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Antibiotic Resistance Can Emerge in Your Gut Even Without Antibiotics Use
The ability of human pathogens to develop resistance to antibiotics poses a serious threat to public health, but this is probably not news to you.
Even people without recent antibiotic use have higher antibiotic-resistant strains of pathogens in countries with high antibiotic use than healthy people in countries with comparatively lower antibiotic use.
Recent research from the Earlham Institute and Quadram Institute in the UK in conjunction with an international team of scientists suggests that any and all of the bacteria and other microorganisms that set up home in and on human bodies may be a source of antibiotic resistance.
And you might be surprised to learn that antibiotic use among the people around you appears to affect you directly.
“Even a healthy individual, who hasn’t taken antibiotics recently, is constantly bombarded by microbes from people or pets they interact with that can lead to resistance genes becoming embedded in their own microbiota,” says Earlham Institute and Quadram Institute microbial ecologist Chris Quince.
“If they exist in a population with a heavy burden of antibiotic consumption, that leads to more resistance genes in their microbiome.”
When antibiotics are used to fight infection, they have the unfortunate side effect of damaging the host microbiome and also increasing the prevalence of resistance genes being passed among different microbiome strains.
Studies on the topic of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) have concentrated mostly on the degree of resistance seen in the microbes that cause infections in humans. But microbes are ubiquitous in the human body, and the vast majority are harmless, and many are beneficial.
Due to the ease with which antibiotic-resistant genes are passed on, the use of antibiotics can have an effect on the entire microbiome, not just the pathogens that are supposed to be killed. The resistome – the collection of resistance genes found in commensal microbiota – is an important topic for research as a result.
“Our bodies are continually importing and exporting microbes and pathogen strains,” Quince explains.
“These strains are themselves passing genes back and forth, which means the challenge of AMR has to be tackled at both the micro and macro level.”
While the entire microbiome plays a part in health and disease, the gut microbiome is especially important with functions in digestion and the formation of the immune system. The digestive tract of a human is a veritable paradise for millions of different kinds of microbes, housing more of them than anywhere else in the body.
So the study authors speculated that microbes living in the gut could be a significant contributor to antimicrobial resistance.
The group analyzed 3,096 gut microbiome samples from people in 14 different countries to learn more about the effects of antimicrobials on the gut microbiome, with a focus on samples from people who weren’t likely to be taking antibiotics so as to get a ‘clean’ gene profile of the gut microbiome.
In order to learn how AMR genes are transferred from microbe to pathogen, researchers made careful comparisons between the data from the samples and the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database, a public health resource where resistance genes are documented.
Prior research already established that there were notable differences in antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) profiles across different countries with enough data available at the time.
And this time, by studying people who were not taking antibiotics, the team uncovered two distinct trends.
They found two clusters, or resistome profiles, of ARG types in the gut microbiome, and they found that median total ARG abundance and diversity varied based on the level of antibiotic consumption in that country.
“We found that, in countries where antibiotics are taken more regularly, their populations also have higher numbers of resistance genes in their gut microbiome,” says Quince.
The connections were remarkably strong. Thus, widespread antibiotic use may cause ARGs to become prevalent throughout the population, not just among those directly exposed, and these ARGs may spread throughout the microbiota.
The researchers suggest further studies could focus on investigating this in more countries and on public health strategies.
According to research, antimicrobial resistance kills thousands of Europeans every year and is only going to get worse in the future. Alarmingly, the third leading cause of death worldwide in 2019 was AMR, which was responsible for 4.95 million deaths.
“This study is so important because it can, for the first time, quantify the impact national antibiotic usage has on our commensal bacteria, as well as giving us insights into the common types of resistance we can expect to evolve,” says Earlham Institute and Quadram Institute microbial bioinformatician Falk Hildebrand.
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
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Pets Reduce Allergy Risk For Kids: Just Don’t Get a Hamster
Having pets in the house when kids are born could make them less likely to develop food allergies, especially if they happen to be a dog or a cat.
Hamsters, however, seem to be an unusual exception.
These findings are based on an analysis of data on 66,215 young children in Japan. Around 22 percent of those studied were exposed to pets through their mothers while still in the womb, which included both indoor and outdoor dogs, cats, hamsters, turtles, and birds.
The team of researchers from Fukushima Medical University in Japan think the study provides sufficient evidence to show a link between pet exposure and allergies – though the details vary depending on the type of animal and the type of food.
“The hygiene hypothesis suggests that pet exposure is effective in preventing allergic disease, and some studies have reported the beneficial effects of dog exposure during fetal development or early infancy on food allergy,” write the researchers in their published paper.
“However, the effects of exposure to pets other than dogs on the kinds of food allergies remains unaddressed.”
Kids exposed to indoor cats and dogs were significantly less likely to have allergies, the study found. That included allergies to eggs, milk, and nuts for dogs, and eggs, wheat, and soybean for cats. While the overall trend seems to be that having pets around is better, there are clearly variations.
The same couldn’t be said for dogs kept outdoors, for example. And those who had hamsters at home (0.9 percent of the children), were significantly more at risk of developing a nut allergy.
“Our findings suggest that exposure to dogs and cats might be beneficial against the development of certain food allergies, thereby alleviating concerns about pet keeping and reducing the burden of food allergies,” write the researchers.
The study isn’t enough to prove cause and effect, and it’s also worth bearing in mind that the findings are based on questionnaire responses, not observations. The researchers could only speculate on the nature of the relationship, suggesting pet exposure might change the mix of gut microbes in kids, or it might be something animals shed that boosts immunity.
It’s also been suggested that keeping pets at home could protect against atopic dermatitis, a skin condition that’s been linked with allergies. More data on bigger groups of people will be needed to find out for sure.
What we do know is that allergies are on the rise, now affecting more than 10 percent of people in developed countries. We need to better understand what’s behind the trend and how we might reverse it.
“Further studies using oral food challenges are required to more accurately assess the incident of food allergies,” write the researchers. “Nevertheless, the findings of this study shall aid in the design of future studies.”
The research has been published in PLOS ONE.
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Don’t Sit With Your Legs Crossed. An Anatomy Expert Explains Why.
Are you sitting comfortably? Just pause for a moment and without adjusting, notice your posture. What are your legs doing?
Are they crossed? And are you a right or left crosser? Some 62 percent of people cross right over left, 26 percent go the other way, and 12 percent have no preference.
There are typically two ways to sit in a chair and cross your legs, one is at the knee and the other is at the ankle. But as comfy as it may be to sit with your legs crossed, is it bad for your health and posture? Let’s take a look at the evidence.
For a start, research shows that sitting cross-legged can increase the misalignment of the hips, with one being higher than the other.
And it changes the speed at which blood moves through the blood vessels in the lower limbs, which can increase the risk of blood clots.
Most of the research suggests crossing at the knees is worse than the ankles. Indeed, sitting this way can cause an increase in your blood pressure due to the pooling of blood in the veins and your heart having to work against this.
And this can increase the risk of damage to your blood vessels, which is why when you get your blood pressure taken you should have your feet flat on the floor.
Effect on the body
The longer and more often you sit cross-legged, the more likely it is that you’ll have long-term changes in the muscle lengths and bone arrangements in your pelvis. And due to the way your skeleton is linked together, leg crossing can also cause misalignment of the spine and shoulders.
Your head position can potentially become out of alignment due to changes in the bones of the neck, as the spine compensates to keep your center of gravity above the pelvis.
Your neck can also be affected due to one side of the body being weaker than the other. The same imbalance can be seen in the muscles of the pelvis and lower back as a result of poor posture and stresses and strains caused by sitting cross-legged.
The pelvis may also become misaligned due to the prolonged stretching of the gluteal (bum) muscles on one side, meaning that they become weaker.
Sitting with the legs crossed for a long time increases the likelihood of scoliosis (abnormal alignment of the spine) and other deformities. It can also cause greater trochanteric pain syndrome, a common and painful condition that affects the outer side of the hip and thigh.
Research also shows that sitting with legs crossed can put the peroneal nerve, also known as the fibular nerve, in your lower leg at risk of compression and injury.
This typically manifests as a weakness when trying to lift the little-toe side of the foot as well as the more concerning foot drop – where the whole of the foot hangs down. Though in most cases, this is short-lived and returns to normal within a few minutes.
There’s also evidence that crossing the legs could affect sperm production. This is because the temperature of the testicles needs to be between 2 °C and 6 °C (3.6 °F and 10.8 °F) below standard body temperature.
Being seated increases the temperature of the testicles by 2 °C and crossing your legs can increase the temperature of the testes by as much as 3.5 °C. And studies suggest that an increase in scrotum or testicle temperature can reduce both sperm count and quality.
It’s also worth noting that due to differences in the anatomy of men and women it’s probably much easier for women to sit cross-legged – particularly because men have a reduced range of motion at the hip.
Legs and joints
But research does indicate that sitting with legs crossed can be beneficial for some people. One small study from 2016, for example, found that for people who have one leg longer than the other, sitting crossed-legged can help to adjust the height of the two sides of the pelvis, improving alignment.
Sitting with legs crossed also appears to reduce the activity of some muscles, particularly the oblique muscles (those beneath the skin where you put your hands on your hips) compared to sitting with legs forward. This may help relax your core muscles and prevent overexertion.
Similarly, there is evidence that sitting cross-legged improves the stability of the sacroiliac joints (responsible for transferring weight between the spine and legs).
And of course, the famous yoga or meditation pose (lotus position) sees people sitting on the floor with legs crossed. There is limited data as to whether long periods of time spent in this position may lead to some of the issues that sitting cross-legged in a chair causes.
Indeed, for many people yoga offers huge benefits – even those who already have knee issues.
So the verdict? It’s probably better to avoid crossing your legs if you can.
Though that said, many of the risk factors associated with crossing your legs are likely exacerbated by other underlying issues such as sedentary lifestyles and obesity.
So with this in mind, the main advice is to not sit still in the same position for too long and to keep regularly active.
Adam Taylor, Professor and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre, Lancaster University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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TN DCA launches WhatsApp helpline number to register complaints
The drug control department in Tamil Nadu has launched a WhatsApp Helpline Number to receive complaints from all stakeholders in pharma and medical field.
This facility is as part of the Online Grievance Redressal System of the government and it will be available 24 hours.
WhatsApp is connected to the monitor of a computer in the office and a senior official at the headquarters office has been specially assigned to check the messages every one minute. So far, 25,000 messages of complaints/grievances were received on the number which is 9445865400.
“From now on anybody can post their complaints on the WhatsApp number which will be checked at the headquarters. No need for sending emails, even for licence problems. As soon as the message arrives on WhatsApp it will be forwarded to the concerned office under the department for speedy action. Requests for renewal of licence can also be shared with the WhatsApp”, said M Vijayalakshmi, director of the drugs control administration.
The director said her office had earlier made a proposal to the government to start a WhatsApp Complaint Cell to receive complaints/suggestions from the public and it has been approved by the government.
It was in 2011 the department launched an online facility to provide better and quick services to the people and to the industry when M Bhaskaran was the director of the department. Later in 2011, with a view to make the administration more people-friendly, the then director Dr G Selvaraju initiated the process of complete computerization in the department with online communication facilities in all the ADCs and drug inspectors’ offices in the state. His efforts had helped to establish transparency and speed in the functioning of the offices.
However, the overall development of the drug control department happened when M Sivabalan became the director in July 2017. He was instrumental in bringing up the department more efficiently with the creation of 10 more zonal offices in 2021. Currently, the TN DCA has 24 zonal offices. Simultaneously, the government had approved his proposal for increasing the number of ADCs and drug inspectors.
Now the WhatsApp facility has been introduced by the current director PV Vijayalakshmi who became the director in July this year. She is trying her level best to strengthen the department and one of her reforms is the WhatsApp complaint cell. But she is retiring on March 31 this year, sources from the department informed.
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An Obscured Face Behind COVID-19 May Finally Be Emerging
Once more, we’re talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
First the US Department of Energy’s review gave more emphasis to the laboratory leak hypothesis than previously, although the confidence for this conclusion was low.
Second, and more importantly, is the release and analysis this week of viral and animal genetic material collected from the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, the place forever associated with the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s a subject close to me. I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. I went to Wuhan on a fact-finding mission in early 2021. I visited the now-closed market.
Now we have stronger evidence that places raccoon dogs at the market as a possible animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, potentially infecting humans.
If we’d had this evidence three years ago, we need to ask ourselves how different recent history would have been. We would have reduced the enormous energy, media frenzy and political argy-bargy about less likely hypotheses of the pandemic’s origins. We might have better focused our research attention.
The twists, turns, and puzzles
Samples were taken from various places in the market, in January 2020, within weeks of the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. SARS-CoV-2 RNA and human DNA were identified in these environmental samples, although no animal swabs were positive for the virus.
This was presented to the WHO team investigating the origins of the pandemic in January 2021, of which I was part.
The work was published as a preprint (posted online, before being independently verified) in February 2022.
The underlying “metagenomic” data to support the conclusions in the preprint – that SARS-CoV-2 and human (but not animal) sequences were present – needed to be provided to allow further analyses.
This is something that is generally required by journals and regarded as appropriate in the spirit of scientific openness and collaboration.
However, it wasn’t until early March 2023 that the international community had access to the data.
That’s when there was a “drop” of these environmental metagenomic sequences into the GISAID database, the international open access repository of viral sequences.
This allowed an independent team of international experts to analyze them. In a startling revelation, they identified large amounts of raccoon dog and other animal DNA in conjunction with SARS-CoV-2.
Raccoon dogs can be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2 and can transmit it. The international team published their observations as a preprint earlier this week.
Of note was the physical co-location of these virus and animal sequences in the corner of what is a very large market, the corner associated with early human cases. It is now known (but initially rejected by Chinese authorities) that wild and farmed animals were sold in this area of the market.
After the sequences were analysed by the international team, the Chinese scientists who had performed the market testing were contacted for comment and discussion – especially around the important observation that mixed in among the SARS-CoV-2 sequences were a large proportion of raccoon dog and other animal DNA.
The sequences were then withdrawn from the GISAID database within a few hours of the study authors being approached. This is perhaps unusual for an open database such as GISAID, and clarity could be sought why this occurred.
Why is this work important?
This latest work does not prove raccoon dogs were definitely the source of SARS-CoV-2. Presumably, they are likely to have been an intermediate host between bats and humans. Bats harbor many coronaviruses, including ones related to SARS-CoV-2.
However, the data fits the narrative of the animal/human connections of SARS-CoV-2.
This, along with other examination of animal links to SARS-CoV-2, should be taken in the context of the lack of robust data to support the other SARS-CoV-2 origins hypotheses, such as a laboratory leak, contaminated frozen food, and acquisition outside China. Bit by bit, the evidence supports animal origins of the outbreak, centered on the Huanan market in Wuhan.
The length of time taken for this early work to surface and the difficulty in accessing the raw data are unfortunate, points made recently by the WHO.
Sympathetically, one might say, the wrong analysis of the original data collected in early 2020 was undertaken and the researchers missed the animal links.
Cynically, (and without evidence) one might say that the significance of the data was recognized, but not made readily available. This is a question for the Chinese researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control to answer.
What are the implications of this delay?
If this had been identified in early 2020 then further studies to understand the viral origins in animals could have been undertaken.
Three years on, it is very difficult to do such studies, tracking backwards from the now closed market to the animal sources and the people who handled these animals.
Clearer answers would have taken some of the heat out of the debate around the possible viral origins. Of course, all hypotheses should remain on the table, but some of these could have been much better explored with earlier data.
Would it have changed the course of the pandemic? Probably not. The virus had already spread worldwide and adapted very well to human-to-human transmission by the time this work was available. However, it would have driven research in better directions and improved future pandemic planning.
What now?
Lessons for the future are obvious. Open disclosure of sequence data is the best way to undertake scientific investigation, especially for something of such international significance.
Making data unavailable, or not reaching out for assistance in complicated analyses, only slows the process.
The resulting political to and fro by all countries, particularly the US and China, has meant that suspicion has deepened, and progress slowed even further.
Although WHO has been criticized for errors in how it managed the pandemic, and in collating data to understand the origins and progress future research, it remains the best international agency to foster open sharing of data.
Scientists, for the most part, want to do the right thing and find the answers to important questions. Facilitating this is crucial.
Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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