Tag Archives: world health organization

Mother’s ultra-processed food intake linked to obesity risk in children; Unlikely during peripregnancy

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A mother’s consumption of ultra-processed foods appears to be linked to an increased risk of overweight or obesity in her offspring, irrespective of other lifestyle risk factors, suggests a US study.

Researchers suggest that mothers might benefit from limiting their intake of ultra-processed foods, and that dietary guidelines should be refined and financial and social barriers removed to improve nutrition for women of child bearing age and reduce childhood obesity.

According to the World Health Organization, 39 million children were overweight or obese in 2020, leading to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and early death.

Ultra-processed foods, such as packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks and sugary cereals, are commonly found in modern Western style diets and are associated with weight gain in adults. But it’s unclear whether there’s a link between a mother’s consumption of ultra-processed foods and her offspring’s body weight.

To explore this further, the researchers drew on data for 19,958 children born to 14,553 mothers (45% boys, aged 7-17 years at study enrollment) from the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II) and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS I and II) in the United States.

pregnant lady

pregnant lady/Commons.wikimedia.org

The NHS II is an ongoing study tracking the health and lifestyles of 116,429 US female registered nurses aged 25-42 in 1989. From 1991, participants reported what they ate and drank, using validated food frequency questionnaires every four years.

The GUTS I study began in 1996 when 16,882 children (aged 8-15 years) of NHS II participants completed an initial health and lifestyle questionnaire and were monitored every year between 1997 and 2001, and every two years thereafter.

In 2004, 10,918 children (aged 7-17 years) of NHS II participants joined the extended GUTS II study and were followed up in 2006, 2008, and 2011, and every two years thereafter.

A range of other potentially influential factors, known to be strongly correlated with childhood obesity, were also taken into account. These included mother’s weight (BMI), physical activity, smoking, living status (with partner or not), and partner’s education, as well as children’s ultra-processed food consumption, physical activity, and sedentary time.

Overall, 2471 (12%) children developed overweight or obesity during an average follow-up period of 4 years.

The results show that a mother’s ultra-processed food consumption was associated with an increased risk of overweight or obesity in her offspring. For example, a 26% higher risk was seen in the group with the highest maternal ultra-processed food consumption (12.1 servings/day) versus the lowest consumption group (3.4 servings/day).

In a separate analysis of 2790 mothers and 2925 children with information on diet from 3 months pre-conception to delivery (peripregnancy), the researchers found that peripregnancy ultra-processed food intake was not significantly associated with an increased risk of offspring overweight or obesity.

This is an observational study, so can’t establish cause and the researchers acknowledge that some of the observed risk may be due to other unmeasured factors, and that self-reported diet and weight measures might be subject to misreporting.

Other important limitations include the fact that some offspring participants were lost to follow-up, which resulted in a few of the analyses being underpowered, particularly those related to peripregnancy intake, and that mothers were predominantly white and from similar social and economic backgrounds, so the results may not apply to other groups.

Nevertheless, the study used data from several large ongoing studies with detailed dietary assessments over a relatively long period, and further analysis produced consistent associations, suggesting that the results are robust.

The researchers suggest no clear mechanism underlying these associations and say the area warrants further investigation.

Nevertheless, these data “support the importance of refining dietary recommendations and the development of programs to improve nutrition for women of reproductive age to promote offspring health,” they conclude.

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Hacked Wuhan lab details point out lab-origin of Coronavirus, WHO denies

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The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday reiterated its earlier stand that the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory. This follows last week statement by US President Donald Trump that his government was trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in Wuhan.

Refuting the reports which are pointing out that the virus was of lab origin and manipulated with HIV virus to make it deadly, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing, “All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else. It is probable, likely that the virus is of animal origin.”

Though it was not clear how the virus had jumped the species barrier to humans, there had “certainly” been an intermediate animal host, she stressed.

Wuhan lab origin?

Increasingly, reports have been going viral online stating that the virus has Wuhan lab origin and manipulated to mix it with HIV virus, making deadlier than any other virus known so far. The latest such report from the Washington Post on Tuesday revealed that hackers were able able to steal nearly 25,000 emails, passwords and classified documents allegedly belonging to the WHO, the Gates Foundation, as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, among other organizations. The details were posted on image board website 4chan, later shared on Pastebin, a text storage site, social media platforms Twitter and Telegram.

“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rita Katz, Intelligence Group SITE’s executive director. “The distribution of these alleged email credentials were just another part of a months-long initiative across the far right to weaponize the covid-19 pandemic.”

Earlier, Luc Montagnier, a Nobel winning French scientist who co-discovered HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) came out with a theory that the novel coronavirus came from a lab, denying WHO and Chinese government clims to the contrary. Montagnier claimed that the new ‘SARS-CoV-2’ virus came as a resultant in attempting to manufacture a vaccine for the AIDS virus, which may have got accidentally released. He claimed it in a podcast by Pourquoi Docteur and also in a TV interview on April 17.

New malaria analysis method reveals disease severity in minutes

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Left untreated, malaria can progress from being mild to severe — and potentially fatal — in 24 hours. So researchers at the University of British Columbia developed a method to quickly and sensitively assess the progression of the mosquito-borne infectious disease, which remains a leading killer in low-income countries.

One way malaria wreaks havoc on the body is by causing excessive amounts of toxic heme, the non-protein component of hemoglobin, to accumulate in the bloodstream. Among other things, this free heme induces oxidative stress in red blood cells (RBCs), leading to their rigidification, destruction and subsequent removal from circulation — a condition known as hemolytic anemia.

In their study, which appeared in Integrative Biology, the UBC investigators found that RBCs become increasingly rigid in direct correlation with the concentration of oxidized heme, or hemin, in the blood. Since hemin is difficult to measure directly — it tends to insert itself into cell membranes — monitoring changes in RBC deformability can therefore serve as a reliable alternative marker of hemin-induced oxidative stress and malaria progression.

“Because this method is mechanical, it’s well suited for use in resource-poor countries, where the vast majority of malaria transmission takes place,” says Kerryn Matthews, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC and the study’s lead author. “Other methods of analyzing malaria severity require training or expensive equipment or chemicals that are not readily available in developing nations.”

To measure RBC deformability quickly and sensitively, the UBC investigators developed the “multiplex fluidic plunger”: a simple microfluidic device consisting of a parallel array of 34 funnel-shaped, micro-sized channels across which uniform, carefully controlled pressures can be simultaneously applied.

By loading the plunger with whole blood, docking an RBC at each channel and applying progressively higher pressures until the RBCs are squeezed through — or not, if an RBC is too stiff — one is able to determine the rigidity, or cortical tensions, of many cells at once and build an RBC deformability profile in minutes.

“The device can be easily integrated with a conventional microscope coupled with a digital camera,” says Matthews. “And the accompanying software, which does all the analysis and records the pressures, is simple to use.”

In addition to indicating the status of a malaria infection, RBC deformability information would be valuable in the development of antimalarial drugs, as well as in illuminating the mechanism by which RBCs are sequestered from circulation and destroyed.

Healthy RBCs are extremely flexible, capable of squeezing through spaces — the tiniest blood vessels, for example, or the channels between cells — that are just fractions of their original size. By rendering them less deformable, malaria parasites impair blood flow and ultimately cause organ failure and possibly death.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria killed an estimated 429,000 people and caused approximately 212 million clinical episodes in 2015. It primarily affects children and pregnant women in poor tropical and subtropical countries.

WHO Gives Maximum Marks to India’s Vaccination System

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WHO, in its assessment of the status of the Indian vaccine regulatory system against WHO NRA Global Benchmarking Tool (GBT) for benchmarking found  Indian NRA as ‘functional’ with a maturity level of 4 or the highest level in respect of 5 functions, and maturity level 3 in respect of 4 functions.

While, maturity level 4 indicates good results and sustained improvement trends, maturity level 3 reflects systematic process based approach, early stage of systematic improvements, data availability regarding conformance to objectives and existence of improvement trends.

The assessment has been carried out by a WHO team comprising lead experts in different areas from WHO Headquarters Geneva, WHO India Country Office, experts drawn from the regulators of USA, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Indonesia, Thailand and Egypt. The assessment has been done in respect of nine different functionalities and

India, as a large vaccine producing country, is currently supplying several vaccines to the UN agencies (UNICEF, WHO and PAHO). A fully functional NRA is a pre-requisite for WHO prequalification of vaccines. One of the requirements to become eligible and retain prequalification status is to have the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) assessed as functional against the WHO published NRA indicators.

WHO Prequalification Programme, as such, facilitates access to vaccines that meet the unified standards of quality, safety and efficacy as well as programme needs. The vaccine manufacturers can only apply for WHO vaccine prequalification if the NRA meets the standards of the WHO NRA published indicators i.e. WHO Global benchmarking Tool on functional regulatory system for vaccines.

The Global Benchmarking Tool (GBT) so developed has 63 indicators and 288 sub-indicators, out of which 150 are critical . The result reflects the growing maturity of the Indian NRA emanating from a concerted effort by the Government in consultation WHO to build capacity and capability of the National Regulatory Authority over last several years.

Trial Results Show Ebola Vaccine Developed by Merck is Working: WHO

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that an experimental Ebola vaccine has been found to be highly protective against the deadly virus in a major trial in Guinea.

WHO said that an international vaccine-focussed organization, GAVI, provided $5 million to Merck, and the medical firm committed to ensure that 300,000 doses of the vaccine are available for emergency use in the interim, and to submit the vaccine for licensure by the end of 2017.
Merck has also submitted the vaccine to WHO’s Emergency Use and Assessment Listing procedure, a mechanism through which experimental vaccines, medicines and diagnostics can be made available for use prior to formal licensure.

“The vaccine is the first to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, and the findings add weight to early trial results published last year,” WHO said in a release, noting the results of the latest trial, published in the medical journal The Lancet.

According to WHO, the vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV was studied in a trial involving 11,841 people in Guinea during 2015. Among the 5,837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination. In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.

“While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next Ebola outbreak hits, we will not be defenceless,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO’ Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation, and the study’s lead author.

The Ebola virus was first identified in 1976 and caused sporadic outbreaks in Africa. However, the 2013-2016 outbreak in west Africa, that killed more than 11,300 people, underlined the urgent need of a vaccine.

The trial took place in the coastal region of Basse-Guinée, the area of Guinea still experiencing new Ebola cases when the trial started in 2015.

It employed an innovative design, a so-called “ring vaccination” approach – the same method used to eradicate small pox. This involved tracing all people who may have been in contact with a new Ebola case within the previous three weeks as well as certain “contacts of contacts.” These “rings” were randomized to receive the vaccine either immediately or after a three-week delay.

However, the authors note that the trial was not designed to measure this effect, so more research will be needed.

Life Expectancy: Indian women live longer than men

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Life expectancy has escalated to a great extent since 1990 as people even in poor nations are living longer than ever, though many of them struggling with sickness and age-old ailments, finds a new study.

In India, between 1990 and 2013, life expectancy for men and women has elevated by 6.9 years and 10.3 years, respectively.

Photo Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões

This new study was conducted in 188 countries by an international research team working on a project called “Global Burden of Disease” and headed by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

Owing to the deterioration of mortality and illness rates due to HIV/AIDS and malaria in the last ten years, health has enhanced to a great deal across the globe. Apart from this, meeting contagious, maternal, newborn and nutritive conditions, effectively has also added to the enhancement.

Nevertheless, healthy life expectancy (HALE) at birth hasn’t seen much improvement, thus; making those who live longer live sicker.

Theo Vos, the professor of IHME as well as who lead the study said albeit health has seen a global advancement it’s time that “more effective ways” to treat and combat disorders and diseases are discovered.

The study discovered that global life expectancy and healthy life expectancy for both genders escalated by 6.2 years and 5.4 years, respectively. However, in comparison to the life expectancy that increased from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013, healthy life expectancy didn’t see a drastic leap with 56.9 in 1990 to 62.3 in 2013.

Majority of the evaluated nations showed “significant and positive” healthy life expectancy changes. However, Belize, Botswana and Syria didn’t show drastic changes in HALE in 2013 as compared to 1990 with the first two nations, showing regression of 2 and 1.3 years, respectively.

In other cases, countries like Paraguay, Belarus and South Africa saw a deterioration in healthy life expectancy. For instance, places like Swaziland and Lesotho in Africa and South Africa, respectively, saw healthy life expectancy drop in individuals born in 2013 as compared to them who were born 20 years before.

People of Cambodia and Nicaragua showed gripping escalation between 1990 and 2013 with 13.9 and 14.7 years, respectively.

Nonetheless, Ethiopia was pin-pointed as one of the nations that have been giving massive efforts to make sure that their country people live both healthier and longer. For instance, in 1990, the healthy life expectancy of an Ethiopian was 40.8 years, but by 2013 with 13.5 years leap, it saw over a two-fold increase to 54.3 years.

Christopher Murray, who is the IHME director said albeit “income and education” play important roles in ensuring proper health, it doesn’t “tell the full story,” adding that weighing both healthy life expectancy and health loss on each sides at country level will facilitate “guide policies” in ensuring longer and healthier lives in every nook and cranny of the world.

Italy, Spain, Norway, Switzerland and Israel showed the lowest rates of health loss. With 42 years, in 2013, Lesotho recorded the lowest healthy life expectancy whereas with 73.4 years, Japan recorded the highest healthy life expectancy.

The findings have been published in the August 27 issue of the journal “The Lancet”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Europe showed stagnation in showing better life expectancy during the 1990s, but after 1990 when life expectancy increased by 6 years around the world, Europe also saw some increase.

On the other hand, African nations have been showing a drop in life expectancy due to being plagued by HIV/AIDS, but now with the accessibility of antiretroviral therapy, the rates have seen an escalation. For instance, in 2000, standard life expectancy at birth was 50 years, but it saw an 8 year leap in 2013.

WHO further informed that high-income nations showed greater life expectancy at 60 years of age with expectation of the individual, living another 23 years in comparison to low-income and lower-middle income nations, which showed 17 more years of life expectancy.