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Covid-19 research scam: Unwanted diversion during pandemic – The East African

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By AFP
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The first research scandal of the coronavirus pandemic has created unnecessary distraction around the politically divisive drug hydroxychloroquine, scientists say, as questions swirl around the tiny health care company at the centre of the affair.

On Thursday, most of the authors of major studies that appeared in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) retracted their work and issued apologies, saying they could no longer vouch for their data after the firm that supplied it — Chicago-based Surgisphere — refused to be audited.

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At any other time, the matter might have led to hang-wringing within academia, but it has taken on a new dimension as the world grapples with a virus that has claimed some 400,000 lives.

Of particular interest was the paper in The Lancet that claimed to have analysed the records of 96,032 patients admitted to 671 hospitals across six continents, finding that hydroxychloroquine showed no benefit and even increased the risk of death.

Its withdrawal is seen as a boost to backers of the decades-old anti-malarial drug, who include US President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

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“It’s very politicised — there is a group, probably not particularly small, who have learned to mistrust science and scientists, and this just feeds into that narrative,” Gabe Kelen, a professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told AFP.

This is despite the fact that even without The Lancet paper, evidence has been building against hydroxychloroquine’s use against Covid-19.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTS

On Friday, results from a fourth randomised controlled trial — carefully designed human experiments considered the most robust form of clinical investigation — showed it had no impact against the virus.

The Lancet, which first published in 1823, is one of the world’s most trusted medical journals.

As a result, the hydroxychloroquine paper had an outsized impact: the World Health Organization, Britain and France all suspended ongoing clinical trials.

But things soon began unravelling after researchers noticed numerous red flags, from the huge number of patients involved to the unusual level of detail about the doses they had received.

PRESTIGIOUS

Both The Lancet and the equally prestigious NEJM, which had published a paper on whether blood thinners elevated the risk of Covid-19 that relied on the same company, issued expressions of concern — before the authors themselves pulled both papers.

Surgisphere, founded in 2007 by vascular surgeon Sapan Desai, had refused to share data with third-party reviewers, saying it would violate privacy agreements with hospitals.

However, when science news site The Scientist began reaching out to hospitals throughout the US to ask whether they had participated, it found none.

Surgisphere’s internet profile has also raised numerous questions. Only a handful of employees could be found on LinkedIn, and most have now deactivated their accounts.

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

According to the Guardian newspaper, its employees included an adult model and until last week the contact page on its website redirected to a WordPress template for a cryptocurrency website, leaving it unclear how hospitals could have reached out to them.

Meanwhile Desai, who according to court records has three outstanding medical malpractice suits against him, has written extensively in the past on research misconduct.

“The most serious cause of fraud in medical publishing is manufactured data that authors use to support high impact conclusions,” he said in a 2013 paper.

For Ivan Oransky, who founded Retraction Watch in 2010, the affair is far from surprising, serving instead to highlight systemic issues in science publishing and the way science is reported to the public.

“No one took a hard look at the data,” said Oransky. “But we’ve known about these issues for literally decades.”

LEADING JOURNALS

Policymakers should get away from the idea of using the results of a single study to inform their decisions, he added, as was the case for the WHO — and the media has a responsibility to place papers in context instead of hyping them up.

The problem also stems from the fact that even leading journals rely too heavily on an honour system, but “you never know when a catastrophe is going to happen, if you’re not willing to put into place some reasonable safeguards,” added Oransky.

As to the future, the current episode is unlikely to serve as a wake-up call, he said. If one journal increases its diligence, more blockbuster papers will start appearing in its competitors.

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We all experience stress. How we handle it is key to our health, say experts – CBC.ca

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The Dose24:36What’s the connection between stress and my health and well-being?

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It could be a morning traffic jam. A deadline at work. A conflict with a family member. Taking care of kids and aging parents. 

Stressful situations are all around us, and experts say how we manage stress is key to preventing it from causing long-term health problems — both physical and mental. 

Short-term stress doesn’t have to be negative, but research shows that ongoing stress wears away at the body’s systems and can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, Type 2 Diabetes, and mental health challenges.

“It’s like walking around with a ten or fifteen-pound weight continually on your back and not being able to shed that weight,” psychologist Dr. Zindel Segal told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC’s The Dose

There are techniques and strategies to decrease that stressful load, however, and lessen the impact of stress on the body and the mind. 

Is stress good or bad? 

Stress means that we are unable to use our personal or social resources to meet the demands being placed on us, said Dr. Eli Puterman, a health psychologist and associate professor in the school of kinesiology at UBC. 

But not all stress is bad stress, said Puterman. 

“It sometimes can motivate you to also move in the direction of, ‘Let’s change our goals,'” he said. 

From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies are engineered to handle stress, said Segal, a distinguished professor of psychology and mood disorders at the University of Toronto Scarborough. 

But after the stress response, we need a period of rest and recovery, which allows the body to recoup the resources that were used up during the stressful situation. 

Chronic stress is when we’re unable to step out of the situation and take advantage of our own natural capacity to restore, said Segal. 

It’s a system that is “stuck in the fifth gear without the ability to downshift,” he said. 

Connecting with your senses

The first step to managing stress is recognizing it, said Segal, and that means tuning into our bodies. 

“Are you noticing that maybe your heart is racing, or that your palms are sweating, or that your temple and forehead are pounding?” he said. 

Grounding techniques can anchor us in the present moment and help pull us away from intrusive thoughts or feelings to take a broader view of the situation, said Segal. 

Deep breathing and meditation can both help you tune into your senses during stressful moments. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

“One of the things that we lose the ability to connect with is the sensory world,” he said, which is why so many techniques for managing stress are about reconnecting with your senses. 

“Sensations are a way of actually helping us step out of thinking, to ground ourselves.” 

A breath of fresh air 

Doing yoga, meditating, exercising and deep breathing can all help ground us in our bodies and change our perspectives on stress, said Segal. 

However, stress can cause barriers to being physically active, said Puterman, so he prefers to think about moving our bodies as opposed to exercising. 

“Getting outside and going for some walks for 10, 15 minutes per day can help us start having those moments where we’re taking care of our bodies,” he said. 

LISTEN | Try this guided exercise in box breathing with Dr. Zindel Segal: 

The Dose1:50A guided exercise in box breathing

One simple exercise Segal recommends is a technique called box breathing. Here’s how to try it: 

  • Sit in a chair and notice the sensations of sitting: the feet pressing down into the floor, the hands folded in the lap or on the thighs. 
  • Breathe in for four beats (visualize the left side of the box). 
  • Hold for four beats (visualize the top of the box).
  • Breathe out for four beats (visualize the right side of the box). 
  • Hold for four beats (visualize the bottom of the box). 
  • Repeat as many times as you like. 

What stress does to the body 

It may be easy to understand how stress can take an emotional and mental toll, but research also shows that stress can have an impact on our physical health — including an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. 

“In the short term, it rapidly increases your blood pressure, which can potentially result in a tear in the plaque that is in your arteries and then subsequently cause a heart attack or a stroke,” said Dr. Hassan Mir, a cardiologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute. 

When we’re feeling stress, it activates our sympathetic nervous system, the part of our nervous system that carries signals related to our fight-or-flight response. 

That can cause an increase in our blood pressure and heart rate, said Mir. 

Another reaction to acute stress is a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or a weakened heart muscle, he said.

“When you’re really stressed, you can have this release of adrenaline in your body,” Mir said. 

WATCH We can’t avoid stress, but we can learn how to deal with it: 

Stress can create long-term health impacts: ‘It’s all about how you cope,’ says psychologist

6 months ago

Duration 1:49

Mir has seen people who come into the hospital because their partner had a cardiac arrest, and then they suddenly get rushed to the ER because it looks like they’re having a heart attack. 

“You go and look inside and the coronary arteries look completely fine, but their heart muscle looks like it’s completely weakened,” Mir said. 

If you’re frequently activating your sympathetic nervous system due to stress, that can cause other issues in the body, said Puterman. 

“If you’re starting to shift your baseline of the functioning of your physiology, you’re now entering the state where now you have too much cortisol that’s then activating too much glucose release,” he said. 

Too much glucose released into the body can cause people to enter a pre-diabetes state, said Puterman. 

How much stress is too much?  

A little bit of stress could help us handle more stressful events in the future, a theory called the inoculation hypothesis, said Puterman. 

“Some stress on a daily basis or in life actually inoculates you to future exposures to stressors,” he said. 

But there are some telltale signs that the stress you’re experiencing is causing harmful effects, said Puterman. They include: 

  • Not sleeping well.
  • Not getting as much exercise as usual.
  • Consuming more alcohol or drugs.
  • Withdrawing from others socially.
  • Getting into more arguments with family or friends.

The trick is finding that sweet spot, said Segal, between having enough stress and too much. 

“We don’t want to tip over into a point where the stress that we’re facing is overwhelming,” Segal said. 

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Medical officer encourages measles vaccinations as global cases rise – SteinbachOnline.com

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As cases of measles are increasing in parts of Canada and around the world, Manitobans are reminded that staying up to date on their vaccinations is one of the most important ways to prevent and reduce the risk of measles and other serious illnesses. 

Measles is very contagious, says Dr. Mahmoud Khodaveisi, Medical Officer of Health for Southern Health-Santé Sud. 

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The most recognized symptom of measles is a red, blotchy rash, which often begins on the face and spreads down the body. Other common symptoms include fever, runny nose, cough, drowsiness, irritability and red eyes. Measles is a serious illness, especially for young children, and can result in lung and brain infections and other conditions that lead to serious complications or death. 

Although there have been no recent confirmed cases of measles in our province since 2019, there is increasing concern as the number of cases are rising in Canada and around the world. 

Dr. Khodaveisi says that before the vaccine was available, measles was a significant cause of childhood illness, and as a result, people born before 1970 are considered immune to measles as they were likely exposed growing up. 

As part of Manitoba’s routine immunization schedule, children can receive two doses of a vaccine that protects against measles, first at 12 months and again between the ages of four and six. Together, these doses provide 97 per cent protection against measles. 

The province reports that the most recent data available shows that about 80 per cent of children in Manitoba have received one dose of the vaccine that protects against measles by age two. Nearly 75 per cent of children have received two doses of the vaccine by age seven and this rate increases to over 88 per cent by the age of 17. 

The province has sent information out about measles to health-care providers. 

Measles is a reportable disease, meaning public health must be informed about cases by laboratories and health-care providers. Once a case is reported, public health will launch an investigation. This includes identifying close contacts, offering vaccination where appropriate and notifying the public of relevant exposures if needed. 

Manitoba’s immunization registry was established in 1988, so records for anyone who has received immunizations since then should be contained in the registry. 

If you are not sure if you or your children have been vaccinated, immunization records can be requested online at https://forms.gov.mb.ca/immunization-update-request/. Alternatively, you can contact your local public health office or contact your health-care provider.

-With files from Corny Rempel. 

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Measles in Toronto: 2nd case confirmed

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A second lab-confirmed case of measles has been identified in Toronto.

The city’s public health agency said that an infant who recently returned from travel has contracted the disease. The child is recovering at home.

The first Toronto case was identified on Feb. 16.

Toronto Public Health is warning that anyone who attended the Agincourt Public Library between 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on March 11 may have been exposed. Individuals should monitor for symptoms until April 1 and double check that their vaccinations are up to date.

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Symptoms of measles include red rashes, fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and fatigue. Individuals can also get unusual white spots in their mouth.

The number of measles infections in Ontario so far this year has already surpassed the total number of cases reported in 2023.

As of March 13, Public Health Ontario had confirmed at least eight cases of measles across the province. Cases have been identified in Peel Region, Hamilton, Brant County and Windsor-Essex County.

Of those infections, six were related to travel and two had an unknown source of exposure.

In 2023, there were seven cases of measles confirmed in Ontario.

Canada-wide data is less detailed, with the Public Health Agency of Canada reporting 17 cases of measles as of March 2, along with one case of congenital rubella syndrome.

 

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