would consider modest—a few beers or glasses of wine a week—may also carry risks to the brain. An analysis of data from more than 36,000 adults, led by a team from the University of Pennsylvania, found that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption was associated with reductions in overall brain volume.

The link grew stronger the greater the level of alcohol consumption, the researchers showed. As an example, in 50-year-olds, as average drinking among individuals increases from one alcohol unit (about half a beer) a day to two units (a pint of beer or a glass of wine) there are associated changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Going from two to three alcohol units at the same age was like aging three and a half years. The team reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

Release date: 04 March 2022
Source: University of Pennsylvania

Neurologic disorders, Public Health

Higher education and language skills may help ward off dementia

New research has found that people with mild cognitive impairment may not inevitably develop dementia and, in fact, having higher education and advanced language skills more than doubles their chances of returning to normal.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo, may reassure those with mild cognitive impairment as it contradicts a common assumption that the condition is simply an early stage of dementia. People with mild cognitive impairment show signs of cognitive decline, but not enough to prevent them from performing typical daily tasks. They have been considered at higher risk of progressing to the more severe cognitive decline seen in dementia.

The study also found that language skills, whether reflected in high grades in English in school or in strong writing that was grammatically complex and full of ideas, were also protective.

The researchers discovered that almost one-third of 472 women diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment reverted to normal cognition at least once over an average of eight-and-a-half years following their diagnosis, with more than 80 per cent of them never developing dementia.

Almost another third of the total number progressed to dementia without ever reverting to normal cognition, while three per cent stayed in the mild cognitive impairment stage, and 36 per cent died. None of the participants reverted from dementia to mild cognitive impairment.

The researchers also highlighted that reverse transitions are much more common than progressing to dementia in relatively younger individuals who didn’t carry a certain genetic risk factor and had high levels of education and language skills.

Release date: 03 March 2022
Source: University of Waterloo

Public Health

Lower Oxidative Stress in Children Who Live and Study Near Green Spaces

The association between green space and oxidative stress was not found to be related to the frequency of children’s physical activity.
A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation, has analysed, for the first time, the relationship between exposure to different green spaces and oxidative stress in children. The study concluded that greater exposure to vegetation is associated with lower levels of oxidative stress and that this association is observed regardless of the children’s physical activity.
Oxygen is essential for numerous biochemical reactions that keep us alive, but its oxidation process generates harmful reactive substances that the body cannot always neutralise quickly or which cause damage that the body is unable to repair. This results in what is known as oxidative stress, which causes ageing or even illness.
To date, various studies have shown that having green spaces in the vicinity of one’s home has a positive effect on health, especially because greenness improves mental health and encourages physical exercise, thereby reducing the risk of overweight or obesity. But less attention has been paid to the direct effects of vegetation on biological processes, such as inflammation and oxidative stress. This is particularly important for understanding the role that green spaces can play in respiratory and allergic diseases.

Study Analysed Over 300 Italian Children

In order to determine whether green spaces might be associated with lower levels of oxidative stress in children, and also whether physical activity plays a role in this possible association, the researchers analysed 323 healthy children aged 8-11 years from five primary schools in Asti, a small city in north-western Italy.

Parents completed a questionnaire on how often their children engaged in physical activity. Oxidative stress was quantified in urine by measuring the concentration of the compound isoprostane. Residential and school greenness were defined according to the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and vegetated portion was also estimated. Multisite exposures were obtained accounting for NDVI around the children’s homes and schools, weighted for the time spent in each location.

Giulia Squillacioti, Anne-Elie Carsin, Valeria Bellisario, Roberto Bono, Judith Garcia-Aymerich. Multisite greenness exposure and oxidative stress in children. The potential mediating role of physical activity. Environmental Research, Volume 209, 2022, 112857, ISSN 0013-9351.

Release date: 01 March 2022
Source: Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)

Covid-19, Public Health

COVID in a cat

Researchers performed whole-genome sequencing of a house cat infected with coronavirus last year. The sequence, the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, was nearly identical to those circulating in humans at the time.

Since being identified in people in 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has gone on to infect a wide range of animal species, wild and domestic. Concerns abound that these species jumps could lead to novel mutations and even harmful new variants.

Writing in the journal Viruses, the scientists identified a domestic house cat, treated at Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital, that was infected with the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 subsequent to an exposure from its owner. The full genome sequence of the virus was a close match to viral sequences circulating in people in the Philadelphia region at the time.

Release date: 01 March 2022
Source: University of Pennsylvania

Covid-19, Public Health

Bark of Neem Tree May Protect Against Coronavirus Variants

Extract from the bark of the Neem tree may help treat and reduce the spread of coronavirus, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

The study, reported recently in the journal Virology, shows that components of Neem bark may target a wide range of viral proteins, suggesting its potential as an antiviral agent against emerging variants of coronaviruses (including SARS-CoV-2).

The Neem tree, indigenous to India, has been used for thousands of years for its anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial and antiviral properties. The bark extract has helped treat malaria, stomach and intestinal ulcers, skin diseases and many other diseases.

Release date: 28 February 2022
Source: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Public Health, Sport Medicine

PHYSICAL FITNESS LINKED TO LOWER RISK OF ALZHEIMERS DISEASE

“One exciting finding of this study is that as people’s fitness improved, their risk of Alzheimer’s disease decreased—it was not an all-or-nothing proposition,” said study author Edward Zamrini, MD, of the Washington VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “So people can work toward making incremental changes and improvements in their physical fitness and hopefully that will be associated with a related decrease in their risk of Alzheimer’s years later.”

The study involved 649,605 military veterans in the Veterans Health Administration database with an average age of 61 who were followed for an average of nine years. They did not have Alzheimer’s disease at the start of the study.

Researchers determined participants’ cardiorespiratory fitness. Cardiorespiratory fitness is a measure of how well your body transports oxygen to your muscles, and how well your muscles are able to absorb oxygen during exercise.

The participants were divided into five groups, from least fit to most fit. Fitness levels were determined by how well participants did on a treadmill test. This test measures exercise capacity, the highest amount of physical exertion a person can sustain. For people who are middle-aged and older, the highest level of fitness can be achieved by walking briskly most days of the week, for two and a half hours or more per week.

The group with the lowest level of fitness developed Alzheimer’s at a rate of 9.5 cases per 1,000 person-years, compared to 6.4 cases per 1,000 person-years for the most fit group. Person-years take into account the number of people in a study as well as the amount of time spent in the study. The case rate decreased as the level of fitness increased, with a rate of 8.5 for the second least fit group, 7.4 for the middle group and 7.2 for the second most fit group.

When researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect risk of Alzheimer’s disease, they found that the people in the most fit group were 33% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those in the least fit group. The second most fit group was 26% less likely to develop the disease, while the middle group was 20% less likely and those in the second least fit group were 13% less likely to develop the disease than those in the least fit group.

Release date: 27 February 2022
Source: American Academy of Neurology