Emission from diesel engines linked to premature death

17-year-old Pratyusha Jha, wakes up scrambling for newspapers these days to look for any news about her pending board exams and is anxious about what the future has in store for her.

Similar concerns are shared by Bipin Kumar, a class 12 student, who says the announcement of board exams from July 1 to 15 brought limited clarity as the larger questions remain unanswered.

The COVID-19 lockdown, came with a different set of concerns for class 12 students, whose board exams were postponed midway following the outbreak of coronavirus, putting on hold their future plans as well.

"Everyday I have been looking for news about the exams and about entrance exam dates. I feel unfortunate that this happened during the year I was supposed to take the big college leap. I don't want my future decisions to be shaped by this very year as what I opt to study now will remain with me lifelong," Pratyusha told PTI.

Ending some uncertainty for students, HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' on Friday announced that the pending class 10 and 12 board exams will be held from July 1 to 15. While class 12 exams will be conducted across the country, the class 10 exams are only pending in North East Delhi where they were affected due to the law and order situation.

"The anxiety doesn't end here, there is no date sheet yet. What will be the modalities of exams, how will we reach centres, what protocols have to be followed, there is no clarity on that. My friends and I keep calling our school teachers and also the CBSE helpline to seek some clarity," Bipin Kumar said.

Vaibhav Sharma, a class 12 student in Gurgaon said, "There is no clarity yet. I wanted to apply for DU, but now that the exams are taking place in July when will the results be declared, when will cut offs be announced. If I don't get a good college here, will I be able to travel to different cities for admission, nothing is known yet."

Similarly, for the students in northeast Delhi, the wait for the exams has become a "test of patience" as they were postponed first in the area due to law and order situation, and later due to the coronavirus outbreak, resulting in a four-month-long wait for the exams.

"It has become an endless wait and now I don't feel like studying too. Right from childhood, we are taught that board exams are too crucial and have to be focussed at least two years in advance. But now, it is a different picture altogether," Rani Kumari, a resident of Chandbagh said.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed and exams postponed since March 16 when the Centre announced a countrywide classroom shutdown as one of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Later, a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, which has now been extended till May 17.

The board was not able to conduct class 10 and 12 exams on eight examination days due to the coronavirus outbreak. Further, due to the law and order situation in North East Delhi, the board was not able to conduct exams on four examination days, while a very small number of students from and around this district were not able to appear in exams on six days.

The board had last month announced that it will only conduct pending exams in 29 subjects which are crucial for promotion and admission to higher educational institutions. The modalities of assessment for the subjects for which exams are not being conducted will be announced soon by the board.

The schedule has been decided in order to ensure that the board exams are completed before competitive examinations such as engineering entrance JEE-Mains, which is scheduled from July 18-23, and medical entrance exam NEET, which is scheduled on July 26.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued guidelines to universities that new academic session for freshers will begin from September while for the existing students from August.

Leading physicians are celebrating a small dose of good news that arrived Tuesday about dexamethasone, a cheap and widely used steroid shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients, but also cautioning against releasing study results by press release during a global health emergency, like in the case of the latest dexamethasone study by University of Oxford.

"It will be great news if dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, really does cut deaths by one-third in ventilated patients with COVID19, but after all the retractions and walk backs, it is unacceptable to tout study results by press release without releasing the paper", Atul Gawande, surgeon and CEO of Haven Healthcare, tweeted.

"Bottom line is, good news," Dr. Fauci, America's foremost infectious diseases expert told a US newswire on Tuesday, soon after the dexamethasone results were announced in the UK.

Fauci, who has long championed the therapeutics-first view said that dexamethasone is a "significant improvement" in the available therapeutic options currently available.

On Medical Twitter and Facebook, doctors broadly agree that dexamethasone use aligns well with the way COVID19 attacks the body's immune system. Fauci said the results in the Oxford study make "perfect sense" in that context.

"We should see the number of people who actually survive go up, if the study holds up," virologist and epidemiologist Dr. Joseph Fair told a television network.

Global coronavirus cases crossed 8 million on Tuesday. In the US, Texas and Florida are facing a new wave of cases after lifting lockdown orders earlier than medical experts recommended. Amidst the relentless graph upwards, the dexamethasone study results injected hope for better survival rates among those most seriously ill.

World Health Organization chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan welcomed the results from the randomised control trial.

Dr Eugene Gu, Founder and CEO of CoolQuit tweeted that he is "genuinely impressed" with the UK dexamethasone trial. This may be a "game changer", he wrote.

"There's no conflict of interest as dexamethasone is a generic steroid. The mechanism of action makes sense because steroids can reduce cytokine storms and overactive immune systems that makes COVID-19 so deadly. The number needed to treat is 8 ventilated patients which is great."

The Oxford study found that dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35 percent in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20 percent in those only needing supplemental oxygen. Dexamethasone was one of 5 drugs studied in a large clinical trial in the United Kingdom named RECOVERY, short for Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy.

Peter Horby, chief investigator of the University of Oxford clinical trial, said dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19. Details of the study have not been released. The trial organisers said they made their announcement via a news release because of "the public health importance of these results." According to Horby's public comments, there was a lot of initial resistance to studying steroids.

During the study, 2,104 patients were randomly selected to be given 6 milligrams of dexamethasone once a day (either by mouth or by intravenous injection) for 10 days. That group was compared with 4,321 patients who received the usual care alone.

Researchers estimated that dexamethasone would prevent one death for every eight patients treated while on ventilators and one for every 25 patients on extra oxygen alone.

UK experts have called the study results a breakthrough in the fight against the virus. The researchers have promised they would publish the results soon.

Drinking coffee may help reduce the risk of certain digestive disorders, including gallstone disease and pancreatitis, a new study has suggested.

The study from the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) also highlighted other beneficial effects that coffee consumption may have on the process of digestion, including supporting gut microflora and promoting gut motility.

"Data indicates benefits against common digestive complaints such as constipation, as well as a potential reduction in the risk of more serious conditions like chronic liver diseases," said study author Carlo La Vecchia from the University of Milan in Italy.

Gallstone disease is a common digestive disorder, caused by the accumulation of gallstones in the gallbladder or bile duct, which affects approximately 10-15 per cent of the adult population.

While the mechanism by which coffee may protect against gallstone disease is not yet known, it has been observed that the risk for the condition declines with increasing daily consumption of coffee, the researchers said.

Caffeine is thought to play a role in these associations, as the same effect is not observed with decaffeinated coffee.

A common question among consumers and focus area for research is whether coffee is associated with heartburn or gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD).

While a small number of studies have suggested an association between coffee drinking and GORD, the majority of studies reviewed suggest that coffee is not a major trigger of these conditions.

The report also reviewed a growing area of health and nutrition research, namely: the effect of coffee on the gut microflora (microorganism populations).

Recent studies suggest that populations of the beneficial gut bacteria Bifidobacterium spp, increase after drinking coffee.

The findings showed the dietary fibre and polyphenols found in coffee, support the healthy growth of microflora populations.

Additional research findings highlighted that coffee consumption is thought to stimulate digestion by encouraging the release of gastric acid, bile and pancreatic secretions.

Coffee is one of the most widely researched components of the diet, and its effect on digestion remains a growing area of research, the researchers noted.