Population-scale study highlights ongoing risk of COVID-19 in some cancer patients despite vaccination

Illustration of the coronavirus
Credit: Gerd Altmann

A study co-led by the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham and Southampton and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), published in Lancet Oncology today by the UK Coronavirus Cancer Evaluation Project, has found that while COVID-19 vaccination is effective in most cancer patients, the level of protection against COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death offered by the vaccine is less than in the general population and vaccine effectiveness wanes more quickly.

Dr Lennard Lee, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford who led the study said: ‘We know that people with cancer have a higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease and that the immune response in cancer patients following COVID-19 vaccination is lower. However, no study has looked at vaccine effectiveness and its waning in cancer patients at a population level. We have undertaken the largest real-world health system evaluation of COVID-19 in cancer patients globally.’

This study analyzed 377,194 individuals with active or recent cancer who had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and undergone a SARS-CoV-2 PCR test in England. The numbers of breakthrough COVID-19 infections and COVID-19-associated hospitalizations and deaths in this cohort of cancer patients were compared to a control population without active or recent cancer.

New tool measures atomic scale defects, identifies transistor limitations

Engineering science and mechanics doctoral student Fedor Sharov adjusts settings in a very low frequency EDMR spectrometer.
Credit: Kelby Hochreither/Penn State

A new technique for studying defects in semiconductor materials could lead to improved speed, power and performance of electronic devices by revealing the atomic-level limitations of advanced materials.

Developed by a Penn State-led team of researchers and lead by former Penn State graduate student James Ashton, the analytic tool makes use of extremely small magnetic fields and frequencies far smaller than those typically used in such measurements to detect and measure imperfections in new materials, providing structural information about the magnetic interactions between electrons and nearby magnetic nuclei in a simpler way than previously possible.

The approach was published as a cover article in Applied Physics Letters. According to Patrick Lenahan, distinguished professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State and Ashton’s doctoral thesis adviser, the tool allows researchers to take a big step toward solving a variety of faults in next-generation devices.

New countermeasure against unwanted wireless surveillance

The intelligent reflective surface IRShield is positioned next to a Wi-Fi router to disguise the environment-dependent radio channel.
Credit: CASA, Michael Schwettmann

Wirelessly functioning devices are now omnipresent. However, wireless communication endangers privacy: passive eavesdroppers can access sensitive data through intercepted high-frequency signals.

Smart devices should make our everyday life easier. At the same time, however, they are a gateway for passive eavesdropping. In order to prevent possible monitoring of the movement profile in your own four walls, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at the Ruhr University Bochum and the Technical University of Cologne have a new system developed to protect privacy in wireless communication. The researchers will present the process, based on the technology of intelligent reflective surfaces, on 24. May 2022 at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

Reducing TV viewing to less than one hour a day could help prevent more than one in ten cases of coronary heart disease

Credit: yousafbhutta

In a study published today in BMC Medicine, researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit show that – assuming a causal link – 11% of cases of coronary heart disease could be prevented if people watched less than an hour of TV each day.

According to the British Heart Foundation, coronary heart disease is one of the UK’s leading causes of death, responsible for around 64,000 deaths each year. In the UK, one in eight men and one in 15 women die from the disease. People with coronary heart disease are twice as likely to have a stroke.

One of the major risk factors for coronary heart disease is sedentary behavior – in other words, sitting for long periods of time rather than being physically active. To examine the link between time spent in screen-based sedentary behaviors such as TV viewing and leisure-time computer use, an individual’s DNA, and their risk of coronary heart disease, researchers examined data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource containing anonymized genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants.

Unravelling how climate, pollution and runoff combine in coastal ecosystems

Source: Griffith University

Griffith University researchers are unravelling how stressors like climate change, pollution, dissolved nitrogen and sediment from run-off are having combined effects in coastal ecosystems.

Two studies published in Ecology Letters and Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveal combining increasing ocean temperatures, pollution or dissolved nitrogen with the reduced light caused by sediment in the water can either amplify or reduce the impact of these stressors individually on seagrass or algal growth.

Dr Mischa Turschwell, Research Fellow
at the Australian Rivers Institute

“Crucially, we show that the combined effects on seagrass and algal growth can vary significantly dependent on the amount of the two stressors and duration of exposure,” said Dr Mischa Turschwell, Research Fellow at the Australian Rivers Institute.

“With the onset of climate change, coastal and marine ecosystems are under threat on more than one front from stressors such as rising ocean temperatures, poor water quality and pollution.

“To effectively look after these coastal ecosystems, managers need a thorough understanding of the effects these human induced changes have, both individually and in combination.”

Associate Professor Chris Brown, head of the Seascape Models group at Australian Rivers Institute and the Coastal and Marine Research Centre lamented that “to-date most attempts to discover of how such stressors interact, using data pooled from multiple studies, have failed to find consistent predictions for combined effects.”

Cystic fibrosis: restoring airway integrity

Hydration restores the airway surface seal. In turquoise, the junctions between the epithelial cells (blue).
Credit: UNIGE - Laboratory of Prof. Marc Chanson

Cystic fibrosis is a rare genetic disease which can cause very serious symptoms. In particular, patients suffer from chronic bacterial infections that can lead to respiratory failure. It is caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, which regulates water movement across the cell membrane. Consequently, mucus quality is altered, it is no longer capable of capturing undesirable bacteria and expelling them. Using a model reproducing a respiratory epithelium - a protective tissue composed of a monolayer of cells - teams from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have discovered that a simple film of liquid is sufficient to restore the airways’ seal and reduce the risk of bacterial infection. These results, to be read in a special issue of the journal Cells, open the way to new therapies based on mucus hydration. A promising alternative to current therapies that are often not widely enough effective.

Despite recent therapeutic advances, people with cystic fibrosis — one in every 2,500 births in Europe — have a life expectancy of no more than 46 years and altered quality of life. The disease is caused by one or more mutations in the CFTR gene, which affects the proper functioning of an essential protective barrier. The epithelial cells that line the airways are usually sealed together and thus protect the airways from bacterial colonization. They are also lined with a fluid, a slippery mucus that traps unwanted germs and carries them away. When the CFTR protein is altered, the junctions between the cells loosen and the dehydrated mucus tends to stagnate, both of which promote the development of respiratory

A family of termites has been traversing the world’s oceans for millions of years

Credit: Aleš Buček

A new study has mapped out the natural history of drywood termites—the second largest family of termites.

Drywood termites form small colonies primarily in wood and are generally thought of as primitive termites but very little is actually known about the family.

By sequencing the mitochondrial genomes of 120 species found across the world, the researchers discerned that this family has made at least 40 oceanic voyages in the last 50 million years.

The study also confirmed that some species have, in recent centuries, hitched a ride with humans to reach far-flung islands.

Furthermore, it cast doubt on the common assumption that drywood termites have a primitive lifestyle as, among the oldest lineages in the family, there are species that do not exhibit this lifestyle.

Planets of binary stars as possible homes for alien life

The ALMA telescopes in Chile
Credit: ESO/S. Guisard

Since the only known planet with life, the Earth, orbits the Sun, planetary systems around stars of similar size are obvious targets for astronomers trying to locate extraterrestrial life. Nearly every second star in that category is a binary star. A new result from research at University of Copenhagen indicates that planetary systems are formed in a very different way around binary stars than around single stars such as the Sun.

“The result is exciting since the search for extraterrestrial life will be equipped with several new, extremely powerful instruments within the coming years. This enhances the significance of understanding how planets are formed around different types of stars. Such results may pinpoint places which would be especially interesting to probe for the existence of life,” says Professor Jes Kristian Jørgensen, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, heading the project.

The results from the project, which also has participation of astronomers from Taiwan and USA, are published in the distinguished journal Nature.

Target CO2 and non-carbon pollutants to slow climate change

Photo: Pixabay

Policies that focus solely on decarbonization will not be sufficient to keep the Earth’s temperature below the “tipping point” threshold scientists have long warned could result in a runaway greenhouse warming effect, according to research published May 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While carbon dioxide is the chemical most responsible for climate change, four other pollutants – methane, black carbon soot, lower-atmosphere ozone smog and hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants – contribute almost half the heat trapped to-date that cause global warming.

Reducing atmospheric levels of all of these pollutants, known as super pollutants, will be necessary to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the internationally accepted guardrail beyond which the world’s climate is expected to pass irreversible tipping points.

Monitoring the "journey" of microplastics through the intestine of a living organism

Drosophila melanogaster 
Credit: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

A UAB research team has managed to track the behavior of microplastics during their "journey" through the intestinal tract of a living organism and illustrate what happens along the way. The study, carried out on Drosophila melanogaster using electron microscopy equipment developed by the researchers themselves, represents a significant step towards a more precise analysis of the health risks of being exposed to these pollutants.

The behavior of micro and nanoplastics (MNPLs) inside the organism is a question impossible to answer at present in humans, and in vitro models are not useful. Hence, there is a need to look for models that allow us to answer this question. Furthermore, there are limitations in the current methodologies for detecting and quantifying their presence in different human biological samples, which prevents an accurate assessment of the health risk of exposure.

In this context, researchers from the Mutagenesis Research Group of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have managed to monitor the tracking of MNPLs in their "journey" from the environment to the interior of a living organism. They have done it by developing tools based on electron microscopy and in larvae of the Drosophila melanogaster fly, a model organism widely used to study biological phenomena and processes.