The close match to variants circulating in humans at the time suggests at least seven recent human-to-animal transmission events. Our data support that exposure to SARS-CoV-2 has been widespread in wildlife communities and suggests that areas with high human activity may serve as points of contact for cross-species transmission.

Our combined results suggest that a broad diversity of mammal species have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in the wild. While species like the white-tailed deer have been shown to be important hosts for SARS-CoV-2, our results highlight that evaluating the importance of each species in the context of a broader community of hosts will be critical for controlling future zoonotic disease risk

Could viruses be the good guys? An obscure 100-year-old medical therapy to treat infection enlists viruses called bacteriophages that evolved to target bacteria. Can it help us avoid a post-antibiotic world? This week, it’s “Not Just a Phage” on Big Picture Science.

We’re hurtling towards a post-antibiotic world, as the overuse of antibiotics has given rise to dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. Can we fight back using viruses as weapons? An obscure medical therapy uses certain viruses called bacteriophages to treat infection. For a century attempts to turn phage-therapy into a life-saving treatment have faltered, but today there’s renewed interest in this approach. Can we use phages to forestall the antibiotic crisis?

All told, just shy of 3,000 people in the U.S. have died of West Nile since 1999. But experts warn of the risks of underestimating the virus. Although most infections are asymptomatic, the virus triggers a fever in about 20 percent of people, and a small proportion of cases—about one in 150—are what doctors call “neuroinvasive,” meaning they reach the brain, triggering encephalitis, or the spinal cord, triggering meningitis.

In either scenario, neuroinvasive West Nile can lead to serious consequences. People can develop a stiff neck and devastating headache. “They’ll say it’s the worst headache they’ve had in their entire life.

And because there’s no specialized treatment for the disease, doctors can only treat the symptoms and hope for the best. Many people with a neuroinvasive infection never fully recover.

Our meningitis cases, about 40 percent of them never returned back to their baseline status, and for our encephalitis cases, [that figure] was 80 percent.

A devout Mupostori, Zhou has not been well since he came back from South Africa four months ago.

Several visits to the local health centre, Matedzi Clinic, yielded nothing as his health kept deteriorating.

His family members even sought divine intervention, but this could not help either.

A relative eventually took him to Zvishavane where he was taken to the district hospital where Zhou was diagnosed with TB.

Zimbabweans who reside in South Africa contribute significantly to TB new cases recorded annually in the country.

The TB burden on South African mines has had a noticeable impact on the country as a result of migrant labour.

TB remains a public health emergency with 10 million people falling ill with the disease globally per year, according to the World Health Organisation.

Parasites take an enormous toll on human and veterinary health. But researchers may have found a way for patients with brain disorders and a common brain parasite to become frenemies.

The extraction and manipulation of granite and slate continues to be the most important source of silica exposure in Spain. However, in the 1990s, a new profile of especially severe silicosis associated with artificial silica conglomerates emerged. These materials, composed of crystalline silica, mainly quartz and cristobalite, dyes and acrylic resin, are widely used in the manufacture of countertops for kitchens and bathrooms.

The damage produced by silica has some special characteristics that prompt us to call it a polyhedric disease.

However, our knowledge of the pathogenic mechanisms of damage caused by silica inhalation is steadily growing.

The likelihood of developing connective tissue disease is enhanced in subjects with exposure to silica and silicosis.

Silica inhalation is also associated with other adverse effects that occur at lower doses than those needed to cause silicosis, including chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and an increased risk of lung cancer.

Occupational exposure to silica or silicon dioxide dust has been examined as a possible risk factor with respect to several diseases, like tuberculosis, lung cancer, systemic vasculitis , rheumatoid arthritis, systemic sclerosis , systemic lupus erythematosus , renal involvement , etc.

Early in 1951, Saita G et al.firstly reported that the renal functions were decreased in some silicosis patients. Subsequently, several epidemiological evidences suggested that the silica exposure was associated with an increased risk of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), chronic kidney disease (CKD), or specifically glomerulonephritis.

Silica nephropathy referred to the floorboard of kidney diseases after exposure to silica or silicon dioxide, including tubulo-interstitial disease, immune-mediated disease, chronic kidney disease, and end-stage renal disease. In literatures, the renal histopathology of silica nephropathy was varied, including focal glomerurevieritis, necrotizing glomerulonephritis, crescentic glomerulonephritis, etc.

Quartz stone is primarily composed of crystalline silica. When factory workers or kitchen installers work with artificial stone, a very fine dust, rich in silica, is released into the air. This dust, known as respirable crystalline silica, is harmful to human lungs and can lead to various diseases over time.

Furthermore, the resins, metals, and pigments used in the composition of quartz artificial stone make this dust even more toxic and harmful. After years of observation and research, Australian doctors have found that prolonged work with quartz stone leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other illnesses.

People suffering from COPD have difficulty breathing, cough constantly, and tire quickly. Another potential consequence is silicosis, where lung tissue gradually hardens and scars due to silica dust exposure. People with silicosis are at higher risk for developing tuberculosis, kidney failure, arthritis, and lung cancer. 

Snot is one of the immune system’s efforts to ditch a virus, but how much we produce when sick is a slippery subject

When you’re struggling through a case of the common cold, the snot pouring from your nose seems endless. You go through countless tissues to mop up all the chunky, bright yellow boogers and thin, runny mucus, heaping up mountain ranges of used tissues.

And while you try to comfort yourself with hot soup and over-the-counter medications (many of which don’t do anything at all), a question pops into your head—how much mucus does someone actually produce while they’ve got a cold?

It must be enough to fill at least a coffee cup, you’re sure. Or a sink maybe? Or even a car? Surely someone must have attempted to measure this for the sake of sinus science.

As it turns out, only a few intrepid scientists have collected Kleenex for the common good. And from what these brave researchers have found so far, the amount of mucus produced through our valiant viral suffering may not be as much as we think.

OP .. @curmudgeonaf@mastodon.social

In the new study, the team conducted a meta-analysis of 170 studies, representing 4,670 participants from 29 countries. They included college #students, amateur #athletes, #engineers, #teachers, and those who work in a #military or #healthcare setting.

The team found that across all populations, the more mental effort a task required, the more study participants reported unpleasant feelings.

The authors note that studies on recovery from long COVID are “sparse and inconsistent.” But those that have closely evaluated individual manifestations of the virus have found recovery rates to be fairly low at one year, and only 7% to 10% fully recovered after two years. For millions and millions of people, the debilitating effects of long COVID are just that.

The economic toll is its own story. A Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey in 2022 found that between 2 million and 4 million working-age Americans were out of work because they were sidelined with the effects of long COVID. Meanwhile 20% of people with long COVID surveyed by the United Kingdom’s Trades Union Congress said they were not working. Another 16% were working reduced schedules.

The consultant in occupational lung diseases at the Royal Brompton Hospital added: “What’s really striking is it is affecting young people, in their 20s and 30s, and there’s no treatment for it.

“If they didn’t do their job, they wouldn’t have a disease, and it should be preventable. So we need urgent action.”

Dr Feary, who also works as a senior clinical research fellow at Imperial College London, told PA: “We’ve known about the problems associated with artificial stone silicosis from colleagues from around the world for the last few years, but we had not seen any confirmed cases in the UK until the middle of last year when they started arriving in my clinic.”

Doctors writing in Thorax, the journal of the British Thoracic Society, warn of a future ‘epidemic’ and call for action following first UK cases of silicosis from cutting artificial stone

The article is by a team of doctors associated with the first 8 cases of silicosis – an irreversible lung disease – in UK workers who inhaled dust from cutting artificial stone (a composite material made from crushed stone bound by adhesive).

The use of artificial stone for kitchen worktops has increased in recent years. And this is leading to more workers involved in supply chains and installation being exposed to silica dust when the artificial stone is cut.

With the rapid growth in the use of artificial stone in the UK, the doctors say: “A concerted effort is required in the UK to prevent the epidemic seen in other countries.”

"I saw everything," says 74-year-old Harry Stackhouse from Illinois, who was awake during his recent kidney transplant. He felt no pain as he chatted with doctors, examined the donor organ, and watched the surgical team staple him back up.

Stackhouse was discharged just 36 hours after the procedure at Northwestern Medicine, which aims to make transplants without risky general anesthesia commonplace.

Performed in a little over an hour on July 15, this was the second such surgery led by Satish Nadig, director of the Chicago-based hospital system's Comprehensive Transplant Center. He has since carried out a third.

"We're at an inflection point in transplantation today in being able to use the technologies that we have around us to really push us into this next era," Nadig told AFP.

It may sound off-putting or even scary, but the medical benefits of using a spinal anesthetic for kidney transplants – similar to what's already done during cesarean sections – are well established.

Where you live has a relationship to your odds of getting cancer and surviving cancer. Epidemiologists studying this link they see in the data have focused on so-called social determinants of health — poor access to transportation, for example, could make it harder for residents to see a doctor. Places lacking grocery stores with fresh food could mean worse nutrition for locals.

Neighborhoods are like ecosystems in their complexity, with countless variables both small and large that could plausibly influence health and biology. For instance, the built environment, whether it has sidewalks or parks or polluting factories, and an area’s crime statistics could influence how easy it is for residents to exercise or spend time outdoors.

Affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP) describes the extent to which affect, or mood, fluctuates in accordance with daily changes in air pollution, which can vary between individuals, according to a study published August 7, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Michelle Ng from Stanford University, U.S., and colleagues.

Specifically, the authors applied statistical models to intensive repeated measures data obtained from 150 US individuals for more than a year. The researchers used the models to examine whether and how individuals' daily affective states fluctuate with the daily concentrations of outdoor air pollution in their county.

They looked at two components of individuals' affective state: arousal, the level of physiological activation, and valence, the positivity or negativity of their mood.

The work demonstrated the viability of using air pollution data obtained from local air quality monitors alongside psychological data to assess individuals' ASAP. The researchers found that individuals' affect arousal was lower than usual on days with higher than usual air pollution. Most importantly, there were substantial differences in ASAP between individuals.

The finding that individuals' day-to-day affect may be disrupted by air pollution has important implications.

Affective Sensitivity to Air Pollution (ASAP): Person-specific associations between daily air pollution and affective states

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0307430

Scotland has had a long association with the asbestos industry. Scottish entrepreneurs were among the pioneers in developing the manufacture of asbestos products, with the first companies appearing in the 1870s.

One account suggests that it was two Scottish businessmen who first introduced the mineral to the United Kingdom, establishing the Patent Asbestos Manufacturing Company in Glasgow to process asbestos, imported initially from Canada in 1871. Thereafter growth was rapid as the potential of the manufactured mineral began to be realised. By 1885 there were at least 19 asbestos manufacturers and distributors in Glasgow and a further handful dotted around Lanarkshire. The number of companies increased, and at the turn of the century 52 were listed as "asbestos manufacturers" in the Glasgow Post Office Directory.

The importance of the industry in Clydeside in this early period is suggested by the fact that of 18 asbestos companies (undoubtedly the largest) listed in a UK Trade Directory in 1884, six were located in Glasgow.

Among the main exposure points in Scotland were the shipyards; marine engineering; locomotive construction, motor engineering, maintenance, and repair (friction products such as clutch and brake linings); the oil refineries in Grangemouth; heating engineering (including storage heater construction); and electrical engineering. In the shipyards asbestos was used to insulate boilers and pipes and as a fire retardant to comply with increasingly strict fire-prevention regulations.

The extent of the exposure can be gauged from the fact that there were 42 shipbuilding and ship-repairing yards in Scotland in 1960-32 of which were located on Clydeside.

The number of pathogens that could trigger the next pandemic has grown to more than 30, and now includes influenza A virus, dengue virus and monkeypox virus, according to an updated list published by the World Health Organization (WHO) last week. Researchers say that the list of ‘priority pathogens’ will help organizations to decide where to focus their efforts in developing treatments, vaccines and diagnostics.

The priority pathogens, published in a report on 30 July, were selected for their potential to cause a global public-health emergency in people, such as a pandemic. This was on the basis of evidence showing that the pathogens were highly transmissible and virulent, and that there was limited access to vaccines and treatments. The WHO’s two previous efforts, in 2017 and 2018, identified roughly a dozen priority pathogens.

Almost 500 different chemicals, some of which are banned, have been found in various mixtures across all 171 river and groundwater catchments tested in England in 2024, according to data from the Environment Agency, analysed by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations.

More than half of them are classified as very toxic, toxic or harmful to aquatic life, according to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), and a banned, carcinogenic “forever chemical” was among 20 “substances of very high concern” found.

“Although it depends on the concentrations, a lot of these are very toxic. We know they target algae, invertebrates and fish. If you’ve got a mixture of a few hundred substances, they are potentially working together and exacerbating the effect,” explained Boxall.

Environmental groups have called chemical pollution the silent killer in our waterways. The world has lost 83% of its freshwater aquatic life in 50 years and in UK waters, the sturgeon and the burbot have vanished and Atlantic salmon is endangered.

DANGERS: People can inhale the free crystalline silica found in powder products, prolonged exposure to which could put users at risk of lung cancer, an academic said

Most countries do not ban or limit the use of crystalline silica in cosmetics, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, adding that it would continue to reference international regulations and revise regulations accordingly.

The agency issued the remarks after an academic suggested banning or limiting the mineral’s use to reduce risk of lung cancer in women.

Kou said most people have very low exposure to crystalline silica in the environment, but miners or people who work in stone cutting or processing, casting and refractory brick production might often be exposed to it, and the government has set exposure limits.

However, crystalline silica is used in cosmetic products to absorb oil and reflect light, which makes the skin look brighter and more delicate, he said.

It is easy to inhale as it is frequently used near the mouth and nose, which makes it more harmful, but there are no limitations to its use in cosmetic products.

Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is found naturally in stone, sand, mud, dirt, air and water, and its common products include brick, glass, ceramic, plaster, granite, concrete, detergent, skin care and cosmetic products, the FDA said in response.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) listed respirable crystalline silica in the form of quartz or cristobalite dust as a human carcinogen, because inhaling it might increase the risk of developing lung cancer, the FDA said.

However, most cosmetic products are in the form of liquid or cream, so the risk of inhaling it is low, it said, adding that if people who use powder cosmetics should dab an appropriate amount of product and avoid patting it too hard on the face to reduce the risk of inhaling the powder.

For example, Likhitsup's group estimated that more than 11 million adults regularly take turmeric supplements, often with the notion that it can ease pain or arthritis. That's not too far below the approximately 14.8 million who take an NSAID pain reliever for much the same reasons.

Unfortunately, "multiple randomized clinical trials have failed to demonstrate any efficacy of turmeric-containing products in osteoarthritis," and overdoing it on turmeric has been linked to serious liver toxicity, the researchers said.

People taking botanicals were more likely to be battling some kind of chronic illness, such as arthritis, thyroid disorders or cancer, compared to folks not using the supplements.

In two-thirds of cases, people took a botanical while also taking a prescription medicine, the study found. Because of the danger of drug interactions and the threat to liver health, it's crucial that botanical users inform their doctors, Likhitsup's group said.

When botanicals are overused, the damage to the liver "can not only be severe, leading to hepatocellular [liver] injury with jaundice, but also fatal, leading to death or liver transplantation," the research team warned.

Intense blazes burning in the United States and Canada are creating their own thunderstorms, which can spark more fires.

The monstrous fires that are now charring vast areas of western North America aren’t just colossal and fast-moving, they have also created their own thunderstorms — an example of exotic fire behaviour that scientists say is becoming more common as the climate changes.

Both the Park Fire, which has burnt more than 160,000 hectares in northern California, and the Jasper Fire, which has destroyed around one-third of the resort town of Jasper in Canada, have spawned ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ clouds, towering formations that can spit lightning, potentially starting more fires.

Reports of such clouds were relatively uncommon in years gone by.

The technology involves assembling heat-absorbing bricks in an insulated container, where they can store heat generated by solar or wind power for later use at the temperatures required for industrial processes. The heat can then be released when needed by passing air through channels in the stacks of "firebricks," thus allowing cement, steel, glass, and paper factories to run on renewable energy even when wind and sunshine are unavailable.

These systems, which several companies have recently begun to commercialize for industrial heat storage, are a form of thermal energy storage. The bricks are made from the same materials as the insulating bricks that lined primitive kilns and iron-making furnaces thousands of years ago. To optimize for heat storage instead of insulation, the materials are combined in different amounts.

Aerosol particles are tiny. Swirling suspended in the air around us, most are smaller than the smallest bug, thinner than the thinnest hair on your head, gossamer specks practically invisible to the naked eye. Newly formed ones are nano-sized. Yet their influence is gargantuan.

They determine the color of sunsets. They inflict over three million premature deaths each year. And the power they hold over our climate is massive.

Aerosol particles come about in different ways. Some, known as primary aerosols, are ejected straight into the atmosphere, like dust from a desert or ash from a volcano. Others are born in the sky, products of gases that intermingle in the atmospheric milieu—these are the particles that claim the EAGLES team's attention.

New particles aren't born just anywhere; there are hotspots. Much of the action happens above forests, like the rainforests of the Central Amazon and Southeast Asia.

There, "clean" air free of primary aerosols allows for the right kind of chemical intermingling that gives way to new particles. Scientists have detected huge concentrations of new particles above these forests.

Global variability in atmospheric new particle formation mechanisms

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07547-1

Researchers at the University of Liège (Belgium) have discovered a new population of macrophages, important innate immune cells that populate the lungs after injury caused by respiratory viruses. These macrophages are instrumental in repairing the pulmonary alveoli.

This groundbreaking discovery promises to revolutionize our understanding of the post-infectious immune response and opens the door to new regenerative therapies.