Stop! Study shows salty snacks reduce thirst, increase hunger

The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the US revved up people's immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday -- as the shots are poised to begin key final testing.

No matter how you slice this, this is good news, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press.

The experimental vaccine, developed by Fauci's colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will start its most important step around July 27: A 30,000-person study to prove if the shots really are strong enough to protect against the coronavirus.

But Tuesday, researchers reported anxiously awaited findings from the first 45 volunteers who rolled up their sleeves back in March. Sure enough, the vaccine provided a hoped-for immune boost.

Those early volunteers developed what are called neutralizing antibodies in their bloodstream -- molecules key to blocking infection -- at levels comparable to those found in people who survived COVID-19, the research team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

This is an essential building block that is needed to move forward with the trials that could actually determine whether the vaccine does protect against infection, said Dr. Lisa Jackson of the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle, who led the study.

There's no guarantee but the government hopes to have results around the end of the year -- record-setting speed for developing a vaccine.

The vaccine requires two doses, a month apart.

There were no serious side effects. But more than half the study participants reported flu-like reactions to the shots that aren't uncommon with other vaccines -- fatigue, headache, chills, fever and pain at the injection site. For three participants given the highest dose, those reactions were more severe; that dose isn't being pursued.

Some of those reactions are similar to coronavirus symptoms but they're temporary, lasting about a day and occur right after vaccination, researchers noted.

Small price to pay for protection against COVID, said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a vaccine expert who wasn't involved with the study.

He called the early results a good first step, and is optimistic that final testing could deliver answers about whether it's really safe and effective by the beginning of next year.

It would be wonderful. But that assumes everything's working right on schedule, Schaffner cautioned.

Moderna's share price jumped nearly 15 percent in trading after US markets closed. Shares of the company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have nearly quadrupled this year.

Tuesday's results only included younger adults. The first-step testing later was expanded to include dozens of older adults, the age group most at risk from COVID-19.

Those results aren't public yet but regulators are evaluating them. Fauci said final testing will include older adults, as well as people with chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus and Black and Latino populations likewise affected.

Nearly two dozen possible COVID-19 vaccines are in various stages of testing around the world. Candidates from China and Britain's Oxford University also are entering final testing stages.

The 30,000-person study will mark the world's largest study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine so far. And the NIH-developed shot isn't the only one set for such massive U.S. testing, crucial to spot rare side effects. The government plans similar large studies of the Oxford candidate and another by Johnson & Johnson; separately, Pfizer Inc. is planning its own huge study.

Already, people can start signing up to volunteer for the different studies.

People think this is a race for one winner. Me, I'm cheering every one of them on, said Fauci, who directs NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

We need multiple vaccines. We need vaccines for the world, not only for our own country. Around the world, governments are investing in stockpiles of hundreds of millions of doses of the different candidates, in hopes of speedily starting inoculations if any are proven to work.

Toronto, Feb 4: People who text while walking face a higher risk of an accident than those listening to music or talking on the phone, a study has found.

The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, found that smartphone texting is linked to compromised pedestrian safety, with higher rates of 'near misses', and failure to look left and right before crossing a road.

Researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada call for a more thorough approach to exploring the impact of distracted pedestrian behaviours on crash risk.

Worldwide, around 270,000 pedestrians die every year, accounting for around a fifth of all road traffic deaths, according to the researchers.

'Pedestrian distraction' has become a recognised safety issue as more and more people use their smartphones or hand held devices while walking on the pavement and crossing roads, they said.

The researchers looked for published evidence to gauge the potential impact on road safety of hand-held or hands-free device activities.

This included talking on the phone, text messaging, browsing and listening to music.

From among 33 relevant studies, they pooled the data from 14 -- involving 872 people -- and systematically reviewed the data from another eight.

The analysis showed that listening to music wasn't associated with any heightened risk of potentially harmful pedestrian behaviours.

Talking on the phone was associated with a small increase in the time taken to start crossing the road, and slightly more missed opportunities to cross the road safely.

The researchers found that text messaging emerged as the potentially most harmful behaviour.

It was associated with significantly lower rates of looking left and right before or while crossing the road, and with moderately increased rates of collisions, and close calls with other pedestrians or vehicles, they said.

Texting also affected the time taken to cross a road, and missed opportunities to cross safely, but to a lesser extent, according to the researchers.

The review of the eight observational studies revealed that the percentage of pedestrians who were distracted ranged from 12 to 45 per cent, they said.

It also found behaviours were influenced by several factors, including gender, time of day, solo or group crossing, and walking speed.

The researchers acknowledge "a variety of study quality issues" which limit the generalisability of the findings.

"Given the ubiquity of smartphones, social media, apps, digital video and streaming music, which has infiltrated most aspects of daily life, distracted walking and street cross will be a road safety issue for the foreseeable future," the researchers noted.

"And as signage and public awareness campaigns don't seem to alter pedestrian behaviour, establishing the relationship between distracted walking behaviour and crash risk is an essential research need," they said.

Feb 22: The subjective feeling of well-being experienced by many people with the practice of meditation is associated with specific changes in the brain, according to a study which may lead to better clinical recommendations of the practice.

The study, published in the journal Brain and Cognition, examined the effects of the technique known as Transcendental Meditation (TM), which consists of the silent repetition of a meaningless sound.

In the study, the researchers from the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca in Italy, enrolled 34 healthy young volunteers and divided them in two groups.

They said the first group practised TM 40 minutes per day in two sessions of 20 minutes each, one in the morning and the other in the evening.

The second group, the scientists said, did not change its daily routine.

Using questionnaires, they also measured the anxiety and stress levels of all the participants at the beginning of the study, as well as the subjects' ability to manage stressful situations.

According to the researchers, the participants were also subjected to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan, in order to measure the organ's activity at rest, and changes in the excitation among different cerebral areas.

They repeated the tests after three months, at the end of the study.

According to the study, the levels of anxiety and stress perceived by the subjects who followed the meditation program were significantly reduced in comparison with those of the volunteers who did not practice TM.

"Magnetic resonance imaging also shows that the reduction of anxiety levels is associated with specific changes in the connectivity between different cerebral areas, such as precuneus, left parietal lobe and insula, which all have an important role in the modulation of emotions and inner states," said study co-author Giulia Avvenuti from the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca.

"In the control group, instead, none of these changes was observed. The fact that Transcendental Meditation has measurable effects on the 'dialogue' between brain structures involved in the modulation of affective states opens new perspectives for the understanding of brain-mind relationships," said Pietro Pietrini, IMT School's Director, and co-author of the study.

"It also extends the results of recent research suggesting that drugs therapies and psychotherapy leverage on the same biological mechanism," Pietrini said.

According to the researchers, even a few months of practice of TM can have positive effects which can be correlated with measurable changes in the brain.