Source: ANI

Following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation against using two cough syrups manufactured by Noida-based Marion Biotech due to “substandard quality,” the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization collected four samples of AMBRONOL syrup for investigation on Thursday.

“The team of CDSCO has collected four samples of AMBRONOL syrup for investigation from Marion Biotech Pvt Ltd,” the Drug inspector of Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh Vaibhav Babbar said. It’s a joint inspection by team of state drugs inspectors and CDSCO.

WHO on Wednesday said that two cough syrups made by Noida-based company Marion Biotech should not be used for children in Uzbekistan.

In a medical product alert on Wednesday, the WHO said the “substandard medical products”, manufactured by Marion Biotech, “are products that fail to meet quality standards or specifications and are therefore out of specification.”

“This WHO Medical Product Alert refers to two substandard (contaminated) products, identified in Uzbekistan and reported to WHO on 22 December 2022. Substandard medical products are products that fail to meet quality standards or specifications and are therefore out of specification,” the WHO said in an alert released on its website.

“The two products are AMBRONOL syrup and DOK-1 Max syrup. The stated manufacturer of both products is MARION BIOTECH PVT. LTD, (Uttar Pradesh, India). To date, the stated manufacturer has not provided guarantees to WHO on the safety and quality of these products,” the alert added.

Noida-based pharma Marion Biotech has come under a cloud as reports emerged about the death of children after consuming cough syrup came in from Uzbekistan.

According to WHO, laboratory analysis of samples of cough syrups, undertaken by national quality control laboratories of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan found both products contained unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and /or ethylene glycol as contaminants.

“Both of these products may have marketing authorizations in other countries in the region. They may also have been distributed, through informal markets, to other countries or regions,” the

WHO alert added. On December 22, Uzbekistan alleged that 18 children had died after consuming medicines manufactured by Marion Biotech company. On Tuesday, Uttar Pradesh Food Safety and Drug Administration department suspended the production licence of Marion Biotech company linked to Uzbekistan’s deaths of 18 children.

“We have suspended the production license of Marion Biotech company after not providing enough documents, a show-cause notice was also given by the state licensing authority depending upon the documents asked during the inspection which they didn’t provide,” said Gautam Buddh Nagar Drug inspector Vaibhav Babbar.

According to a recent study, drug overdose mortality among women who are pregnant or just gave birth have climbed by more than 180% over the previous five years.
Publication Of Pediatrics, a journal, published the report. The investigation also showed that the number of overdose fatalities linked to pregnancy increased sharply in 2020, perhaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on social, economic, and healthcare systems.

“We’ve seen significant increases in fatal and nonfatal overdose in the general population during the pandemic,” said Emilie Bruzelius, MPH, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and first author. “It now appears that pregnant and postpartum women are being affected as well.”

Data from national death certificates, which contain information on whether the death happened among a person who was presently or recently pregnant, were used to identify pregnancy-related overdose fatalities between 2017 and 2020. The researchers assessed the particular drug types used in each overdose and computed yearly overdose fatality rates.

The researchers also computed the total overdose fatality rates for women of reproductive age as a reference (who were not pregnant). 1,249 of the 7,642 pregnancy-related fatalities among expectant and postpartum women were brought on by drug overdose. In contrast to a 38% increase among women of reproductive age overall, overdose mortality surged more than 80% over the course of the four years, reaching a peak of 11.85 deaths per 100,000 in 2020. Rises in overdose mortality for both groups in 2020 were more marked than increases in any previous year before.

Contrary to significant rises in mortality related to fentanyl, methamphetamines, and cocaine, pregnancy-associated overdose deaths involving benzodiazepines, heroin, and prescription opioids remained mostly steady between 2017 and 2020. The number of fatalities involving fentanyl increased significantly in 2020, nearly tripling.

“Pregnant and postpartum people are known to face barriers to accessing drug treatment and harm reduction services, that when compounded by pandemic-associated stressors, healthcare shutdowns, and an increasingly volatile unregulated drug supply, may have increased fatal overdose risk,” said Bruzelius.

“Enhanced strategies supporting substance use prevention, treatment, and harm reduction efforts among pregnant and postpartum people are critical and much needed. We expect new and improved approaches will help address the concerning trends we are seeing,” noted Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology and senior author.

With India reporting a highly infectious novel COVID-19 variant, former Delhi AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria advised the general public on Wednesday to practise COVID-appropriate behaviour.

He said, “I would suggest to everyone that if they are going out and especially in crowded places then they must wear a mask. High-risk groups, elderly people should avoid going out because there are high chances of spreading infection and some can also get a serious infection.”

“New variants are expected and this variant has a tendency to mutate that will continue, but now the situation is different, earlier, there was no vaccination, but people are now vaccinated also. But this doesn’t mean that people will stop taking precautions, festival season is coming up and cases are also rising,” he explained further.

Guleria said that the chances of hospitalisation and ICU admissions are low. “The chances of hospitalisation and ICU admissions are low. This time there will be a mild infection, fever cold, cough and body ache, the chances of recovery are within 3-4 days, usually, in this season, viral fever is reported due to COVID also.”

On Tuesday, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya convened a high-level conference with senior health officials to discuss the development of Omicron’s new sub-variants, which resulted in the decision to continue masks and COVID19-appropriate behaviour across the country.

The panel of scientists, medics, and senior government officials also advocated for more surveillance and genetic sequencing.

The health experts also recommended Eligible Population on Mission Mode to receive their COVID-19 prophylactic dose as soon as possible.

According to official sources, Niti Aayog member VK Paul, Chairperson of COVID-19 working group NTAGI NK Arora, NTAGI officials, NEGVAC officials, and other senior health authorities attended.

According to a state health department advisory issued earlier on Tuesday, Maharashtra saw a 17.7 percent increase in coronavirus cases compared to the previous week.

According to statistics the new COVID cases are expected to increase in the state in the October 10-16 period this week by 17.7 per cent as compared to the period between October 3-9. This rise is noticed in Thane, Raigad and Mumbai says the official release from the health department.

While on October 17, India detected its first case of Omicron’s BQ.1 subvariant in a sample of a patient from Pune. The BQ.1 is a descendant of BA.5, which is behind the 60 per cent of COVID cases in the United States (US), as per reports.

Some experts from the health department predicted a rise in the coming winter season, especially in a festive environment. In Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), BA.2.75 decreased to 76 per cent from 95 per cent.

Maharashtra’s health department and experts have asked not to ignore flu-like symptoms and seek medical advice soon. They have advised observing Covid Appropriate behaviour in public places and getting vaccinated as per Government of India guidelines.

Experts from the department suggest that people with comorbidities need to take extra precautions while visiting public places. People suffering from Influenza-like illnesses should avoid public contact as much as possible. The BF.7 is also reported in Gujarat and confirmed by the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre.BF.7 is known as an

‘Omicron spawn’ that was first detected in China and now reached the United States, the UK, Australia, and Belgium.
Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 17 held a high-level meeting under health minister Veena George and said it is intensifying preventive measures in view of the new genetic variations of COVID-19 (XBB and XBB1) being reported from other parts of the world.

“Necessary instructions have been given to all the districts. The new strain is more contagious than any other strain of Covid-19 so far. Hence the resistance is strengthened. About 1.8 per cent of those infected may require hospital treatment. There is no cause for concern at present. But everyone should be careful. Everyone should wear a mask properly for self-protection. Masks must be worn by the elderly and those with co-morbidities. The minister requested that masks be worn at the airport and in closed places,” the Kerala health department said.

According to Kerala Health Expert Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, said, “These are immune escape variants. Since Omicron arrived in November 2021, it has been giving off branches that divide into smaller branches. Of these, BA.2 and BA.5 proved stronger than the rest.”

“From BA.2 and BA.5, a series of sublineages kept appearing. Each of these had additional mutations which were concentrated on the RBD or receptor binding domain of the spike protein of the virus. This is the part that the virus uses to attach to the human cell,” he added.

He said, “With convergent evolution involving about 5 frequently found mutations, the virus is now able to escape the immune response to the earlier versions, either from natural infection or through vaccination.”
This is why they are called immune evasive variants BA.5.1.7 and BF.7 are names given to downstream descendants of BA.5.”

Dr Rajeev further explained also said that the pandemic isn’t over, precautions still need to be taken.
He said, “What we must realise is that the pandemic is not over. There will be periodic regional surges that especially coincide with festivals and group gatherings. Wearing masks Indoors and preferring outdoor to indoor gatherings are safe options. The vulnerable individuals will need to be specially protected.”

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According to WHO South-East Asia Region Regional Director Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the World Health Organization (WHO) has asked countries to recognise the importance of investing in health, particularly in primary healthcare.

“Health is fundamental to economic security. This has been amply demonstrated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. With a high risk of countries reducing investments in health to pre-COVID-19 levels, the World Health Organization has asked countries to recognize the importance of investing in health, particularly in primary healthcare,” Singh stated.

He added that the world was unprepared to deal with a pandemic of this scale, hence preparedness is the key. There is a need to fill the gaps in the delivery of health services and health coverage, she further said.

Robust healthcare systems respond better to health emergencies, she further stated.

“There is no economic security without health security. Health and well-being for all, universal health coverage, and pandemic preparedness have complementary roles. Investments in primary healthcare-oriented systems are the most efficient and equitable approach to achieving these goals,” she added.

“Since 2014, the South-East Asia Region has prioritized health workforce strengthening as a part of Regional Flagship Priority Programmes. The availability of doctors, nurses, and midwives has increased by over 30 per cent during this period which played a crucial role in the COVID-19 pandemic response,” Singh stated.

Singh further said that it is well established that countries with sustained investments in primary health care – with communities at the centre- could identify cases and mount an effective public health response to the pandemic more quickly.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call long anticipated by the global community. The world was unprepared to deal with a pandemic of this scale. Preparedness is the key. We need to fill the gaps in the delivery of health services and health coverage,” said the Regional Director.

To address gaps and prepare for the next pandemic, the Regional Director stressed on investments and strengthening the six pillars of health systems; service delivery, health workforce, access to medical products, vaccines and technologies, health information systems, and financing backed by political commitment at the highest levels.

Health care needs of all countries are expected to increase due to the underlying changes in population growth, increased life expectancies, and increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and injuries.

Economic hardships on account of COVID-19, the current geopolitical crisis, and inflationary pressures have hampered recovery with decades of progress in health service delivery and poverty reduction stalled or reversed. The majority of the 71 million pushed into extreme poverty by the end of 2020 reside in the region.

With history bearing testimony to the increase in frequency, diversity and scale of epidemics, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that decades of investments in expanding the health workforce and primary health care oriented health systems served as the foundation for countries to rapidly mount public health actions while maintaining essential health services with minimal disruption and allowing for countries to recover faster.

“The cost of inaction is far greater than action”, said Singh adding, “There is strong and growing evidence that health investment is a smart investment, which pays off by boosting economic performance and stability.”

The Regional Director highlighted the importance of adopting and leveraging technology in health services and pandemic response. Sri Lanka’s Health Information System was the first globally to be adapted to facilitate real-time COVID-19 surveillance. India’s COWIN platform facilitated the delivery of vaccines to over one billion people.

“The pandemic demonstrated how interconnected the world is and how rapidly a virus can transmit from one country to another. A country with a weaker health system poses a threat to health and prosperity everywhere. Now more than ever, we must ensure that adequately financed and quality health services are extended to all,” said Singh.

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The Central Government called news reports suggesting flaws in National Health Accounts (NHA) and a reduction in out-of-pocket expenditure “misleading and wrong” on Friday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “The news report suggesting inaccuracies in National Health Accounts (NHA) especially out-of-pocket expenditure reduction claim is misleading and incorrect. National Health Accounts (NHA) provide detailed information on expenditures incurred within the health sector of the country. These estimates are crucial as they are not only a reflection of the existing health system of the country but also enable the government to monitor the progress made in different health financing indicators.”

“The recent NHA estimates (2018-19) show a substantial reduction in out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE), reaffirming the government’s commitment towards easing the citizens’ financial burden. Calling this data, a “mirage” by one expert of health economics working in a private Indian University and quoted in certain sections of media, is devoid of justification and rational basis,” it said further.

It further said that the main source of information for OOPE was based on NSO data of 2017-18 whereas the previous estimates were based on 2014.

“Both the surveys of the 71st and 75th rounds use the same sampling design for the selection of households so that it ensures comparability of both the rounds,” the government said.

Moreover, the 2017-18 data was a one-year survey whereas 2014 was done over a period of six months.

“Given that seasonality plays an important role, the 2017-18 survey was definitely more robust than the previous survey. And, while the same experts had unequivocally accepted the 2014 data, their assessment of 2017-18 as “doubtful” is truly arbitrary,” it said.

The government said that criticism is based on flawed juxtaposition and selective picking of data to further their specious argument. Formulations like, “seems problematic/seems unlikely” as the basis of a claim, is nothing if not hypothetical disagreement.

The increase in the utilisation of government health facilities has been another important aspect of NSO 2017-18. A study by Muraleedharan et al. (2020) published in the reputed Economic and Political Weekly on these NSS rounds also observes a decline in OOPE in 2017-18.

The Ministry said, “They observe this decline is driven by an increase in the use of public facilities for outpatient and inpatient services between the two NSS rounds. They also find that not only has the utilisation of public facilities increased but there has also been a decline in average OOPE in public facilities. The available evidence of NSS also shows increasing trend in utilisation of government health facilities.”

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An worldwide research found that very high workloads and an increase in workplace abuse since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic had taken a toll on the mental health of healthcare personnel, lowering the standard of care provided globally.

59% of healthcare professionals polled from the UK, US, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, India, and Brazil said their mental health had worsened as a result of working throughout the COVID-19 epidemic. Nearly half (48%) acknowledged that this has hampered their capacity to offer high-quality patient care, with 56 percent expressing a desire to leave their positions since the global health crisis began.

The survey was conducted by YouGov on behalf of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) , the global health initiative of Qatar Foundation . The research examined the impacts of the ongoing pandemic on the lives of health and care workers to understand their experiences and feelings about their career and workplace, as well as explore how they see the future of healthcare as those serving on the frontline of care delivery.

Highlighting a major risk factor to their mental health, almost half of the healthcare professionals revealed that they had witnessed or experienced more physical and verbal abuse since the start of the pandemic. Chief Nursing Officers stood out here, with over three quarters (78 per cent) agreeing they had either seen increased abuse or been at the receiving end of it.

Identifying the biggest changes to their work since the COVID-19 outbreak, more than half of all practitioners noted a higher workload, with a third specifying colleagues under more stress as some of the most prominent developments.

“While health and care workers routinely experience physical and emotional stress from working in high pressure environments, delivering care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these experiences, leading to an alarming impact on the mental health of caregivers on a global scale. It is imperative that governments, health systems and industry leaders listen to those that have been on the front line and learn from their experiences, to improve our collective response to the global mental health crisis that continues to compromise the quality of patient care across communities,” said Sultana Afdhal, CEO of WISH.

“As a champion of mental health, we believe this is a crucial area for global collaboration, and a tremendous opportunity for innovators, to revisit existing mechanisms, devise strategies and rebuild systems that help lift the burden from health and care workers and enable them to enhance care delivery,” Afdhal added.

WISH is a global platform which gathers healthcare experts, policymakers and innovators to unite in the goal of building a healthier world. The biennial WISH Summit aims to showcase WISH’s evidence-based research and discuss how to translate these findings into practical, policy-driven solutions that help transform global healthcare delivery.

The sixth edition of the summit is set to take place on October 4-6 in Doha, Qatar and virtually, under the banner of “Healing the Future.” The summit will thoroughly explore the legacy of COVID-19 from various perspectives, including how to build more resilient and sustainable healthcare systems, improve our response to the mental health crisis, and harness the rapid progress in pharmaceutical innovation that has taken place during the pandemic.

A study of 24 very sick individuals hospitalised with COVID-19 found that an investigational dendrimer nanoparticle drug named OP-101 dramatically reduced the probability of mortality and the requirement for a ventilator.

The small clinical trial, which was funded by Ashvattha Therapeutics, a Johns Hopkins startup that manufactures the drug, discovered that patients who received the drug had a greater than fourfold higher rate of decrease in biomarkers of inflammation and brain injury circulating in their blood compared to patients who received a placebo.

A report on the study was published July 20 in Science Translational Medicine.

“OP-101 could be a potent therapy for decreasing hyperinflammation and promoting repair in people with severe COVID, showing significant clinical benefit without the associated side effects typically seen with some other treatments,” says Sujatha Kannan, M.B.B.S., professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Kannan and her husband, Kannan Rangaramanujam, Ph.D, professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine, developed OP-101 by attaching a powerful antioxidant/anti-inflammatory drug known as n-acetyl cysteine (NAC) to a nanoparticle that is 100,000 times smaller than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

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Each nanoparticle has a number of molecules of the drug attached to it, and can deliver the drug specifically to inflammatory cells called macrophages. The dendrimer nanoparticle delivers the drug to only those macrophages involved in inflammation at the site of injury. Currently, NAC is used in a different form to treat acetaminophen poisoning and for thinning mucus secretions in airways.

The pair of researchers are co-inventors on patents related to the drug’s discovery, and founded a biotechnology company, Ashvattha Therapeutics Inc., based in California, to develop the drug and fund clinical trials. The company licenses the technology through Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures.

The researchers caution that larger clinical trials of OP-101 must be completed, and that OP-101 should be used to treat COVID-19 only in a clinical trial or, for other medical needs, with the supervision of a physician.

For the study, researchers recruited 24 patients between the ages of 43 and 86, mostly male (five Black, 15 Hispanic and four non-Hispanic white) with severe COVID-19 admitted to hospitals between August 2020 and May 2021 within five medical systems located in five states in the U.S., including The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Patients with signs of severe COVID-19 who were on mechanical ventilation or on oxygen through high-flow nasal cannula were eligible to be enrolled in the study. The majority of patients included in the study were in the intensive care unit. Six patients received a single intravenous 2 mg/kg dose of OP-101; six received a 4 mg/kg dose; five received an 8 mg/kg dose and seven received a saline placebo within 24 hours of enrollment.

All 24 patients also received standard care for COVID-19, including corticosteroids used to suppress inflammation and the antiviral drug remdesivir.

The investigators were not aware which patients received placebo or OP-101 until the end of the study.

At the conclusion of the trial, the researchers found that OP-101, at a dosage of either 4 mg/kg or 8 mg/kg, was sixfold better at reducing the inflammation marker C-reactive protein, and fourfold to tenfold better at reducing biomarkers of neurologic injury such as neurofilament light and glial fibrillary acidic protein.

The risk of death or needing a ventilator at 30 and 60 days after treatment was 71% for patients who received the placebo and 18% for those receiving OP-101.

At 60 days after receiving either OP-101 or the placebo, 3 of 7 patients who received the placebo and 14 of 17 patients who received any of the three doses of OP-101 had survived.

OP-101 was not associated with any adverse events, and was well tolerated in this critically ill population. “It is possible that OP-101 may also be useful in treating the neurologic, cardiac and respiratory symptoms associated with long COVID, since a proportion of patients with long COVID have persistent inflammation,” says Rangaramanujam Kannan.

The researchers are planning larger clinical trials of OP-101.

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A smartphone app for eye patients is being developed by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to raise awareness of hospital admission, organ transplantation, and post-surgery follow-up.

Dr JS Titiyal, Chief, RP centre, AIIMS, Delhi said, “I think it’s a demand of time. COVID has also made us realise that you have to approach people in a different manner because a physical approach may be difficult sometimes. It’s only for people coming from far-off places.” “If we could be able to develop this app, phone based app where we can have the direct interaction with the patient and we are going to have a camera system in that which can take the photograph of the eye, especially the interior part, cornea, and this picture we can see in the national eye bank, which is 24 hours working every day and report back to patient if they are suffering for some disease. If they have been registered with us, we can tell them what is their timeframe for coming for admission and transplantation,” Dr Titiyal added on Wednesday.

He also pointed out the difficulty in the follow-up of a patient after any surgery.

“Third important thing is after we do a transplant surgery for patients, their follow-up becomes very difficult sometimes because if somebody develops a rejection after a transplant, it has to be taken care of within a few days. If a patient comes after one or two weeks, then you can reverse the rejection, such a critical time is there. And if this patient can get picked up by this app, then that patient can rush to a hospital nearby hospital,” said Dr Titiyal on the utility and importance of the app for follow-up of patients.

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He said that the app can also be used to connect various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation.
“This is also used to connect to our various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation or they can take care of our post-transplant patients. We can train them and we can discuss with them so that we can advise them what treatment can be started for that patient at that particular time,” he said.

Dr Titiyal further informed that the app will be an AIIMS entity only and it will be a simple app.

“The App is going to be an AIIMS entity only, “This app is going to be AIIMS entity because this is not the very extraordinary type, it will be a simple app where you are going to have a photographic relationship. Fortunately, in India now every corner is connected with Wi-Fi. Everybody has a smartphone nowadays. So this is going to be a simple approach,” said Dr Titiyal.

A recent animal research found that testosterone can drive men to be more gregarious and friendly. The findings of Emory University neuroscientists’ study on Mongolian gerbils were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“We’ve shown that testosterone may directly enhance nonsexual, prosocial conduct, along with aggression, in the same individual, for what we believe is the first time,” says Aubrey Kelly, an assistant professor of psychology at Emory University and the study’s first author. It’s unexpected because often we associate testosterone with escalating aggressive and sexual activities. However, we’ve demonstrated that, depending on the social environment, it can have more complex impacts. The research also demonstrated how testosterone affects oxytocin cells’ brain activity, the so-called “love hormone” linked to social bonding.

The study’s co-author is Richmond Thompson, a neuroscientist at Oxford College at Emory University.

Using rodent experimental models, Kelly’s lab has recently concentrated on the brain effects of oxytocin. The effects of steroids on fish’s neurological systems are studied by Thompson’s group. Both researchers are attempting to answer the question of how hormones function in the brain to enable an animal to quickly alter its behaviour in response to its social environment.

Kelly and Thompson live together as a married couple and also have a common research interest.

We were conversing over a glass of wine when the concept for this article first came to us, Kelly claims. It combines the two spheres of our research.

Most human research have found that testosterone makes people more violent. Kelly and Thompson questioned if testosterone might also generally reduce prosocial behaviours in addition to its ability to promote hostility toward invaders.

They also speculated that it might have a more drastic effect, enhancing favourable social reactions in situations where doing good deeds is appropriate.

The Kelly lab experimented on Mongolian gerbils, rodents that create enduring pair bonds and raise their young together, to answer this question. Males can be hostile during mating and when defending their territory, but they also engage in snuggling and protective behaviour when a female gets pregnant.

In one experiment, a male and a female gerbil were introduced. The males adopted their customary snuggling behaviours toward their companions once they developed a pair connection and the female got pregnant. The male test volunteers were subsequently given an injection of testosterone by the researchers. They anticipated that since testosterone often has an antisocial effect, the consequent sharp increase in a man’s testosterone level would reduce his tendency to cuddle.

As opposed to that, Kelly notes, “we were startled that a male gerbil became even more affectionate and prosocial with his spouse.” He developed into a “great companion.”

A week later, the researchers ran a resident-intruder test as a follow-up experiment. Each male gerbil who had previously gotten a testosterone injection was left alone in his own cage after the females were taken out of the cages. The cage was then filled with an unidentified guy.

A male would typically try to avoid or chase another male that entered its cage, according to Kelly. Instead, the local males who had previously received testosterone injections were friendlier toward the visitor.

However, when the initial male patients received another injection of testosterone, the friendly behaviour rapidly altered. When the intruder approached, they started displaying typical pursuing and/or avoiding behaviours. According to Kelly, “it was like they all of a sudden realised they weren’t allowed to be nice in that situation.”

According to the researchers, because the male subjects’ testosterone levels spiked while they were with their partners, it not only quickly increased the positive social reactions to them but also primed the males to act more prosocially in the future, even when the context changed and they were around another male. The second testosterone injection, however, quickly caused them to change their behaviour and become more hostile, as befitting a male intruder.

According to Kelly, “it seems that testosterone increases context-appropriate conduct. It appears to contribute to enhancing the propensity for being cuddly, protective, or violent.”

In a sense, the laboratory tests slowed down what males might go through practically simultaneously in the wild. Kelly argues that in their natural environment, mating with a spouse raises testosterone levels, preparing them to behave affectionately in the present and the near future when residing with their partner, even if the testosterone levels fall.

The gerbil would probably suffer another spike in testosterone if a competitor entered its burrow, which would prompt him to instantly alter his behaviour in order to ward off the competitor and save his offspring. As the social environment changes, testosterone then seems to aid animals in quickly switching between prosocial and antisocial behaviours.

The biochemical interactions between oxytocin and testosterone were also examined in the current investigation. The findings demonstrated that, in comparison to men who did not receive testosterone injections, men who did so showed increased oxytocin activity in their brains during interactions with a partner.

Kelly claims that although “we know that oxytocin and testosterone systems cross in the brain, we really don’t understand why.” When seen as a whole, our findings imply that one rationale for this overlap may be so they can cooperate to encourage prosocial behaviour.

Kelly claims that hormones appear to play a more sophisticated role in behaviour modulation compared to simply switching a “on” or “off” switch. “It’s like a convoluted dashboard where one dial might need to move a little up while another one slides down,” the speaker said.

Although human behaviours are much more complex than those of Mongolian gerbils, the researchers believe that their findings will serve as a foundation for more research in humans and other animals.

According to Thompson, the parts of the brain that our hormones activate are even the same. It will be useful to discover how hormones like testosterone assist other animals adjust to quickly changing social circumstances in order to forecast and ultimately comprehend how the same chemicals in human brains help shape our own reactions to the social environment around us. This will aid us in understanding the biological roots of their behaviour.

According to new research, structural or functional abnormalities in the left atrium of the heart, with or without symptoms, may raise a person’s risk of dementia by 35% later in life.

The study was published in the Magazine of the American Heart Association, the American Heart Association’s open access, peer-reviewed journal. Dementia risk increased even among those who did not have atrial fibrillation or stroke, two diseases linked to dementia. The left atrium is one of the four chambers of the heart that receives blood from the lungs and pumps it into the left ventricle, which then pumps the blood to the rest of the body.

An abnormality in the structure or functioning of the left atrium, known as atrial cardiopathy, can often serve as a biomarker, or predictor, of a person’s cardiac risk.

Atrial cardiopathy is associated with an increased risk of stroke and atrial fibrillation, which are both linked to an enhanced risk of dementia. In a study led by Michelle C. Johansen, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, the research team aimed to determine the relationship between atrial cardiopathy and dementia, and if so, whether it is independent of atrial fibrillation and stroke.

The study results highlight the need to get a better understanding of the relationship and mechanisms between a state of atrial dysfunction, that may be subclinical (not presenting symptoms) and the newly uncovered association with dementia, the researchers noted.

Participants in the current analysis were part of a larger study group of more than 15,000 people originally recruited for the ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, which began in 1987 to research heart health in people living within four diverse communities throughout the U.S. ARIC study participants were ages 45-65 years at the start of the study and from rural areas in the U.S. (Forsyth County, North Carolina, and Washington County, Maryland) and urban areas: Minneapolis and Jackson, Mississippi.

All ARIC participants attended clinical visits every three years, and the resulting research and data — including hospital record abstraction, ECG tracings, and physician and coroner questionnaires, as well as death certificate data — have led to discoveries and guidelines surrounding atherosclerosis, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, stroke and cognitive decline. This analysis uses data and assessments gathered during participants’ fifth ARIC clinical visit, between 2011 and 2013 as a baseline, and follows the participants through their sixth visit, between 2016 and 2017, and their seventh visit, between 2018 and 2019.

The current analysis included 5,078 of the 5,952 participants who returned for their fifth clinical visit; 59% were female, and 41% were male. The group of 5,078 were an average age of 75 years old, and 21% self-identified as Black adults. During their fifth, sixth and seventh clinical visit, the ARIC participants were evaluated for cognitive decline indicating dementia.

Researchers evaluated cognitive decline in all participants with a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery from the Uniform Data Set of the Alzheimer’s Disease Centers program of the National Institute on Aging, as well an informant interview in a subset of participants. Informant interviews are a screening test of questions, such as the Eight-Item Informant Interview to Differentiate Between Aging and Dementia, given to a spouse, adult child or close friend of the adult being evaluated for cognitive decline.

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The neuropsychological test battery consists of brief measures of processing speed, episodic memory, language, attention and executive function. A diagnosis of dementia was generated based on testing results by a computer diagnostic algorithm and then decided upon by an expert based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the criteria outlined by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of Health.

Hospital discharge codes — obtained as part of the ARIC study either directly from hospital discharge indices or from an indexing service or from an indexing service — and death certificate data, obtained as part of the ARIC study from the Automated Classification of Medical Entities system, were also included to assess participants’ cognitive status. Additionally, cardiac evaluation, including echocardiography, electrocardiography (EKG/ECG) and blood work, was conducted to assess the size and function of the left atrium of the heart to check for signs of atrial cardiopathy.

The analysis of the collective health data found that throughout the more than 30 years of follow-up, 763 people developed dementia, and 1,709 had atrial cardiopathy. The participants with atrial cardiopathy appeared to be 35% more likely to develop dementia. When the researchers adjusted for participants who experienced atrial fibrillation and stroke, even after accounting for other vascular risks, they still observed a respective 31% and 28% increase in dementia risk in patients with atrial cardiopathy.

The researchers suggested that a state of atrial cardiopathy leading to dementia is not a result of atrial fibrillation or stroke alone.

While the researchers note the results do not imply causality, they emphasize the importance of lowering vascular and heart disease risks. Among the study’s limitations was the possibility that asymptomatic atrial fibrillation or silent strokes may have been missed in some study participants.

Additionally, dementia develops slowly, therefore, some participants with milder symptoms may have been missed, and some patients in the study may have died before dementia was observed and documented. The study may also not be generalizable among populations with different demographics than the four communities in Forsyth County, North Carolina; Washington County, Maryland; Minneapolis; and Jackson, Mississippi that comprise ARIC.

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