Life expectancy

Several Down syndrome features may be linked to a hyperactive antiviral immune response – new research

Retrieved on: 
Monday, June 5, 2023
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In the early 1900s, less than 20% of newborns with Down syndrome survived past age 5.

Key Points: 
  • In the early 1900s, less than 20% of newborns with Down syndrome survived past age 5.
  • In the U.S. today, more than 90% of babies with this condition live past age 10 and have a life expectancy of nearly 60 years.
  • On the other hand, people with Down syndrome tend to have lower levels of hypertension and certain types of cancers.

When too much of a good thing is bad

    • While interferons do trigger a beneficial immune response against viral infections, chronic interferon hyperactivity could have detrimental effects.
    • Notably, four of the six human interferon receptor genes are located on chromosome 21.
    • Because people with Down syndrome have three copies of chromosome 21, they also have three copies of the interferon receptor genes on it.
    • Overall, our findings suggest that the tripling of interferon receptor genes may cause a number of key traits of Down syndrome.

Therapeutic implications and future directions

    • It also supports the possibility of using drugs that attenuate this response to treat some of the negative health effects of trisomy 21.
    • Our team is currently leading two clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of one such drug, tofacitinib (Xeljanz).
    • This drug belongs to a class of drugs known as JAK inhibitors used to treat autoinflammatory conditions.

LITHUANIAN PAVILION AT THE 2023 BIO INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION DEMONSTRATES THE DIVERSITY OF EUROPE'S FASTEST-GROWING LIFE SCIENCES HUB

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Friday, June 2, 2023
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VILNIUS, Lithuania, June 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lithuanian Pavilion at the 2023 BIO International Convention in Boston, June 5-8 will showcase the strength, ingenuity, and diversity of Europe's fastest-growing life sciences hub – reaching already close to 3% of country's GDP.

Key Points: 
  • VILNIUS, Lithuania, June 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lithuanian Pavilion at the 2023 BIO International Convention in Boston, June 5-8 will showcase the strength, ingenuity, and diversity of Europe's fastest-growing life sciences hub – reaching already close to 3% of country's GDP.
  • The US is a key market for Lithuanian life sciences and during BIO leading CDMO Northway Biotech will officially open its new cGMP manufacturing and process development plant in Waltham.
  • Lithuania's life sciences journey begins with the first globally recognized textbook 'Theory Of Living Organisms', written by Lithuanian-Polish Professor Andrius Sniadeckis in 1804.
  • Innovation Agency Lithuania Pavilion media contacts for 2023 BIO International Convention:

Drugs that melt away pounds still present more questions than answers, but Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro could be key tools in reducing the obesity epidemic

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Friday, June 2, 2023
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Three drugs in particular – sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – have shown remarkable effects on weight loss in clinical trials.

Key Points: 
  • Three drugs in particular – sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – have shown remarkable effects on weight loss in clinical trials.
  • Globally, more than 650 million people are obese, and by 2030, an estimated 1 billion adults will be obese.
  • In my view, they warrant much more research before they become the basis for a new weight management protocol.

How these drugs work

    • Prolonged elevated blood sugar, if left untreated, can lead to heart disease, vision loss and even death.
    • At the same time, semaglutides also reduce the release of the hormone glucagon, which works opposite of insulin to increase blood sugar.
    • In non-diabetics, these two hormones work together to maintain normal blood sugar levels.
    • This dual-hormone action works to not only lower blood sugar levels and increase insulin sensitivity, but also slows the digestive system and decreases appetite.

Staggering results

    • Over 80% of participants lost more than 5% of their body weight, with the most common side effects being nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and constipation.
    • In April 2023, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly released the results of the second phase 3 clinical trial of Mounjaro.
    • The results were, quite frankly, amazing: Compared to a placebo, the 938 obese or overweight adults with type 2 diabetes lost more than 34 pounds, or roughly 15% of their body weight, with no required fitness and nutrition program.

Costs of obesity

    • The WHO defines obesity as when an adult or child has a body mass index, or BMI, over 30; a BMI over 25 is considered overweight.
    • In fact, obesity is responsible for nearly half of the total cost of chronic disease in the U.S. Studies show that obesity also leads to a decrease in life expectancy.
    • Recent data suggests that the direct medical costs of a person being obese in the U.S. is more than US$2,500 annually.
    • Predictions show the annual cost of obesity will be more than $4.3 trillion worldwide by 2030.
    • Since most Americans can’t afford these drugs, it’s reasonable to ask whether more should be done to decrease costs and increase access.

The age-old benefits of exercise and a healthy diet

    • Research has long since established that being physically active improves mental health, including memory, depressive symptoms and mood, as well as immune function and bone health.
    • Being active also reduces the risks of developing conditions like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
    • The health care field now has a new strategy for meaningful weight loss, but there are still more questions than answers.
    • Researchers are also just beginning to understand what happens when you stop using these new weight loss medications.

Reparations over formerly enslaved people has a long history: 4 essential reads on why the idea remains unresolved

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Friday, June 2, 2023
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The debate about reparations to descendants of enslaved people rages on.

Key Points: 
  • The debate about reparations to descendants of enslaved people rages on.
  • In California, the state’s reparations task force has estimated that the descendants of former enslaved people living in California should receive a payment of $1.2 million per person.
  • Several scholars of U.S. slavery and the history of reparations have written articles explaining what the ongoing debate has been about since the idea first emerged after the Civil War.

1. Despite gains, persistent racial gaps remain

    • While researching his book “Making Whole What Has Been Smashed,” John Torpey learned that the idea of compensating freed slaves or their descendants has never really gained much traction in the United States.
    • A driving force behind the persistence of reparations talk is just how stark the racial differences remain, Torpey wrote.

2. Righting past wrongs

    • Anne Bailey has researched slavery for the past three decades and has concluded that there are many rationales for reparations.
    • For one, Bailey wrote, “There has never been a leveling of the playing field, or payments for the debt of unpaid labor over 250 years of slavery.” Furthermore, she explained, Black contribution to the wealth of America has not been acknowledged or given its due.
    • “Paying reparations to Americans of African descent could help the U.S. reclaim some moral leadership on the global stage,” Bailey wrote.
    • Read more:
      Revisiting reparations: Is it time for the US to pay its debt for the legacy of slavery?

3. Slave owners received reparations

    • “But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before,” Craemer wrote .
    • “But those payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.” A prominent example is the so-called “Haitian Independence Debt” that burdened an independent Haiti with reparation payments to former slave owners in France.
    • Another was the British government, which paid reparations totaling the equivalent of about $429 billion in 2021 to slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833.

4. Germany reparations to Holocaust survivors

    Billions is spent on cancer research globally – but is it money well spent?

    Retrieved on: 
    Friday, June 2, 2023
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    Poorer countries will be especially hard hit, with an increasing number of cases and more deaths, compared with richer countries.

    Key Points: 
    • Poorer countries will be especially hard hit, with an increasing number of cases and more deaths, compared with richer countries.
    • Cancer research is vital to helping ease this global burden, but where and how research money is spent doesn’t always match with where and how help is needed.
    • To get a clearer picture of where cancer research funding is spent, we collected and compiled data covering public and charitable cancer research investments, globally, between 2016 and 2020, inclusive.
    • By country, the US provided 57.3% of the total cancer research funding awarded, with the US National Institute of Health being by far the biggest funder.

    Lung and thyroid cancers least funded

      • Our analysis compares the level of funding given to researching different types of cancers with the health burden of those types of cancer.
      • In terms of the type of research, preclinical research (typically laboratory studies) received US$18 billion (73.5%).
      • Our results suggest that lung cancer was particularly poorly funded.
      • Here, thyroid cancer came out as least-well funded.
      • Both lung and thyroid cancers were judged to be the least well-funded cancer conditions overall, compared to their global burdens.

    Cancer funding fell 45%

      • This might have been a natural fluctuation – cancer funding levels were declining to some extent – but it’s possible the drop was caused by a diversion of funds into COVID research.
      • It’s also likely that these drops in funding will mean less new knowledge coming through the cancer research pipeline.
      • Our analysis showed the flow of funding into cancer research.
      • Ramsey Cutress receives grant funding from the NIHR, Prevent breast cancer, World Cancer Research Fund, Association of Breast Surgery, Astra Zeneca and institutional research support from seca.

    Ukraine war: why Putin's appeals to masculinity to recruit for the military will not work

    Retrieved on: 
    Friday, June 2, 2023
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    Instead, Russia is attempting to persuade thousands of men to enlist voluntarily as contract soldiers.

    Key Points: 
    • Instead, Russia is attempting to persuade thousands of men to enlist voluntarily as contract soldiers.
    • The Kremlin’s recruitment campaign is designed to appeal to their sense of national pride and injured masculinity.
    • But my research with working-class men – the primary targets of the campaign – suggest it is unlikely to succeed.
    • And, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they left Russia in their droves.

    Needed: cannon fodder

      • The country has already squandered tens of thousands of lives in its disastrous war in Ukraine – including many of those mobilised in the autumn of 2022.
      • The campaign shows it’s ordinary working-class men – most of whom have military training – to whom Putin is appealing.
      • This affected working-class men more than any other socio-demographic group, with psycho-social stress, accidents, suicide and alcoholism all featuring highly.

    A pragmatic working class

      • Army service was framed pragmatically, as an opportunity to build physical strength and personal discipline.
      • It was also viewed as a means of improving one’s earning capacity as a manual worker – literally “becoming a man”.
      • An unstated aim of the current recruitment campaign, then, is to provide a veneer of consent for what can now only be achieved through coercion.
      • Men will still be found to be sent to the Donbas, but few will go there willingly.

    Monopar Announces Encouraging Camsirubicin Phase 1b Trial Update

    Retrieved on: 
    Thursday, June 1, 2023
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    WILMETTE, Ill., June 01, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: MNPR), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative treatments for cancer, today announced an update from its currently enrolling multi-center open-label Phase 1b clinical trial of camsirubicin in patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma (ASTS).

    Key Points: 
    • Phase 1b data continue to show an improvement in median progression free survival from what was observed in the prior camsirubicin Phase 2 trial (265 mg/m2).
    • The purpose of this 3+3 dose escalation Phase 1b trial is to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of camsirubicin.
    • The Phase 2 plan is to evaluate camsirubicin head-to-head against doxorubicin in patients with ASTS, with GEIS as the study sponsor with support from Monopar.
    • Further information about this actively enrolling, open-label, dose-escalation Phase 1b clinical trial is available at www.ClinicalTrials.gov under study identifier NCT 05043649.

    Money Cat Group Obtains NCCP License, Expands Services to Better Serve Pension Companies and Retirees

    Retrieved on: 
    Monday, May 29, 2023
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    With this significant development, Money Cat Group is equipped to meet the diverse requirements of pension companies and provide trading strategies while effectively managing risks.

    Key Points: 
    • With this significant development, Money Cat Group is equipped to meet the diverse requirements of pension companies and provide trading strategies while effectively managing risks.
    • Money Cat Group recognizes the increasing importance of effective retirement planning in a society with an aging population and rising life expectancy.
    • Money Cat Group values open and honest communication, empowering clients with knowledge and insights to make informed investment choices.
    • Money Cat Group's expanded services, fueled by the acquisition of the NCCP license, will enable pension companies and individuals planning retirement to benefit from their expertise and comprehensive financial management solutions.

    Enterin announces FDA acceptance of an investigator sponsored IND to treat a patient with prodromal multisystem atrophy (MSA) with ENT-01

    Retrieved on: 
    Wednesday, May 31, 2023
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    Treatment will continue indefinitely or until significant adverse events occur that warrant discontinuation of drug.

    Key Points: 
    • Treatment will continue indefinitely or until significant adverse events occur that warrant discontinuation of drug.
    • Individuals diagnosed with MSA have an average life expectancy of 6-8 years and there is no existing treatment which halts the progression of the disease.
    • Phase 3 studies in Parkinson’s disease-related constipation and further Phase 2 studies in Parkinson’s disease-related psychosis and dementia are being planned.
    • On the basis of these symptoms, he has been diagnosed as having prodromal MSA.

    Adrian Gore Named the IIS Vanguard Award 2023 Recipient

    Retrieved on: 
    Tuesday, May 30, 2023
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    The International Insurance Society (IIS) has named Adrian Gore, founder and chief executive of South Africa-based Discovery , the 2023 recipient of the Vanguard Market Development Award.

    Key Points: 
    • The International Insurance Society (IIS) has named Adrian Gore, founder and chief executive of South Africa-based Discovery , the 2023 recipient of the Vanguard Market Development Award.
    • The Vanguard Award recognizes those who have substantially advanced the development of insurance in an underserved market or emerging economy.
    • View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230530005483/en/
      Adrian Gore, founder and chief executive of South Africa-based Discovery, is the 2023 recipient of the Vanguard Market Development Award, presented by the International Insurance Society.
    • Gore has received numerous accolades, including the World Economic Forum’s leading health innovator; E&Y’s South Africa Best Entrepreneur and Global Lifetime Achiever Award; McKinsey’s Geneva Forum of Health Award; Frost and Sullivan Visionary Innovation Leadership Award for Africa; and the Sunday Times Lifetime Achiever Award 2018.