Medical Bulletin 5/January/2022

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Long distance travelling is linked to better health: UCL Study

How often people travel and the range of places visited are important, with those who regularly travel more than 15 miles away from home more likely to report being in general good health.

Those who travel to a wider variety of places are more likely to see friends and family. This increase in social participation is then linked to better health.

People who travel more outside of their local area feel that they are healthier than those who stay closer to home, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Reference:

Dr Paulo Anciaes et al,Constraints to travel outside the local area: Effect on social participation and self-rated health,doi: 10.1016/j.jth.2022.101535

Specific outdoor air pollutants linked to asthma attacks in urban children by NIH study

Asthma is caused by chronic inflammation of the airways. During an asthma attack, the airway lining swells, muscles around the airways contract, and the airways produce extra mucus, substantially narrowing the space for air to move in and out of the lungs. Children who live in low-income urban environments in the United States are at particularly high risk for attack-prone asthma. Asthma attacks provoked by respiratory virus infections-a common trigger-have been studied extensively, but those that occur independently of such infections have not.

Reference:

MC Altman, et al. Relationships of outdoor air pollutants to non-viral asthma exacerbations and airway inflammatory responses in urban children and adolescents: a population-based study. The Lancet Planetary Health (2023).

Diet and drug combination may reduce seizures: Study

The modified Atkins diet is a combination of the Atkins diet and a ketogenic diet that includes food items such as soy products, heavy cream, butter and oils, leafy green vegetables, and animal protein including eggs, chicken, fish, and bacon. While the ketogenic diet has been shown to be effective in reducing seizures, its stringent requirements and restrictions can make it difficult to follow.

Reference:

Manjari Tripathi et al,Neurology

Cancer vaccine to simultaneously kill and prevent brain cancer developed

Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. A research team from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, tested their dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine in an advanced mouse model of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, with promising results. Findings are published in Science Translational Medicine.

In the latest work, investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring.

Reference:

Chen KS et al. “Bifunctional cancer cell-based vaccine concomitantly drives direct tumor killing and antitumor immunity”, Science Translational Medicine DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abo4778