Tag: iab-science

May 27, 2023

HIV/AIDS Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
— 

Here’s a look at the origins, treatments and global response to HIV and AIDS.

HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus.

AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

HIV/AIDS is spread through sexual contact with an infected person, sharing needles with an infected person, through transfusions of infected blood or through an infected mother.

People infected with HIV go through three stages of infection:

  1. Acute infection, or acute retroviral syndrome, which can produce flu-like symptoms in the first month after infection.
  2. Clinical latency, or asymptomatic HIV infection, in which HIV reproduces at lower levels.
  3. AIDS, in which the amount of CD4 cells fall below 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood (as opposed to the normal level of 500-1,500).

HIV-1 and HIV-2 can both cause AIDS. HIV-1 is the most common human immunodeficiency virus; HIV-2 is found mostly in western Africa.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) involves taking a cocktail of HIV medications used to treat the virus. In 1987, Azidothymidine (AZT) became the first FDA-approved drug used to attempt to treat HIV/AIDS.

from UNAIDS:

38.4 million – Number of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide in 2021.

5.9 million – Approximate number of people living with HIV globally that are unaware of their HIV-positive status in 2021.

160,000 – Newly infected children worldwide in 2021.

1.5 million – New infections worldwide in 2021.

650,000 – Approximate number of AIDS-related deaths worldwide in 2021.

Of the 4,500 new infections each day in 2019, 59% are in sub-Saharan Africa.

40.1 million – Approximate number of AIDS-related deaths worldwide since the start of the epidemic.

Sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of the following countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

1981 – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publish the first reports of men in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco who were previously healthy and are suffering from rare forms of cancer and pneumonia, accompanied by “opportunistic infections.”

1982 – The CDC refer to the disease as AIDS for the first time.

1983 – French and American researchers determine that AIDS is caused by HIV.

1985 – Blood tests to detect HIV are developed.

December 1, 1988 – First World AIDS Day.

1999 – Researchers in the United States find evidence that HIV-1 most likely originated in a population of chimpanzees in West Africa. The virus appears to have been transmitted to people who hunted, butchered and consumed the chimpanzees for food.

January 29, 2003 – In his State of the Union speech, US President George W. Bush promises to dramatically increase funding to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.

May 27, 2003 – Bush signs H.R. 1298, the US Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003, also known as PEPFAR (US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), that provides $15 billion over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria abroad, particularly in Africa.

July 30, 2008 – H.R. 5501, The Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008, becomes law and authorizes up to $48 billion to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Through 2013, PEPFAR plans to work in partnership with host nations to support treatment for at least four million people, prevention of 12 million new infections and care for 12 million people.

October 2011 – In his book, “The Origins of AIDS,” Dr. Jacques Pepin traces the emergence and subsequent development of HIV/AIDS to suggest that initial AIDS outbreaks began earlier than previously believed.

July 24, 2012 – Doctors announce during the 19th International AIDS Conference that Timothy Ray Brown, known as the “Berlin patient,” has been clinically “cured” of HIV. Brown, diagnosed with leukemia, underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2007 using marrow from a donor with an HIV-resistant mutation. He no longer has detectable HIV.

March 3, 2013 – Researchers announce that a baby born infected with HIV has been “functionally cured.” The child, born in Mississippi, was given high doses of antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of being born. A year later, the child now has detectable levels of the virus in her blood, 27 months after being taken off antiretroviral drugs, according to scientists involved with her case.

June 18, 2013 – Marking the 10th anniversary of PEPFAR, Secretary of State John Kerry announces that the millionth child has been born HIV-free due to prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs (PMTCT).

March 14, 2014 – The CDC reports on a case of likely female-to-female HIV transmission. Unlike previous announcements of other cases involving female-to-female transmission, this case excludes additional risk factors for HIV transmission.

July 24, 2017 – A 9-year-old child from South Africa is reported to have been in remission for over eight years without treatment, according to Dr. Avy Violari, who spoke at the 9th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science in Paris.

November 2018 – According to PEPFAR’s website, they have “supported life-saving antiretroviral treatment (ART) for more than 14.6 million men, women and children” since 2003.

March 5, 2019 – According to a case study published in the journal Nature, a second person has sustained remission from HIV-1. The “London patient” was treated with stem cell transplants from donors with an HIV-resistant mutation. The London patient has been in remission for 18 months since he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs. The study also includes a possible third remission after stem cell transplantation, this person is referred to as the “Düsseldorf patient.”

May 2, 2019 – A study of nearly 1,000 gay male couples, where one partner with HIV took antiretroviral therapy (ART), found no new cases of transmission to the HIV-negative partner during sex without a condom. The landmark, eight-year study, published in the Lancet medical journal shows that the risk of passing on the HIV virus is eliminated with effective drugs treatment.

October 7, 2019 – Governor Gavin Newsom signs a bill making HIV prevention drugs available without a prescription in California starting on January 1, 2020. The medications covered by the new legislation are pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), which both help prevent HIV infections. California becomes the first state in the country to allow pharmacists to provide the drugs without a physician’s prescription.

November 6, 2019 – According to a study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, a team of scientists has detected a new strain of HIV. The strain is a part of the Group M version of HIV-1, the same family of virus subtypes to blame for the global HIV pandemic, according to Abbott Laboratories, which conducted the research along with the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

June 15, 2020 – A study is published in the journal JAMA Network Open showing that the life expectancy of people with HIV approaches that of people without the virus, when antiviral therapy is started early in infection. However, disparities still remain in the number of chronic health problems that people with HIV endure.

July 7, 2020 – Scientists presenting at the 23rd International AIDS Conference announce a new study that found an injection of the investigational drug cabotegravir every eight weeks was more effective at preventing HIV than daily oral pills. It is also announced that a Brazilian man might be the first person to experience long-term HIV remission after being treated with only an antiviral drug regimen – not stem cell transplantation.

November 16, 2021 – A new study finds a second patient whose body has seemingly rid itself of HIV. The international team of scientists reports in the Annals of Internal Medicine that the patient, originally from the city of Esperanza, Argentina, showed no evidence of intact HIV in large numbers of her cells, suggesting that she may have naturally achieved what they describe as a “sterilizing cure” of HIV infection. The 30-year-old woman in the new study is only the second patient who has been described as achieving this sterilizing cure without help from stem cell transplantation or other treatment.

December 20, 2021 – The US Food and Drug Administration announces that it has approved the first injectable medication for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to lower the risk of getting HIV through sex.

February 15, 2022 – A US woman becomes the third known person to go into HIV remission, and the first mixed-race woman, thanks to a transplant of stem cells from umbilical cord blood, according to research presented at a conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

December 1, 2022 – An experimental HIV vaccine, called eOD-GT8 60mer, has been found to induce broadly neutralizing antibody precursors among a small group of volunteers in a Phase 1 study. The clinical trial results, published in the journal Science, suggest that a two-dose regimen of the vaccine, given eight weeks apart, can elicit immune responses against the human immunodeficiency virus.

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May 24, 2023

Sleep apnea raises risk of long Covid by up to 75% for some, study says | CNN

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CNN
— 

Adults who have obstructive sleep apnea have up to an 75% increased risk, on average, of developing long Covid after a SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with people without sleep apnea, a new study found.

Women with obstructive sleep apnea had up to an 89% increased risk, while men had a 59% higher risk, according to the analysis of electronic health data on nearly 1.8 million people.

Obstructive sleep apnea is a potentially dangerous disorder in which breathing stops for about 10 seconds multiple times during the night due to a blockage of the airways by heavy or relaxed soft tissues in the mouth and throat.

A second analysis of medical records of a smaller group of 330,000 adults found the risk to be only 12%, according to the study, which is part of RECOVER, or Researching Covid to Enhance Recovery. RECOVER is a National Institutes of Health initiative dedicated to understanding why some people develop long Covid and how best to detect, treat, and prevent the condition.

Why the huge difference in numbers? People in the larger study had additional health concerns, or comorbidities, such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, said senior study author Lorna Thorpe, co-lead of the RECOVER Clinical Science Core at NYU Langone Health.

“The range of 12% to 75% is likely due to a combination of different study populations and different levels of comorbidities, but also different definitions of long Covid,” she said. “We didn’t even have a diagnostic code for long Covid until October 2021.

“I believe the risk is likely to be in the middle, but we will need additional studies to tease that out,” added Thorpe, a professor and director of the division of epidemiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

A third analysis of medical records of 102,000 children with sleep apnea found no correlation between sleep apnea and long Covid after the various confounding health conditions were factored out, “which, of course, is great news,” Thorpe said.

“By using three very large networks of electronic health records, we were able to do this study three times, which is one of the strengths of the research,” she added. “This study is the first collaboration of this focus and scale to find that adults with sleep apnea are at greater risk for long Covid.”

This is an “important study” on long Covid, said Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, a principal investigator of the University of Arizona Health Sciences RECOVER Adult Study and professor of medicine.

“Research needs to be done in a prospective study to verify this association, and if found to be true these findings have implications for treatment of long Covid,” said Parthasarathy, who was not involved in the study.

“It is important to note that some of the symptoms of long Covid such as fatigue may be related to obstructive sleep apnea, and that the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea may improve such long Covid-related symptoms,” he added.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Sleep, is one of a several studies released since Congress allocated $1.15 billion to NIH in January 2021, to study the long-term effects of Covid over a four-year period. To date, the agency says it has used about $811 million to fund research.

Researchers wanted to investigate the role of sleep apnea in long Covid due to the well-known association between the condition and poorer outcomes after a Covid infection.

“People with sleep apnea are at higher risk for a more severe case of Covid-19, admission to intensive care at the hospital and for mortality,” Thorpe said.

“Obstructive sleep apnea can result in increased inflammation, potentially disrupted sleep leading to an increased propensity to develop infections and reduced immunity,” said Dr. Bhanu Prakash Kolla, a sleep medicine specialist in the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

“This could potentially explain the pathway by which obstructive sleep apnea leads to an increased risk of having Covid and also … (long Covid),” said Kolla, who was not involved in the study.

Sleep apnea is an underdiagnosed condition regardless of gender, said the University of Arizona’s Parthasarathy.

“It is conservatively estimated that 80% of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are not diagnosed,” he said. In addition, “an assumption with these analyses is that patients with OSA are likely to be treated. However, nearly half of them are not using the treatment.”

Why would women have up to an 89% higher risk compared with 59% in men? The study did not address that issue.

However, “one can postulate this difference may be based on what we know about sex differences in sleep and immune responses,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Zee, who was not involved with the new research, coauthored one of the first published studies on the link between sleep apnea and serious Covid infection.

“Women typically have stronger immune responses to viral infections, and thus also vulnerability for post-infection inflammation,” Zee said. “Women in general have more insomnia and with long Covid tend to present with fatigue and insomnia symptoms, which are also common symptoms of long Covid.”

Another reason could be that sleep apnea has historically been considered a male disease, Thorpe said, which could mean that by the time a woman is diagnosed her apnea is more advanced.

“It could be that the women who are documented in electronic health records have more severe sleep apnea because physicians more often look for sleep apnea among men,” she said.

As scientists continue to learn more about long Covid, further information will become available, Thorpe said. In the meantime, people who have sleep apnea — or who snore, snort and stop breathing at night, which are all signs of the condition — should be exceedingly careful when they contact Covid.

“People with sleep apnea who get infected with Covid should seek early treatment and consider getting Paxlovid, the oral medication prescribed to reduce risk of severe outcomes,” Thorpe said. “They should also keep up with their vaccinations to lower the risk of infection in the first place.”

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May 23, 2023

What happens if you wake up before your alarm? Tips from sleep experts | CNN

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Sign up for CNN’s Sleep, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide has helpful hints to achieve better sleep.



CNN
— 

Many people dread the blaring sound of an alarm clock, signaling the start of a busy workday. Others wish they weren’t already awake and that the sound had actually woken them up.

Waking up many minutes or even hours before the alarm is not a new phenomenon, sleep experts tell CNN, but it can cause people discomfort.

More than a third of Americans get fewer hours of sleep a night than the minimum recommendation of seven hours, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the National Institutes of Health, studies across the globe show anywhere from 10% to 30% of the population struggles with insomnia, defined as the consistent difficulty falling asleep and the inability to return to sleep after going to bed.

Those experiencing insomnia can have a combination of “nocturnal awakenings” and what’s categorized as “early morning awakenings,” according to a 2009 study from the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center and other universities. The study finds that some people may experience early awakenings without other insomnia symptoms such as “difficulty initiating sleep,” “nocturnal awakenings” and “non-restorative sleep,” meaning sleep that isn’t substantial even with the recommended hours.

While insomnia treatments include cognitive behavioral therapy and medication, other daily tips can have an impact on early morning awakenings. An acute sleep disorder could be at play for someone not experiencing chronic insomnia but waking up early.

The constant waking up before that daily sound is coupled with an immense frustration about not falling back asleep. The stress can feel isolating and all-consuming, taking more precedence than the initial sleep problem.

“You start ruminating about it, and then you start doing things that make insomnia worse,” said Dr. Rajkumar Dasgupta, associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

“Don’t start telling yourself … ‘I’m going to make myself stay in bed until I fall asleep,’ ” he said.

So, what can you do about it?

If you wake up suddenly — in what feels like the early morning hours — resist checking the clock. Finding out it’s 3 a.m. when you set the alarm for 7 a.m. can cause increased worry about the hours of sleep you hoped to attain.

“The anxiety and the frustration build,” said sleep specialist Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at Rand Corp. “Clock watching becomes habitual, and that habitual response of frustration and anxiety also causes a stress response in the body.”

When anxiety and worry take precedence, cortisol levels increase, and the body becomes alert. This process is counterproductive for maintaining drowsiness, as the brain becomes hyper-engaged.

“You look at the clock. It’s 3 o’clock in the morning like clockwork, and immediately might grit your teeth. You think of all the demands … how awful it is going to be when you’re sleep-deprived,” Troxel said. “All of this mental processing and agitation is antithetical to the sleep state. It’s making you more alert and aroused … versus sending the signal to the brain that it’s OK to drift.”

If your alarm is on the phone, checking the clock can pose an even more significant trigger. Consider getting an alarm that isn’t attached to your phone.

“Our phone is our strongest signal to our waking lives,” Troxel said. “You’re getting the light exposure from your phone, which can directly stimulate your circadian signal for alertness. The content of what we are consuming on our phones can be very activating, whether it’s scrolling through social media or reading the news. These can all stimulate emotional states that are more activating rather than relaxing.”

Paradoxically, experts say to get out of bed. Yes, even at 3 a.m.

“Abandon the idea of getting back to sleep,” Troxel said. “When you do that, when you let the pressure go that sleep isn’t so effortful, sleep is more likely to come back.”

In a stimulus control technique, you can distract your brain with a mundane task to help bring back drowsiness faster than staying frustrated in bed.

Mentally assigning the bed with sleeping helps people associate positive sleep thoughts with their space. Leaving the room when agitation sets in can separate the frustration from the bed.

Anything from reading a book to knitting or listening to soft music (but not using a phone) can positively distract the brain. Once drowsiness sets in again, head back to bed.

Dasgupta recommends keeping track not only of when you went to bed and woke up on a given night, but also the calming techniques, environmental factors — and even nutrition and exercise routines that seemed to help you sleep that day.

“Perfect sleep is like having a puzzle, and you need all the right pieces,” Dasgupta said. “People who have insomnia, they’re missing one of those sleep hygiene pieces. When you make your recommendation, like a muscle relaxation, maybe that’s not the thing that they were missing. Maybe sound wasn’t the key part. Maybe you need more of that weighted blanket.”

It also depends on our given circadian rhythm, or the 24-hour solar cycle the body runs on that alerts us when sleepiness sets at night. If any environmental factors change — such as travel, work schedule or lighting — the body’s circadian rhythm may be thrown off, signaling an uncomfortable early wake-up before the alarm, Dasgupta said. In this case, changing the lighting in a given room or getting alternative lighting could help.

Progressive muscle relaxation may work — start at the toes, clench the given muscles for three seconds and release. Breathe through this process. The 4-7-8 breathing exercise coupled with muscle relaxation can be successful, Dasgupta said. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold it for 7 seconds and breathe out for 8 seconds.

Relaxing breath

Follow along as Dr. Ellen Vora guides you through the 4-7-8 breathing technique.

Source: Courtesy Dr. Ellen Vora

Others may find that yoga, meditation or reading can help when they wake up before their alarm. The same techniques don’t work for everyone, but practicing various strategies that may affect sleep is critical, ultimately building a well-followed routine.

If the problem continues beyond three times a week for three months, experts recommend talking to a sleep specialist. It may require more than a simple habit change.

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May 18, 2023

When older parents resist help or advice, use these tips to cope | CNN

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KFF Health News
— 

It was a regrettable mistake. But Kim Sylvester thought she was doing the right thing at the time.

Her 80-year-old mother, Harriet Burkel, had fallen at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, fractured her pelvis and gone to a rehabilitation center to recover. It was only days after the death of Burkel’s husband, 82, who had moved into a memory care facility three years earlier.

With growing distress, Sylvester had watched her mother, who had emphysema and peripheral artery disease, become increasingly frail and isolated. “I would say, ‘Can I help you?’ And my mother would say, ‘No, I can do this myself. I don’t need anything. I can handle it,’ ” Sylvester told me.

Now, Sylvester had a chance to get some more information. She let herself into her mother’s home and went through all the paperwork she could find. “It was a shambles — completely disorganized, bills everywhere,” she said. “It was clear things were out of control.”

Sylvester sprang into action, terminating her mother’s orders for anti-aging supplements, canceling two car warranty insurance policies (Burkel wasn’t driving at that point), ending a yearlong contract for knee injections with a chiropractor and throwing out donation requests from dozens of organizations. When her mother found out, she was furious.

“I was trying to save my mother, but I became someone she couldn’t trust — the enemy,” Sylvester said. “I really messed up.”

Dealing with an older parent who stubbornly resists offers of help isn’t easy. But the solution isn’t to make an older person feel like you’re steamrolling them and taking over their affairs. What’s needed instead are respect, empathy and appreciation of the older person’s autonomy.

“It’s hard when you see an older person making poor choices and decisions. But if that person is cognitively intact, you can’t force them to do what you think they should do,” said Anne Sansevero, president of the board of directors of the Aging Life Care Association, a national organization of care managers who work with older adults and their families. “They have a right to make choices for themselves.”

That doesn’t mean adult children concerned about an older parent should step aside or agree to everything the parent proposes. Rather, a different set of skills is needed.

Cheryl Woodson, an author and retired physician based in the Chicago area, learned this firsthand when her mother — whom Woodson described as a “very powerful” woman — developed mild cognitive impairment. She started getting lost while driving and would buy things she didn’t need, then give them away.

Chastising her mother wasn’t going to work. “You can’t push people like my mother or try to take control,” Woodson said. “You don’t tell them, ‘No, you’re wrong,’ because they changed your diapers and they’ll always be your mom.”

Instead, Woodson learned to appeal to her mother’s pride in being the family matriarch. “Whenever she got upset, I’d ask her, ‘Mother, what year was it that Aunt Terri got married?’ or ‘Mother, I don’t remember how to make macaroni. How much cheese do you put in?’ And she’d forget what she was worked up about, and we’d just go on from there.”

Woodson, author of “To Survive Caregiving: A Daughter’s Experience, a Doctor’s Advice,” also learned to apply a “does it really matter to safety or health?” standard to her mother’s behavior. It helped Woodson let go of her sometimes unreasonable expectations.

One example she related: “My mother used to shake hot sauce on pancakes. It would drive my brother nuts, but she was eating, and that was good.”

“You don’t want to rub their nose into their incapacity,” said Woodson, whose mother died in 2003.

Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and family therapist, sounded similar themes in describing a psychiatrist in his late 70s who didn’t like to bend to authority. After his wife died, the older man stopped shaving and changing his clothes regularly. Though he had diabetes, he didn’t want to see a physician and instead prescribed medicine for himself. Even after several strokes compromised his vision, he insisted on driving.

An adult child needs to show empathy and respect for the autonomy of an aging parent.

Jacobs’ take: “You don’t want to go toe-to-toe with someone like this, because you will lose. They’re almost daring you to tell them what to do so they can show you they won’t follow your advice.”

What’s the alternative? “I would employ empathy and appeal to this person’s pride as a basis for handling adversity or change,” Jacobs said. “I might say something along the lines of, ‘I know you don’t want to stop driving and that this will be very painful for you. But I know you have faced difficult, painful changes before and you’ll find your way through this.’ “

“You’re appealing to their ideal self rather than treating them as if they don’t have the right to make their own decisions anymore,” he said. In the older psychiatrist’s case, conflict with his four children was constant, but he eventually stopped driving.

Another strategy that can be useful: “Show up, but do it in a way that’s face-saving,” Jacobs said. Instead of asking your father if you can check in on him, “Go to his house and say, ‘The kids really wanted to see you. I hope you don’t mind.’ Or ‘We made too much food. I hope you don’t mind my bringing it over.’ Or ‘I wanted to stop by. I hope you can give me some advice about this issue that’s on my mind.’ “

This psychiatrist didn’t have any cognitive problems, though he wasn’t as sharp as he used to be. But encroaching cognitive impairment often colors difficult family interactions.

If you think this might be a factor with your parents, instead of trying to persuade them to accept more help at home, try to get them medically evaluated, said Leslie Kernisan, author of “When Your Aging Parent Needs Help: A Geriatrician’s Step-by-Step Guide to Memory Loss, Resistance, Safety Worries, and More.”

“Decreased brain function can affect an older adult’s insight and judgment and ability to understand the risks of certain actions or situations while also making people suspicious and defensive,” she noted.

This doesn’t mean you should give up on talking to an older parent with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia, however. “You always want to give the older adult a chance to weigh in and talk about what’s important to them and their feelings and concerns,” Kernisan said.

“If you frame your suggestions as a way of helping your parent achieve a goal they’ve said was important, they tend to be much more receptive to it,” she said.

A turning point for Sylvester and her mother came when the older woman, who developed dementia, went to a nursing home at the end of 2021. Her mother, who at first didn’t realize the move was permanent, was furious, and Sylvester waited two months before visiting. When she finally walked into Burkel’s room, bearing a Valentine’s Day wreath, Burkel hugged her and said, “I’m so glad to see you,” before pulling away. “But I’m so mad at my other daughter.”

Sylvester, who doesn’t have a sister, responded, “I know, Mom. She meant well, but she didn’t handle things properly.” She learned the value of what she calls a “therapeutic fiblet” from Kernisan, who ran a family caregiver group Sylvester attended between 2019 and 2021.

After that visit, Sylvester saw her mother often, and all was well between the two women up until Burkel’s death. “If something was upsetting my mother, I would just go, ‘Interesting,’ or ‘That’s a thought.’ You have to give yourself time to remember this is not the person you used to know and create the person you need to be your parent, who’s changed so much.”

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May 17, 2023

Older dogs who sleep badly may have dementia, study says | CNN

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CNN
— 

In a veterinary lab in North Carolina, Woofus, a 15-year-old basset hound mix, is allowing researchers to attach an electroencephalogram, or EEG, electrodes to his head before padding off to a dark, cozy room for an afternoon nap.

During his snooze, the study team will analyze Woofus’ brain waves to judge the quality of his sleep. Woofus has canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome, or CCDS, the doggie disorder that’s similar to Alzheimer’s disease in people. The elderly dog’s owners say he is struggling to get enough rest at night.

“Just like humans with Alzheimer’s disease, dogs with CCDS experience sleep disruptions, such as insomnia and sleep fragmentation,” said veterinarian Dr. Natasha Olby, a professor of neurology, neurosurgery and gerontology at North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh.

Woofus isn’t the only sleep-deprived dog in this study. On other days in the clinic, Jake, a 13-year-old pointer, and Coco, a 12-year-old dachshund, among others, might be taking a siesta while researchers peer inside their brains.

“Owners of dogs with CCDS report their dogs suffer from difficulty sleeping at night, increased sleeping during the day or both, as well as pacing and vocalizations at night,” Olby said. “This can be very hard on the dog’s owners — not only are they worried for their pet, their sleep is also significantly disrupted.”

To find out whether sleep problems in dogs indicate early signs of dementia as they do in people, Olby and her team turned to a group of senior dogs enrolled in an ongoing study testing antiaging supplements. The dogs visit twice a year “and do all kinds of really fun cognitive testing,” she said. “They really enjoy it and like the handlers they work with.”

To be considered for the antiaging study, the dog must have lived more than 75% of the expected life span for their breed or mix of breeds. A dog also could not be crippled by arthritis or going blind, as the pet needed to be able to perform tasks designed to test their cognitive capabilities.

A dog might be asked, for example, to find a treat hidden under a cup or a snack inside a cylinder in which one end had been closed by a researcher. By repeating the tasks at the clinic every six months, any decline in the dog’s mental agility or performance can be tracked.

Woofus, 15-year-old basset hound mix, plays

For the new study measuring a dog’s brain waves during sleep, researchers used a form of electroencephalogram called polysomnography, used in sleep clinics to diagnose sleep problems in people.

“It’s the gold standard method to look at what the brain is doing during sleep,” Olby said, adding this is the first canine study to apply the same technology used on humans.

“We glue these electrodes on with a really great conductive glue that’s water soluble. Then we just wash it off afterwards,” she said. “We don’t use anywhere near as many electrodes as you see on people in a sleep lab, because dogs have far less cortex and surface area to cover.”

Already at ease with the staff, it wasn’t too difficult to train 28 senior dogs to wear electrodes and walk around with dangling wires without complaint, she said.

Jake, a 13-year-old pointer, was one of 28 dogs trained to sleep with EEG electrodes.

To make the dogs more comfortable during their siestas, owners bring their dogs’ beds from home, which are placed in a protected room with white noise.

“Staff sit with them while they nap to make sure that they’re not trying to pull out or eat the electrodes or do anything that might hurt them,” Olby said.

When sleeping brain waves were compared with a dog’s cognitive testing, researchers found that dogs with greater dementia spent less time in deep and REM sleep, just as people do. The study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

“Dogs that did worse on our memory tests had levels of REM sleep which were not as deep as they should be,” Olby said. “We found the same when it came to deep sleep.”

While no one knows the exact mechanism at work — either in people or in dogs — research like this study may help scientists better understand the process and find ways to treat it, Olby said.

“There’s a possibility we might be able to identify an early signature of change on the EEG that can tell us, ‘Hey, things are starting to slide.’ Because with a chronic neurodegenerative process, of course we’d love to be able to intervene sooner rather than later.”

In the meantime, there are medications for anxiety and melatonin for sleep that veterinarians can prescribe as a dog ages, Olby said. And as with people, diet and exercise appears to be a factor.

“There’s been some very nice studies showing diets that are enriched in flavonoids and antioxidants and medium-chain fatty acids could possibly slow the development of dementia in dogs,” she said. “It’s just like people — if you can eat a Mediterranean diet and do your exercise, you’re going to do better.”

Doggie dementia is a worrisome reality for many senior dogs. Research has found that by 11 or 12 years of age, 28% of dogs had mild and 10% had severe cognitive impairment. By the time the dogs reached age 15, the risk had risen to 68% for mild and 35% for severe cognitive impairment. A 2022 study found the odds of canine cognitive dysfunction increased by 52% with each year of age, Olby said.

Pet owners can look for signs that their dog’s mental functions are declining. According to Olby, vets use an acronym called DISHA-AL, which stands for disorientation, interaction changes, sleep/wake cycle alterations, house soiling; activity changes (increased or decreased); and anxiety and learning & memory.

“One of the earliest signs is you’ll start to see a little confusion just like you do with people, they suddenly start to make some mistakes and things you wouldn’t expect them to do. Very similar to us,” Olby said.

“Do you really think there’s enough room for you?” — Delilah, a 10-year-old Siberian husky.
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Lynx (top) and Luna (bottom) are 2-year-old Siberian Forest cats.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1125″ width=”2000″/>

Dogs and cats who share their human's bed tend to have a

Banshee, a 6-year-old Husky mix, is a rescue who survived heartworms.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1500″ width=”2000″/>

Mason, a 3-year-old lab mix, loves to sleep next to his dad every night but hates covers.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1125″ width=”2000″/>

“What? I don’t snore!” — Luna, a 2-year-old Siberian Forest cat.
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Molly (left), a 15-year-old cockapoo mix, likes to sleep in her human’s armpit, while Evie (right) prefers the end of the bed and hates to be woken up early.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”900″ width=”1600″/>

Evie, a 4-year-old Jack Russell terrier mix, has been known to crawl onto her human if she needs more affection.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1358″ width=”2000″/>

A dog who sleeps at the end of the bed with their face toward the door might have a more protective personality, Varble said.</p><p>

Is sleeping with your pets good for them?

Dogs may also lose learned behaviors, or forget their house training and begin to have unintentional accidents around the house, she added.

“A classic problem is wandering around and getting lost under the table or something — they just can’t process the information and figure out where they are. Changes in sleep cycle, increased anxiety, all of these things are classic signs of dementia,” she said.

Don’t assume that is what is wrong with your dog, however. Just like in people, other health problems such as metabolic disease, urinary tract infections or even brain tumors can mimic classic signs of dementia.

“High blood pressure can make dogs anxious, for example,” Olby said, “so a vet needs to thoroughly check the dog to rule out disease.”

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May 14, 2023

Sleeping will be one of the challenges for astronauts on Mars missions | CNN

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CNN
— 

Astronauts have been adjusting to the challenges of sleeping in space for years — and the lessons learned from their zero gravity slumbers will ensure that one day the first crewed missions to Mars will have gotten enough rest before exploring the red planet.

Rotating crews have spent an average of six months living and working aboard the International Space Station for nearly 23 years, and they struggle with sleep issues just like people on Earth. Some of the challenges are similar to those of shift workers or people with abnormal schedules, but others are more unique to the space environment.

NASA astronaut Josh Cassada is bundled up in his crew quarters on the International Space Station on March 2.

For example, most people don’t have to worry about floating away from their beds due to zero gravity. Don’t worry — astronauts use special restraints to keep them from floating through the space station while asleep.

Two of the biggest challenges for astronauts include their sleep environment and the establishment of a natural sleep cycle.

Astronauts have dark, quiet and private crew quarters on the space station conducive to good sleep — but that won’t always be the case on other space missions, said Dr. Erin Flynn-Evans, director of the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Like their historic Apollo predecessors, the Orion capsules that will be used during future Artemis missions to the moon are small vehicles with limited space for crews and sleeping bags for rest periods.

“I think of it like camping,” Flynn-Evans said. “If it’s for a couple days, probably no big deal. But the longer you’re in close quarters with someone, the more disruptive that can be.”

While the space station affords incredible views of Earth, the 16 sunrises an astronaut witnesses a day can wreak havoc on circadian rhythm, the body’s natural clock for sleeping and waking.

On Earth, disruptions to circadian rhythm occur for people who work overnight shifts or experience jet lag while traveling across time zones.

“Light is what resets our circadian rhythm and keeps us organized to that day-night cycle, but in space we have several challenges,” Flynn-Evans said.

The space station orbits around Earth every 90 minutes, creating alternating cycles of darkness and light. Rather than force the astronauts to adapt to such a strange cycle, experts at NASA have added lighting to the interior of the space station that mimics what people experience during a normal day on Earth.

“We have to try to block out the light from windows during the night,” she said, “and we have to really try to maximize the light either through windows or with internal lighting to make sure the crew are getting that synchronizing stimulus so that they’re able to stay awake and asleep at the right time.”

Jet lag begins before astronauts ever arrive at the space station, and their sleep schedules are shifted for days before liftoff based on the time of day and time zone from which they will launch. Once they reach the space station, each astronaut is shifted to Greenwich Mean Time, “a nice middle ground between all of the countries that participate,” Flynn-Evans said.

At the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory, Flynn-Evans and her colleagues develop tools to help astronauts overcome sleep challenges. Some of the strategies involve managing when the astronauts are exposed to blue light, the primary synchronizing wavelength for the circadian system, and when to reduce blue light to help them sleep.

Astronauts have regimented schedules, but the arrival of resupply missions or new crews sometimes interrupt those. Flynn-Evans and other researchers develop approaches to shifting sleep safely for the astronauts, such as determining when to take naps or stay up later to accommodate schedule changes.

The same tips that help astronauts sleep also apply on Earth, including following a regular schedule with waking and falling asleep at the same time as much as possible and limiting exposure to blue light before going to bed, which is emitted by LED TVs, smartphones, computers and tablets.

Although scientists have sleep data from years of spaceflight, conducting simulated missions on Earth allow for more control.

“We do fake space missions all the time,” Flynn-Evans said. “We have what we call an analog space environment at Johnson Space Center called the Human Exploration Research Analog or HERA, and that’s basically a small habitat.”

The CHAPEA crew will live in a habitat with individual quarters at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The habitat mimics the size of a lunar base or small spacecraft and can house crews of four people for long periods of time. Flynn-Evans was involved in a study in which crews spent 45 days in the habitat and were restricted to five hours of sleep on weeknights and eight hours on weekends. The participants were tested for alertness and performance.

Findings from the experiment showed that if crew members only got five hours of sleep one night, they needed more opportunities to catch up on sleep on subsequent nights to prevent the ill effects of sleep deprivation. The current requirement is that crew members get 8½ hours of sleep per night on missions to avoid long-term sleep loss, fatigue-induced errors and health complications, according to NASA.

In June, NASA will begin the first experiment in a new 3D-printed Martian habitat at Johnson Space Center called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA.

Over the course of one year, a four-person crew will live and work inside a 1,700-square-foot (158-square-meter) space to simulate living on Mars. The focus for the first experiment is nutrition, but Flynn-Evans and her fellow researchers will also monitor how well the crew sleeps.

Habitats such as HERA and CHAPEA allow scientists to simulate surprises that may happen on a real mission to the moon or Mars, such as limited resources, failing equipment, communication issues and other stressors of small habitats.

An unexpectedly rich source of sleep data has proven to be studying the Earth-bound scientists and engineers who work on Mars missions such as the Perseverance rover.

A day on Mars lasts about 39 minutes longer than one on Earth, but it’s just enough that the members of Mars mission control have to adjust their schedules constantly to stay on Perseverance’s timetable.

“If you’re shifting 39 minutes a day, that means that you’re basically going to bed 39 minutes later every day,” Flynn-Evans said. “It doesn’t seem that bad on a single night. But after five days, it’s like you’ve crossed like six time zones. It’s a real stressor on the body.”

Many unknowns still exist about being on “Mars time,” such as how the time shift affects the human body’s metabolism.

Understanding how people on Earth adapt to live on Mars time is one way of preparing for future missions to the red planet. Flynn-Evans and her team are working closely with those planning the Artemis lunar missions to optimize the astronauts’ schedules and ensure that the lighting is sufficient and the noise is dampened inside Orion when they need to sleep.

Researchers also want to study how much caffeine astronauts require for alertness to make sure crews don’t run out of coffee in a spacecraft with limited storage.

“Sleep is intimately tied with performance, alertness, interpersonal communication and relationships,” Flynn-Evans said, “so we want to make sure that the crews are set up for success and getting that sleep they need.”

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May 13, 2023

FDA advisers narrowly vote in favor of experimental gene therapy for rare muscle disease | CNN

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CNN
— 

Most parents wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of their kids getting hooked up to an IV bag filled with trillions of viruses.

But for Melanie Hennick, whose son, Connor, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, it was an opportunity she hoped would change his life.

“We knew this wasn’t a cure,” Hennick said. “But it was a chance.”

Connor is one of just dozens of kids to have received SRP-9001, an experimental gene therapy that aims to slow or stop the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD. Current treatments for the disease – which primarily affects boys because of the way it’s inherited – include steroids and, later, heart drugs. But none stop it.

SRP-9001 uses viruses to ferry a copy of a gene to muscles to help make up for one that’s causing the disease. Hennick and many other parents like her advocated for the treatment’s accelerated approval Friday in a meeting of outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration.

The advisers voted 8-6 in favor of approving the treatment, and the FDA will now decide whether to follow their advice.

“The decision the FDA has to make doesn’t just affect the patients in study 301 [an ongoing confirmatory trial that Sarepta is running]; it affects the entire field of drug development for Duchenne,” said Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, who voted against recommending approval. “The totality of evidence … simply doesn’t rise to the threshold that’s required for accelerated approval.”

Dr. Raymond Roos, a neurology professor at the University of Chicago Medical Center, voted in favor. “The downside of the gene therapy here is relatively small compared to whether it really helps the patient, and for this reason, I voted yes,” he said.

Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said his agency will take the recommendation and “do something that we have to do every day at FDA. … We have to manage through the uncertainty here.”

The FDA’s decision, expected by the end of the month, will have implications not just for families like Connor’s but for how the agency regulateths treatments like this one more broadly: It would be the first of its kind of medicine – one-time treatments delivering a gene to try to fix a disease – to get accelerated approval, a faster track through the regulatory process. Its approval would set a precedent for other drugs like this based on so-called surrogate endpoints, a measure of what the drug does in the body, before further clinical evidence is available.

“Approval of a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy will be huge,” said Jeffrey Chamberlain, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who helped pioneer gene therapy approaches for the disease. “This, I think, will spur further research and further development of gene therapies for other diseases.”

DMD patients don’t have a lot of time to wait. Kids with Duchenne typically lose the ability to walk before they’re teenagers and often don’t live well into their 30s, Chamberlain said. He’s not directly involved with SRP-9001, which is being developed by Sarepta Therapeutics, and is on the scientific advisory board for another company working on DMD gene therapies, Solid Biosciences.

“Gene therapy appears to be a really good approach to try to treat this disease, because it’s a genetic disease,” Chamberlain said. “The cause of the disease is a mutation in a single gene.”

That gene is responsible for the production of dystrophin, a protein key to the structure of muscle cells.

“It’s kind of like the two-by-fours that make up your house,” Chamberlain said. “It’s really important for just holding everything together.”

SRP-9001, invented at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, before being licensed for development by Sarepta, delivers a miniaturized version of the dystrophin gene to cells, aiming to help them make a version of the muscle-preserving protein.

In a key clinical trial, the therapy appeared to do that. But it didn’t meet another main goal: showing a benefit on a measure of muscle function, complicating SRP-9001’s path through the FDA.

Sarepta blamed the outcome on an imbalance in how the trial separated patients into the placebo and treatment groups. But key FDA reviewers appear unconvinced.

“The clinical studies conducted to date do not provide unambiguous evidence that SRP-9001 is likely beneficial for ambulatory patients with DMD,” agency reviewers wrote in briefing documents released ahead of Friday’s meeting, referring to patients who can still walk – the group who will initially be eligible for the treatment if it gets approved.

Family after family who participated in Sarepta’s trials, like the Hennicks, disagree with the reviewers. They say they believe that the treatment has helped keep their kids walking and running in ways they never would have without it.

“It’s really miraculous,” said Nate Plasman, whose son Andrew got SRP-9001 as part of the trial in January 2019, at age 4.

Sara, left, Andrew and Nate Plasman on the day he was dosed in the trial in January 2019.

Andrew was away from school for more than two months when he got the experimental therapy, Plasman said, and when he returned, “his teachers at the preschool were blown away,” he recalled. “They’re like, ‘Who is this kid?’ He’s running. He’s jumping. He’s pedaling the tricycle. He’s getting up and down off the ground” – all things he couldn’t do as well before the therapy.

Marit Sivertson, mom to 9-year-old Brecken, agrees.

“We’ve seen the incredible changes with our son,” she said. “He’s not just walking around. He’s running; he’s swimming; he’s diving. He’s truly living the life that every 9-year-old boy ought to be living.”

Dr. Jerry Mendell of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, who developed the gene therapy, left, with Brecken Kinney.

Sivertson and Plasman also spoke at Friday’s meeting. Their goal isn’t to secure the therapy for their own kids; because it’s designed as a one-time treatment, they wouldn’t take it again. They say they’re speaking up on behalf of children who are still waiting.

That wait is especially painful for Daniel and Lindsey Flessner, who have two sons with DMD. Their 5-year-old son, Mason, is in the SRP-9001 clinical trial. Their 2-year-old, Dawson, is still too young.

“With every trip, every fall, every time he stands up by walking up his legs using his hands to help stabilize him, it just keeps chipping away at us,” Flessner said. “It’s very painful as the parents watching your children struggling knowing all you can do is wait, when waiting is what you don’t have time for.”

Lindsey and Daniel Flessner's sons, Mason and Dawson, both have DMD.

In addition to questions about how well the treatment works, the FDA reviewers raised concerns about safety, particularly “related to the possibility of administering an ineffective gene therapy.”

The reviewers focused on opportunity cost: Because of the viruses used to deliver the gene, patients can develop an immune response that could render future doses ineffective.

Chamberlain said work is underway to find ways to be able to administer more doses, if needed, but it’s currently a one-and-done treatment.

For now, he thinks this approach is the best hope for DMD patients.

“It’s not perfect,” he acknowledged. “It’s not a complete cure, but from what I can gauge from the clinical results that have been released by Sarepta and some of the other companies, I think the micro-dystrophin gene therapy is working better than any other drug that’s been tried for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.”

It’s unclear how long the effects will last; Sarepta is continuing trials, and a confirmatory study would be required as part of accelerated approval. Sarepta has proposed a trial that it’s already running to satisfy that requirement, with results expected later this year.

For families facing DMD, there’s an opportunity cost to waiting, too. In its briefing documents for the FDA meeting, Sarepta estimated that accelerated approval would speed up broad access to SRP-9001 by at least a year, a time in which about 400 boys could lose the ability to walk and another 400, whose disease is more advanced, would die.

Melanie Hennick said Connor was admitted to the trial just weeks before he’d have aged out, at 8 years old. She said she believes the therapy is the reason Connor’s doing so well.

“We had the opportunity to see Connor grow as an 8-, 9-, 10-, 11- and 12-year-old with more capacity than we ever dreamed,” she said. “He climbs stairs unaided; he runs around; he plays football; he plays hockey; he plays on a baseball team. … Those are things that we never thought we would be able to see him do, especially at 12.”

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May 11, 2023

How psilocybin, the psychedelic in mushrooms, may rewire the brain to ease depression, anxiety and more | CNN

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CNN
— 

Shrooms, Alice, tweezes, mushies, hongos, pizza toppings, magic mushrooms — everyday lingo for psychedelic mushrooms seems to grow with each generation. Yet leading mycologist Paul Stamets believes it’s time for fans of psilocybin mushrooms to leave such childish slang behind.

“Let’s be adults about this. These are no longer ‘shrooms.’ These are no longer party drugs for young people,” Stamets told CNN. “Psilocybin mushrooms are nonaddictive, life-changing substances.”

Small clinical trials have shown that one or two doses of psilocybin, given in a therapeutic setting, can make dramatic and long-lasting changes in people suffering from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, which typically does not respond to traditional antidepressants.

Based on this research, the US Food and Drug Administration has described psilocybin as a breakthrough medicine, “which is phenomenal,” Stamets said.

Psilocybin, which the intestines convert into psilocin, a chemical with psychoactive properties, is also showing promise in combating cluster headaches, anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various forms of substance abuse.

“The data are strong from depression to PTSD to cluster headaches, which is one of the most painful conditions I’m aware of,” said neurologist Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic in the Center for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University.

“I’m excited about the future of psychedelics because of the relatively good safety profile and because these agents can now be studied in rigorous double-blinded clinical trials,” Isaacson said. “Then we can move from anecdotal reports of ‘I tripped on this and felt better’ to ‘Try this and you will be statistically, significantly better.’ “

Classic psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD enter the brain via the same receptors as serotonin, the body’s “feel good” hormone. Serotonin helps control body functions such as sleep, sexual desire and psychological states such as satisfaction, happiness and optimism.

People with depression or anxiety often have low levels of serotonin, as do people with post-traumatic stress disorder, cluster headaches, anorexia, smoking addiction and substance abuse. Treatment typically involves selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which boost levels of serotonin available to brain cells. Yet it can take weeks for improvement to occur, experts say, if the drugs even work at all.

With psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD, however, scientists can see changes in brain neuron connectivity in the lab “within 30 minutes,” said pharmacologist Brian Roth, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“One of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the classic psychedelics is that they have a dramatic effect on the way brain systems synchronize, or move and groove together,” said Matthew Johnson, a professor in psychedelics and consciousness at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“When someone’s on psilocybin, we see an overall increase in connectivity between areas of the brain that don’t normally communicate well,” Johnson said. “You also see the opposite of that – local networks in the brain that normally interact with each other quite a bit suddenly communicate less.”

It creates a “very, very disorganized brain,” ultimately breaking down normal boundaries between the auditory, visual, executive and sense-of-self sections of the mind – thus creating a state of “altered consciousness,” said David Nutt, director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London.

And it’s that disorganization that is ultimately therapeutic, according to Nutt: “Depressed people are continually self-critical, and they keep ruminating, going over and over the same negative, anxious or fearful thoughts.

“Psychedelics disrupt that, which is why people can suddenly see a way out of their depression during the trip,” he added. “Critical thoughts are easier to control, and thinking is more flexible. That’s why the drug is an effective treatment for depression.”

There’s more. Researchers say psychedelic drugs help neurons in the brain sprout new dendrites, which look like branches on a tree, to increase communication between cells.

“These drugs can increase neuronal outgrowth, they can increase this branching of neurons, they can increase synapses. That’s called neuroplasticity,” Nutt said.

That’s different from neurogenesis, which is the development of brand-new brain cells, typically from stem cells in the body. The growth of dendrites helps build and then solidify new circuits in the brain, allowing us to, for example, lay down more positive pathways as we practice gratitude.

“Now our current thinking is this neuronal outgrowth probably doesn’t contribute to the increased connectivity in the brain, but it almost certainly helps people who have insights into their depression while on psilocybin maintain those insights,” Nutt said.

“You shake up the brain, you see things in a more positive way, and then you lay down those positive circuits with the neuroplasticity,” he added. “It’s a double whammy.”

Interestingly, SSRIs also increase neuroplasticity, a fact that science has known for some time. But in a 2022 double-blind phase 2 randomized controlled trial comparing psilocybin to escitalopram, a traditional SSRI, Nutt found the latter didn’t spark the same magic.

“The SSRI did not increase brain connectivity, and it actually did not improve well-being as much as psilocybin,” Nutt said. “Now for the first time you’ve got the brain science lining up with what patients say after a trip: ‘I feel more connected. I can think more freely. I can escape from negative thoughts, and I don’t get trapped in them.’ “

Taking a psychedelic doesn’t work for everyone, Johnson stressed, “but when it works really well it’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s a cure for PTSD or for depression.’ If people really have changed the way their brain is automatically hardwired to respond to triggers for anxiety, depression, smoking — that’s a real thing.”

How long do results last? In studies where patients were given just one dose of a psychedelic “a couple of people were better eight years later, but for the majority of those with chronic depression it creeps back after four or five months,” Nutt said.

“What we do with those people is unknown,” he added. “One possibility is to give another dose of the psychedelic — we don’t know if that would work or not, but it might. Or we could put them on an SSRI as soon as they’ve got their mood improved and see if that can hold the depression at bay.

“There are all sorts of ways we could try to address that question,” Nutt said, “but we just don’t know the answer yet.”

The mycelium, or rootlike structure, of Lion's mane mushroom is part of the

Stamets, who over the last 40 years has discovered four new species of psychedelic mushrooms and written seven books on the topic, said he believes microdosing is a solution. That’s the practice of taking tiny amounts of a psilocybin mushroom several times a week to maintain brain health and a creative perspective on life.

A typical microdose is 0.1 to 0.3 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms, as compared with the 25-milligram pill of psilocybin that creates the full-blown psychedelic experience.

Stamets practices microdosing and has focused on a process called “stacking” in which a microdose of mushrooms is taken with additional substances believed to boost the fungi’s benefits. His famous “Stamets Stack” includes niacin, or vitamin B3, and the mycelium, or rootlike structure, of an unusual mushroom called Lion’s mane.

Surveys of microdosers obtained on his website have shown significantly positive benefits from the practice of taking small doses.

“These are self-reported citizen scientists’ projects, and we have now around 14,000 people in our app where you register yourself and report your microdose,” Stamets told an audience at the 2022 Life Itself conference, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“I’m going to say something provocative, but I believe it to my core: Psilocybin makes nicer people,” Stamets told the audience. “Psilocybin will make us more intelligent and better citizens.”

Scientific studies so far have failed to find any benefits from microdosing, leaving many researchers skeptical. “People like being on it, but that doesn’t validate the claims of microdosing,” Johnson said. “People like being on a little bit of cocaine, too.”

Experimental psychologist Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the University of Chicago, was excited to study microdosing because it solves a key problem of scientific research in the field – it’s hard to blind people to what they are taking if they begin to trip. Microdosing solves that problem because people don’t feel an effect from the tiny dose.

De Wit specializes in determining whether a drug’s impact is due to the drug or what scientists call the “placebo effect,” a positive expectation that can cause improvement without the drug.

She published a study in 2022 that mimicked real-world microdosing of LSD, except neither the participants nor researchers knew what was in the pills the subjects took.

“We measured all kinds of different behavioral and psychological responses, and the only thing we saw is that LSD at very low doses produced some stimulant-like effects at first, which then faded,” de Wit said.

The placebo effect is powerful, she added, which might explain why the few additional studies done on it have also failed to find any positive results.

“I suspect microdosing may have an effect on mood, and over time it might build up resilience or improve well-being,” Nutt said. “But I don’t think it will rapidly fragment depression like macrodosing and going on a trip.”

Obviously, not all hallucinogenic experiences are positive, so nearly every study on psychedelic drugs has included therapists trained to intercede if a trip turns bad and to maximize the outcome if the trip is good.

“This is about allowing someone access into deeper access into their own mental processes, with hopefully greater insight,” Johnson said. “While others might disagree, it does seem very clear that you need therapy to maximize the benefits.”

There are also side effects from psychedelics that go beyond a bad trip. LSD, mescaline and DMT, which is the active ingredient in ayahuasca tea, can increase blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Ayahuasca tea can also induce vomiting. LSD can cause tremors, numbness and weakness, while the use of mescaline can lead to uncoordinated movements. People hunting for psychedelic mushrooms can easily mistake a toxic species for one with psilocybin, “leading to unintentional, fatal poisoning.”

Another issue: Not everyone is a candidate for psychedelic treatment. It won’t work on people currently on SSRIs — the receptors in their brains are already flooded with serotonin. People diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or who have a family history of psychosis are always screened out of clinical trials, said Frederick Barrett, associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins.

“If you have a vulnerability to psychosis, it could be that exposing you to a psychedelic could unmask that psychosis or could lead to a psychotic event,” Barnes said.

Then there are the thousands of people with mental health concerns who will never agree to undergo a psychedelic trip. For those people, scientists such as Roth are attempting to find an alternative approach. He and his team recently identified the mechanisms by which psychedelics bond to the brain’s serotonin receptors and are using the knowledge to identify new compounds.

“Our hope is that we can use this information to ultimately make drugs that mimic the benefits of psychedelic drugs without the psychedelic experience,” Roth said.

“What if we could give people who are depressed or suffer from PTSD or anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder a medication, and they could wake up the next day and be fine without any side effects? That would be transformative.”

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May 9, 2023

Covid-19 Pandemic Timeline Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
— 

Here’s a look at the coronavirus outbreak, declared a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization. The coronavirus, called Covid-19 by WHO, originated in China and is the cousin of the SARS virus.

Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are common among animals. The viruses can make people sick, usually with a mild to moderate upper respiratory tract illness, similar to a common cold. Coronavirus symptoms include a runny nose, cough, sore throat, possibly a headache and maybe a fever, which can last for a couple of days.

WHO Situation Reports

Coronavirus Map

CNN’s early reporting on the coronavirus

December 31, 2019 – Cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan, China, are first reported to WHO. During this reported period, the virus is unknown. The cases occur between December 12 and December 29, according to Wuhan Municipal Health.

January 1, 2020 – Chinese health authorities close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after it is discovered that wild animals sold there may be the source of the virus.

January 5, 2020 – China announces that the unknown pneumonia cases in Wuhan are not SARS or MERS. In a statement, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission says a retrospective probe into the outbreak has been initiated.

January 7, 2020 – Chinese authorities confirm that they have identified the virus as a novel coronavirus, initially named 2019-nCoV by WHO.

January 11, 2020 – The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus. A 61-year-old man, exposed to the virus at the seafood market, died on January 9 after respiratory failure caused by severe pneumonia.

January 17, 2020 – Chinese health officials confirm that a second person has died in China. The United States responds to the outbreak by implementing screenings for symptoms at airports in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.

January 20, 2020 – China reports 139 new cases of the sickness, including a third death. On the same day, WHO’s first situation report confirms cases in Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

January 20, 2020 – The National Institutes of Health announces that it is working on a vaccine against the coronavirus. “The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards the development of a vaccine,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

January 21, 2020 – Officials in Washington state confirm the first case on US soil.

January 23, 2020 – At an emergency committee, WHO says that the coronavirus does not yet constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

January 23, 2020 – The Beijing Culture and Tourism Bureau cancels all large-scale Lunar New Year celebrations in an effort to contain the growing spread of coronavirus. On the same day, Chinese authorities enforce a partial lockdown of transport in and out of Wuhan. Authorities in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou Huanggang announce a series of similar measures.

January 28, 2020 – Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom in Beijing. At the meeting, Xi and WHO agree to send a team of international experts, including US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff, to China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak.

January 29, 2020 – The White House announces the formation of a new task force that will help monitor and contain the spread of the virus, and ensure Americans have accurate and up-to-date health and travel information, it says.

January 30, 2020 – The United States reports its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus. On the same day, WHO determines that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

January 31, 2020 – The Donald Trump administration announces it will deny entry to foreign nationals who have traveled in China in the last 14 days.

February 2, 2020 – A man in the Philippines dies from the coronavirus – the first time a death has been reported outside mainland China since the outbreak began.

February 3, 2020 – China’s Foreign Ministry accuses the US government of inappropriately reacting to the outbreak and spreading fear by enforcing travel restrictions.

February 4, 2020 – The Japanese Health Ministry announces that ten people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship moored in Yokohama Bay are confirmed to have the coronavirus. The ship, which is carrying more than 3,700 people, is placed under quarantine scheduled to end on February 19.

February 6, 2020 – First Covid-19 death in the United States: A person in California’s Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus, but the link is not confirmed until April 21.

February 7, 2020 – Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor who was targeted by police for trying to sound the alarm on a “SARS-like” virus in December, dies of the coronavirus. Following news of Li’s death, the topics “Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang an apology,” and “We want freedom of speech,” trend on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo, before disappearing from the heavily censored platform.

February 8, 2020 – The US Embassy in Beijing confirms that a 60-year-old US national died in Wuhan on February 6, marking the first confirmed death of a foreigner.

February 10, 2020 – Xi inspects efforts to contain the coronavirus in Beijing, the first time he has appeared on the front lines of the fight against the outbreak. On the same day, a team of international experts from WHO arrive in China to assist with containing the coronavirus outbreak.

February 10, 2020 – The Anthem of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, sets sail from Bayonne, New Jersey, after a coronavirus scare had kept it docked and its passengers waiting for days.

February 11, 2020 – WHO names the coronavirus Covid-19.

February 13, 2020 – China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency announces that Shanghai mayor Ying Yong will be replacing Jiang Chaoliang amid the outbreak. Wuhan Communist Party chief Ma Guoqiang has also been replaced by Wang Zhonglin, party chief of Jinan city in Shandong province, according to Xinhua.

February 14, 2020 – A Chinese tourist who tested positive for the virus dies in France, becoming the first person to die in the outbreak in Europe. On the same day, Egypt announces its first case of coronavirus, marking the first case in Africa.

February 15, 2020 – The official Communist Party journal Qiushi publishes the transcript of a speech made on February 3 by Xi in which he “issued requirements for the prevention and control of the new coronavirus” on January 7, revealing Xi knew about and was directing the response to the virus on almost two weeks before he commented on it publicly.

February 17, 2020 – A second person in California’s Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus, but the link is not confirmed until April 21.

February 18, 2020 – Xi says in a phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China’s measures to prevent and control the epidemic “are achieving visible progress,” according to state news Xinhua.

February 21, 2020 – The CDC changes criteria for counting confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the United States and begins tracking two separate and distinct groups: those repatriated by the US Department of State and those identified by the US public health network.

February 25, 2020 – The NIH announces that a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the antiviral drug remdesivir in adults diagnosed with coronavirus has started at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The first participant is an American who was evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan.

February 25, 2020 – In an effort to contain the largest outbreak in Europe, Italy’s Lombardy region press office issues a list of towns and villages that are in complete lockdown. Around 100,000 people are affected by the travel restrictions.

February 26, 2020 – CDC officials say that a California patient being treated for novel coronavirus is the first US case of unknown origin. The patient, who didn’t have any relevant travel history nor exposure to another known patient, is the first possible US case of “community spread.”

February 26, 2020 – Trump places Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the US government response to the novel coronavirus, amid growing criticism of the White House’s handling of the outbreak.

February 29, 2020 – A patient dies of coronavirus in Washington state. For almost two months, this is considered the first death due to the virus in the United States, until autopsy results announced April 21 reveal two earlier deaths in California.

March 3, 2020 – The Federal Reserve slashes interest rates by half a percentage point in an attempt to give the US economy a jolt in the face of concerns about the coronavirus outbreak. It is the first unscheduled, emergency rate cut since 2008, and it also marks the biggest one-time cut since then.

March 3, 2020 – Officials announce that Iran will temporarily release 54,000 people from prisons and deploy hundreds of thousands of health workers as officials announced a slew of measures to contain the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. It is also announced that 23 members of Iran’s parliament tested positive for the virus.

March 4, 2020 – The CDC formally removes earlier restrictions that limited coronavirus testing of the general public to people in the hospital, unless they had close contact with confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the CDC, clinicians should now “use their judgment to determine if a patient has signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and whether the patient should be tested.”

March 8, 2020 – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signs a decree placing travel restrictions on the entire Lombardy region and 14 other provinces, restricting the movements of more than 10 million people in the northern part of the country.

March 9, 2020 – Conte announces that the whole country of Italy is on lockdown.

March 11, 2020 – WHO declares the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic. WHO says the outbreak is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. In an Oval Office address, Trump announces that he is restricting travel from Europe to the United States for 30 days in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus. The ban, which applies to the 26 countries in the Schengen Area, applies only to foreign nationals and not American citizens and permanent residents who’d be screened before entering the country.

March 13, 2020 – Trump declares a national emergency to free up $50 billion in federal resources to combat coronavirus.

March 18, 2020 – Trump signs into law a coronavirus relief package that includes provisions for free testing for Covid-19 and paid emergency leave.

March 19, 2020 – At a news conference, officials from China’s National Health Commission report no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for the first time since the pandemic began.

March 23, 2020 – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres calls for an immediate global ceasefire amid the pandemic to fight “the common enemy.”

March 24, 2020 – Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach agree to postpone the Olympics until 2021 amid the outbreak.

March 25, 2020 – The White House and Senate leaders reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus deal to offset the economic damage of coronavirus, producing one of the most expensive and far-reaching measures in the history of Congress.

March 27, 2020 – Trump signs the stimulus package into law.

April 2, 2020 – According to the Department of Labor, 6.6 million US workers file for their first week of unemployment benefits in the week ending March 28, the highest number of initial claims in history. Globally, the total number of coronavirus cases surpasses 1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally.

April 3, 2020 – Trump says his administration is now recommending Americans wear “non-medical cloth” face coverings, a reversal of previous guidance that suggested masks were unnecessary for people who weren’t sick.

April 8, 2020 – China reopens Wuhan after a 76-day lockdown.

April 14, 2020 – Trump announces he is halting funding to WHO while a review is conducted, saying the review will cover WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”

April 20, 2020 – Chilean health officials announce that Chile will begin issuing the world’s first digital immunity cards to people who have recovered from coronavirus, saying the cards will help identify individuals who no longer pose a health risk to others.

April 21, 2020 – California’s Santa Clara County announces autopsy results that show two Californians died of novel coronavirus in early and mid-February – up to three weeks before the previously known first US death from the virus.

April 28, 2020 – The United States passes one million confirmed cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.

May 1, 2020 – The US Food and Drug Administration issues an emergency-use authorization for remdesivir in hospitalized patients with severe Covid-19. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn says remdesivir is the first authorized therapy drug for Covid-19.

May 4, 2020 – During a virtual pledging conference co-hosted by the European Union, world leaders pledge a total of $8 billion for the development and deployment of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines against the novel coronavirus.

May 11, 2020 – Trump and his administration announce that the federal government is sending $11 billion to states to expand coronavirus testing capabilities. The relief package signed on April 24 includes $25 billion for testing, with $11 billion for states, localities, territories and tribes.

May 13, 2020 – Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, warns that the coronavirus may never go away and may just join the mix of viruses that kill people around the world every year.

May 19, 2020 – WHO agrees to hold an inquiry into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. WHO member states adopt the proposal with no objections during the World Health Assembly meeting, after the European Union and Australia led calls for an investigation.

May 23, 2020 – China reports no new symptomatic coronavirus cases, the first time since the beginning of the outbreak in December.

May 27, 2020 – Data collected by Johns Hopkins University reports that the coronavirus has killed more than 100,000 people across the US, meaning that an average of almost 900 Americans died each day since the first known coronavirus-related death was reported nearly four months earlier.

June 2, 2020 – Wuhan’s Health Commission announces that it has completed coronavirus tests on 9.9 million of its residents with no new confirmed cases found.

June 8, 2020 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces that almost all coronavirus restrictions in New Zealand will be lifted after the country reported no active cases.

June 11, 2020 – The United States passes 2 million confirmed cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.

June 16, 2020 – University of Oxford scientists leading the Recovery Trial, a large UK-based trial investigating potential Covid-19 treatments, announce that a low-dose regimen of dexamethasone for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation in the trial.

June 20, 2020 – The NIH announces that it has halted a clinical trial evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus. “A data and safety monitoring board met late Friday and determined that while there was no harm, the study drug was very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with Covid-19,” the NIH says in a statement.

June 26, 2020 – During a virtual media briefing, WHO announces that it plans to deliver about 2 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine to people across the globe. One billion of those doses will be purchased for low- and middle-income countries, according to WHO.

July 1, 2020 – The European Union announces it will allow travelers from 14 countries outside the bloc to visit EU countries, months after it shut its external borders in response to the pandemic. The list does not include the US, which doesn’t meet the criteria set by the EU for it to be considered a “safe country.”

July 6, 2020 – In an open letter published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, 239 scientists from around the world urge WHO and other health agencies to be more forthright in explaining the potential airborne transmission of coronavirus. In the letter, scientists write that studies “have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking, and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in air and pose a risk of exposure at distances beyond 1 to 2 meters (yards) from an infected individual.”

July 7, 2020 – The Trump administration notifies Congress and the United Nations that the United States is formally withdrawing from WHO. The withdrawal goes into effect on July 6, 2021.

July 21, 2020 – European leaders agree to create a €750 billion ($858 billion) recovery fund to rebuild EU economies ravaged by the coronavirus.

July 27, 2020 – A vaccine being developed by the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in partnership with the biotechnology company Moderna, enters Phase 3 testing. The trial is expected to enroll about 30,000 adult volunteers and evaluates the safety of the vaccine and whether it can prevent symptomatic Covid-19 after two doses, among other outcomes.

August 11, 2020 – In a live teleconference, Russian President Vladimir Putin announces that Russia has approved a coronavirus vaccine for public use before completion of Phase 3 trials, which usually precedes approval. The vaccine, which is named Sputnik-V, is developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute with funding from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

August 15, 2020 – Russia begins production on Sputnik-V, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

August 23, 2020 – The FDA issues an emergency use authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19. It is made using the blood of people who have recovered from coronavirus infections.

August 27, 2020 – The CDC notifies public health officials around the United States to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine as soon as late October. In the documents, posted by The New York Times, the CDC provides planning scenarios to help states prepare and advises on who should get vaccinated first – healthcare professionals, essential workers, national security “populations” and long-term care facility residents and staff.

September 4, 2020 – The first peer-reviewed results of Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine are published in the medical journal The Lancet. The results “have a good safety profile” and the vaccine induced antibody responses in all participants, The Lancet says.

October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for Covid-19. He spends three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center receiving treatment before returning to the White House.

October 12, 2020 – Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson announces it has paused the advanced clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus vaccine because of an unexplained illness in one of the volunteers.”Following our guidelines, the participant’s illness is being reviewed and evaluated by the ENSEMBLE independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) as well as our internal clinical and safety physicians,” the company said in a statement. ENSEMBLE is the name of the study. The trial resumes later in the month.

December 10, 2020 – Vaccine advisers to the FDA vote to recommend the agency grant emergency use authorization to Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine.

December 14, 2020 – US officials announce the first doses of the FDA authorized Pfizer vaccine have been delivered to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

December 18, 2020 – The FDA authorizes a second coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna for emergency use. “The emergency use authorization allows the vaccine to be distributed in the U.S. for use in individuals 18 years and older,” the FDA said in a tweet.

January 14, 2021 – The WHO team tasked with investigating the origins of the outbreak in Wuhan arrive in China.

January 20, 2021 – Newly elected US President Joe Biden halts the United States’ withdrawal from WHO.

February 22, 2021 – The death toll from Covid-19 exceeds 500,000 in the United States.

February 27, 2021 – The FDA grants emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, the first single dose Covid-19 vaccine available in the US.

March 30, 2021 – According to a 120-page report from WHO, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 probably spread to people through an animal, and probably started spreading among humans no more than a month or two before it was noticed in December of 2019. The report says a scenario where it spread via an intermediate animal host, possibly a wild animal captured and then raised on a farm, is “very likely.”

April 17, 2021 – The global tally of deaths from Covid-19 surpasses 3 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins.

August 3, 2021 – According to figures published by the CDC, the more contagious Delta variant accounts for an estimated 93.4% of coronavirus circulating in the United States during the last two weeks of July. The figures show a rapid increase over the past two months, up from around 3% in the two weeks ending May 22.

August 12, 2021 – The FDA authorizes an additional Covid-19 vaccine dose for certain immunocompromised people.

August 23, 2021 – The FDA grants full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for people age 16 and older, making it the first coronavirus vaccine approved by the FDA.

September 24, 2021 – CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky diverges from the agency’s independent vaccine advisers to recommend boosters for a broader group of people – those ages 18 to 64 who are at increased risk of Covid-19 because of their workplaces or institutional settings – in addition to older adults, long-term care facility residents and some people with underlying health conditions.

November 2, 2021 – Walensky says she is endorsing a recommendation to vaccinate children ages 5-11 against Covid-19, clearing the way for immediate vaccination of the youngest age group yet in the US.

November 19, 2021 – The FDA authorizes boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for all adults. The same day, the CDC also endorses boosters for all adults.

December 16, 2021 – The CDC changes its recommendations for Covid-19 vaccines to make clear that shots made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are preferred over Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

December 22, 2021 – The FDA authorizes Pfizer’s antiviral pill, Paxlovid, to treat Covid-19, the first antiviral Covid-19 pill authorized in the United States for ill people to take at home, before they get sick enough to be hospitalized. The following day, the FDA authorizes Merck’s antiviral pill, molnupiravir.

December 27, 2021 – The CDC shortens the recommended times that people should isolate when they’ve tested positive for Covid-19 from 10 days to five days if they don’t have symptoms – and if they wear a mask around others for at least five more days. The CDC also shortens the recommended time for people to quarantine if they are exposed to the virus to a similar five days if they are vaccinated.

January 31, 2022 – The FDA grants full approval to Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 18 and older. This is the second coronavirus vaccine given full approval by the FDA.

March 29, 2022 – The FDA authorizes a second booster of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for adults 50 and older. That same day, the CDC also endorses a second booster for the same age group.

April 25, 2022 – The FDA expands approval of the drug remdesivir to treat patients as young as 28 days and weighing about seven pounds.

May 17, 2022 – The FDA authorizes a booster dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 at least five months after completion of the primary vaccine series. On May 19, the CDC also endorses a booster dose for the same age group.

June 18, 2022 – The CDC recommends Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.

August 31, 2022 – The FDA authorizes updated Covid-19 vaccine booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer. Both are bivalent vaccines that combine the companies’ original vaccine with one that targets the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sublineages. The CDC signs off on the updated booster shots the following day.

May 5, 2023 – The WHO says Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.



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May 3, 2023

Regular internet use may be linked to lower dementia risk in older adults, study says | CNN

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CNN
— 

If your parents or grandparents ask you how to post on Instagram or how to send a birthday message to a Facebook friend, a new study suggests you might want to help them – not just to be nice but because getting them online may help their brain health, too.

A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggested that older people who regularly used the internet were less likely to develop dementia.

The researchers saw this association after about eight years tracking 18,154 adults between the ages of 50 and 65 who did not have dementia when the study period began.

The adults were a part of the Health and Retirement Study, a multidisciplinary collection of data from a representative sample of people in the US that is gathered by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration.

Each of the participants was asked a simple question: “Do you regularly use the World Wide Web, or the Internet, for sending and receiving e-mail or for any other purpose, such as making purchases, searching for information, or making travel reservations?”

People who used the internet at the start of the study had about half the risk of dementia as people who were not regular users.

The researchers also looked at how often these adults were online, from not at all to more than eight hours a day. Those who used the internet for about two hours or less a day had the lowest risk of dementia compared with those that didn’t use the internet, who had a “notably higher estimated risk.”

The researchers noted that people who were online six to eight hours a day had a higher risk of dementia, but that finding wasn’t statistically significant, they said, and more research is needed.

Scientists still don’t know what causes dementia, so the new research can’t pinpoint the exact connection between internet usage and brain health. Study co-author Dr. Virginia W. Chang has a few ideas.

“Online engagement may help to develop and maintain cognitive reserve, which can in turn compensate for brain aging and reduce the risk of dementia,” said Chang, an associate professor of global public health at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

The study also did not look at what people were exploring online. Although the internet is full of cat videos and conspiracy theories, it can also be intellectually stimulating, and some studies have shown that intellectual stimulation may help prevent dementia. A 2020 study found an association between cognitively stimulating jobs and a lower risk of dementia, for example.

As people age, it’s natural for brain processing speeds to slow a little, and it may get harder to remember what’s on all those open browser tabs on your computer. But in a healthy brain, routine memory and knowledge remains pretty stable. People with dementia have trouble with routine brain functions like making new memories, solving problems and completing normal tasks.

About 6.2 million people 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. That number is expected to grow exponentially as baby boomers age.

“Overall, this is important research. It identifies another potentially modifiable factor that might influence dementia risk,” said Dr. Claire Sexton, the Alzheimer’s Association’s senior director of scientific programs and outreach, who was not involved in the new study. “But we wouldn’t want to read too much into this study in isolation. It doesn’t establish cause and effect.”

Beyond medications, experts have been looking for ways to help people keep dementia at bay.

The Alzheimer’s Association is working on the US Pointer Study, a two-year clinical trial to pinpoint exactly what lifestyle interventions may lower a person’s risk of dementia.

Risk factors like family history and age can’t be changed, but scientists think there are some healthy behaviors that can reduce the risk of this kind of cognitive decline.

Lifestyle factors like exercise, getting enough sleep, maintaining a healthy weight, keeping blood pressure in check, managing blood sugar, quitting smoking and staying engaged with others may help. Internet surfing isn’t one of the official activities listed by the CDC, but the new study adds to the growing body of evidence that suggests more research could better establish this connection.

The new research isn’t the first to find that the use of the internet may help reduce cognitive decline. One 2020 study found only a smaller cognitive decline in male internet users. Others have not seen a gender difference.

In the latest study, the difference in risk between regular users and those who did not use the internet regularly did not vary by gender, level of education, or race or ethnicity.

Some studies have also shown a benefit to training older adults on computers and have suggested that the internet can positively connect them to others and help them learn information or skills.

Research also suggests that most older adults most frequently use the internet for basic tasks like email, news or online banking. But a growing number are learning newer social platforms like BeReal or dancing and singing on TikTok. And learning new skills may be protective against dementia, studies suggest.

Older adults’ use of social networking sites can also increase their connections to other people and reduce isolation. Some studies have shown that older people who were lonely were three times more likely to develop dementia than those who said they felt socially connected to others.

“We need further evidence, not just from observational studies like this one but also interventional studies,” Sexton said. That way, doctors might someday treat people for dementia like they do with heart disease: by suggesting lifestyle changes in addition to medication.

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