Exposure to wildfire smoke can increase the risk of premature birth, new research suggests. For the study, the researchers reviewed birth certificates and hospital delivery data for more than 2.5 million pregnant women in California from 2007 to 2012, and used satellite images and ZIP codes to compare daily estimates of wildfire smoke intensity. The study found that from the four weeks prior to conception and through the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, 86% of the women were exposed to at least one day of wildfire smoke. They had an average exposure of 7.5 days. Wildfire smoke was significantly associated with spontaneous preterm birth, the investigators found. Each additional day of smoke exposure slightly increased the odds of delivering prematurely. “Wildfires lead to acute and abrupt changes in air quality,” said lead study author Dr. Anne Waldrop, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. “And some emerging evidence suggests that wildfire smoke could be worse for your health than other types of pollutants. So, even as we work to decrease other forms of air pollution, with wildfires becoming more frequent, more intense, and happening on a much larger scale, exposure to wildfire smoke is a serious public health problem, especially for vulnerable populations like pregnant people,” Waldrop said in a news release from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Wildfire smoke…  read on >  read on >

Researchers studying well water found current monitoring practices often fail to reflect actual groundwater pollution risks. The problem: Spikes in harmful bacteria, like those from animal and human waste, vary depending on the season. They may be higher at times when testing is less likely to be done. “This is concerning because many residents and homeowners across the country, including here in the Northeast, have been found to test their wells in colder months, which can cause a false sense of security and underestimate the true threat of harmful bacteria in their drinking water,” said study co-author Ranjit Bawa, a visiting assistant professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The research team studied this by looking at year-round water samples from nearly 50,000 wells across the state of North Carolina between 2013 and 2018. The investigators found a significant gap in the timing of sample collection from private wells and when they were likely to become contaminated. More than 44 million people in the United States depend on private drinking water wells. These wells are not federally regulated, the study authors noted in a university news release. Communities without access to public water systems also tend to be near sources of industrial and agricultural pollution, according to the report. The researchers focused on wells near hog farm…  read on >  read on >

Healthy young people who vape or smoke may be putting themselves at greater risk for developing severe COVID, new research finds. Both smoking tobacco and vaping electronic cigarettes may predispose people to increased inflammation, future development of severe COVID-19 and lingering cardiovascular complications, said lead study author Dr. Theodoros Kelesidis. He’s an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles. “The key message is that smoking is the worst, but vaping is not innocent,” Kelesidis said in a UCLA news release. “This has been shown for many lung diseases, but not for COVID. It was a quite interesting and novel finding that vaping changed the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate.” For the study, the researchers examined blood plasma collected before the pandemic from 45 nonsmokers, 30 vapers and 29 cigarette smokers. The investigators tested the plasma to measure levels of since-identified proteins that the COVID virus needs in order to replicate. These proteins are known as ACE2, furin, Ang II, Ang 1–7, IL-6R, sCD163 and L-selectin. A protein called ADAM17 collectively regulates those last three proteins. The researchers found that plasma from healthy young people who smoke tobacco or vape had increased levels of furin, sCD163, and L-selectin, compared to nonsmokers. The findings suggest there may be increased…  read on >  read on >

Using a “neuroprotectant” drug alongside the standard surgical removal of a clot may slash the risk of death and disability following a stroke, a new study finds. The new medication, called ApTOLL, shields brain tissue from continuing damage by cooling down inflammation, the researchers said. A stroke occurs when blood supply to part of the brain is blocked by a clot or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts. Ischemic strokes, which are far more common, occur when a blood clot cuts off blood supply to the brain. Still, more research is needed before ApTOLL is ready for prime time. “We need confirmatory studies in larger populations, and we are aiming to start those in the last quarter of 2023,” said study author Dr. Marc Ribó, an interventional neurologist at Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain. “If everything goes well and we replicate these findings in larger studies, the drug may be available in a couple of years.” For the study, more than 150 people who had an ischemic stroke (average age, 70) were treated in 15 hospitals in France and Spain between July 2021 and April 2022. Patients received either 0.05 mg/kg of ApTOLL, 0.2 mg/kg of ApTOLL, or a placebo medication. Everyone in the study also underwent mechanical blood clot removal to restore blood flow to their brain within six hours of…  read on >  read on >