Eye Scan Predicts Mortality Risk

Calendar January 19, 2022 | Posted by admin

Using deep learning to predict “retinal age” from images of the internal surface of the back of the eye, an international team of scientists has found that the difference between the biological age of an individual’s retina and that person’s real, chronological age, is linked to their risk of death. This ‘retinal age gap’ could be used as a screening tool, the investigators suggest.

Reporting on development of their deep learning model and research results in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, first author Zhuoting Zhu, PhD, at Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, together with colleagues at the Centre for Eye Research Australia, Sun Yat-Sen University, and colleagues in China, Australia, and Germany, concluded that in combination with previous research, their study results add weight to the hypothesis that “… the retina plays an important role in the aging process and is sensitive to the cumulative damages of aging which increase the mortality risk.”

Estimates suggest that the global population aged 60 years and over will reach 2.1 billion in 2050, the authors noted.

“Aging populations place tremendous pressure on healthcare systems.”

But while the risks of illness and death increase with age, these risks vary considerably between different people of the same age, implying that ‘biological aging’ is unique to the individual and may be a better indicator of current and future health. As the authors pointed out, “Chronological age is a major risk factor for frailty, age-related morbidity and mortality. However, there is great variability in health outcomes among individuals with the same chronological age, implying that the rate of aging at an individual level is heterogeneous. Biological age rather than chronological age can better represent health status and the aging process.”

Several tissue, cell, chemical, and imaging-based indicators have been developed to pick up biological aging that is out of step with chronological aging. But these techniques are fraught with ethical/privacy issues as well as often being invasive, expensive, and time consuming, the researchers noted.

Source: https://www.genengnews.com/

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Sweden Could Reach ‘Herd Immunity’ In Weeks

Calendar May 1, 2020 | Posted by admin

In an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, many countries imposed lockdown restrictions on public life, prompting the closure of schools, restaurants and businesses deemed non essential. But Sweden did something different. Instead of imposing strict social-distancing policies like most of the world, Sweden aimed at keeping public life as open as possible, allowing for some exposure to the virus to build immunity among its population. Sweden rolled out voluntary measures, advising older people and others particularly vulnerable to the virus to avoid social contact. It also recommended people work from home, wash their hands regularly and avoid nonessential travel. But the country’s borders stayed open, along with some schools and many businesses.

“Herd immunity could be reached in Stockholm in the coming weeks. In major parts of Sweden, around Stockholm, we have reached a plateau [in new cases] and we’re already seeing the effect of herd immunity, and in a few weeks’ time we’ll see even more of the effects of that. And in the rest of the country, the situation is stable,” says Dr. Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency. Herd immunity is when a high proportion of the population is immune to an infection, and usually occurs with a vaccine. There’s currently no vaccine for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and scientists are investigating whether exposure and recovery from the coronavirus leads to long-term immunity.

Tegnell said data indicate 20 percent of Stockholm’s population is already immune to the virus, and that “in a few weeks’ time we might reach her immunity and we believe that is why we’re seeing a slow decline in cases, in spite of sampling [testing for the coronavirus] more and more.” “Unfortunately the mortality rate is high due to the introduction in elderly care homes and we are investigating the cause of that,” Tegnell explained. The country, with a population of roughly 10 million, has more than 16,000 confirmed cases, most in Stockholm and surrounding areas. The number of cases in Sweden is nearly double that of Denmark and Finland, which have put lockdown measures in place. Both Denmark and Finland have populations about half of Sweden’s. Sweden has recorded more than 1,900 deaths.

Sweden’s strategy has stirred some controversy, as some health experts have criticized the approach. Some even liken it to playing Russian roulette with public health, CNBC reports. More than 20 high-profile scientists last week wrote in a Swedish newspaper that public-health authorities had failed, and urged politicians to step in with stricter measures, according to Nature. “Closing borders, in my opinion, is ridiculous,” Tegnell told Nature. “Because COVID-19 is in every European country now. We have more concerns about movements inside Sweden. As a society, we are more into nudging: continuously reminding people to use measures, improving measures where we see day by day that they need to be adjusted. We do not need to close down everything completely because it would be counterproductive.”

Source: https://thehill.com/

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Short Patients Are More Likely To Die In Intensive Care

Calendar December 28, 2018 | Posted by admin

If you end up in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital or clinic there’s a number of things that can affect your eventual outcome. How healthy you are, your age, and the conditions that you’re suffering from are all obvious factors, but a new study suggests that your height might actually play a role in whether you’re able to pull through or not.

New research published in Intensive Care Medicine suggests that taller patients tend to survive at a higher rate than shorter individuals. The study reaches a rather bold conclusion in that short stature may actually be a risk factor if you end up in the ICU.

The cohort study looked at over 400,000 cases from the UK in total, with 233,308 men and 184,070 women who passed through a hospital intensive care unit. After accounting for anything that could skew the data one way or another, the team crunched the numbers and discovered that shorter people die more often in the ICU by a significant margin.

“Hospital mortality decreased with increasing height; predicted mortality decreased from 24.1 to 17.1% for women and from 29.2 to 21.0% for men across the range of heights,” the study explains. Those are stunning numbers, but why would height affect health outcomes in such a drastic way?

“We can’t say for sure why this is happening,” Dr. Hannah Wunsh, co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It’s speculative that all the things we do to people might in some way be harmful to patients who are smaller.”

Source: https://bgr.com/2018/

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