Cure for HIV moves closer as scientists find potential genetic switch

Washington DC, Apr 17: In recent research, scientists have linked the emotional, social and psychiatric problems in children and adolescents with higher levels of genetic vulnerability for adult depression. The study implies that the genetics passed from parents may be linked with psychiatric problems in children and adolescents and may also leading to depression in adults.

University of Queensland scientists made the finding while analysing the genetic data of more than 42,000 children and adolescents from seven cohorts across Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

Professor Christel Middeldorp said that researchers have also found a link with a higher genetic vulnerability for insomnia, neuroticism and body mass index.

"By contrast, study participants with higher genetic scores for educational attainment and emotional well-being were found to have reduced childhood problems," Professor Middeldorp said.

"We calculated a person's level of genetic vulnerability by adding up the number of risk genes they had for a specific disorder or trait and then made adjustments based on the level of importance of each gene We found the relationship was mostly similar across ages," Middeldorp added.

The results indicate there are shared genetic factors that affect a range of psychiatric and related traits across a person's lifespan.

Middeldorp said that around 50 per cent of children and adolescents with psychiatric problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), continue to experience mental disorders as adults, and are at risk of disengaging with their school community among other social and emotional problems.

"Our findings are important as they suggest this continuity between childhood and adult traits is partly explained by genetic risk," the Professor said.

"Individuals at risk of being affected should be the focus of attention and targeted treatment," Middeldorp continued.

"Although the genetic vulnerability is not accurate enough at this stage to make individual predictions about how a person's symptoms will develop over time, it may become so in the future, in combination with other risk factors. And, this may support precision medicine by providing targeted treatments to children at the highest risk of persistent emotional and social problems," Middeldorp added.

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.

New York, May 19: Cigarette smoke spurs the lungs to make more of the receptor protein which the novel coronavirus uses to enter human cells, according to a study which suggests that quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection.

The findings, published in the journal Developmental Cell, may explain why smokers appear to be particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease.

"Our results provide a clue as to why smokers who develop COVID-19 tend to have poor clinical outcomes," said study senior author Jason Sheltzer, a cancer geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US.

"We found that smoking caused a significant increase in the expression of ACE2, the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells," Sheltzer said.

According to the scientists, quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection.

They said most individuals infected with the virus suffer only mild illness, if they experience any at all.

However, some require intensive care when the sometimes-fatal virus attacks, the researchers said.

In particular, they said three groups have been significantly more likely than others to develop severe illness -- men, the elderly, and smokers.

Turning to previously published data for possible explanations for these disparities, the scientists assessed if vulnerable groups share some key features related to the human proteins that the coronavirus relies on for infection.

First, they said, they focused on comparing gene activity in the lungs across different ages, between the sexes, and between smokers and nonsmokers.

The scientists said both mice that had been exposed to smoke in a laboratory, and humans who were current smokers had significant upregulation of ACE2.

According to Sheltzer, smokers produced 30-55 per cent more ACE2 than their non-smoking counterparts.

While the researchers found no evidence that age or sex impacts ACE2 levels in the lungs, they said the influence of smoke exposure was surprisingly strong.

However, they said, the change seemed to be temporary.

According to the data, the level of the receptors ACE2 in the lungs of people who had quit smoking was similar to that of non-smokers.

The study noted that the most prolific producers of ACE2 in the airways are mucus-producing cells called goblet cells.

Smoking is known to increase the prevalence of such cells, the scientists said.

"Goblet cells produce mucous to protect the respiratory tract from inhaled irritants. Thus, the increased expression of ACE2 in smokers' lungs could be a byproduct of smoking-induced secretory cell hyperplasia," Sheltzer explained.

However, Sheltzer said other studies on the effects of cigarette smoke have shown mixed results.

"Cigarette smoke contains hundreds of different chemicals. It's possible that certain ingredients like nicotine have a different effect than whole smoke does," he said.

The researchers cautioned that the actual ACE2 protein may be regulated in ways not addressed in the current study.

"One could imagine that having more cells that express ACE2 could make it easier for SARS-CoV-2 to spread in someone's lungs, but there is still a lot more we need to explore," Sheltzer said.