Coronavirus Test Report

A simple urine test can reveal if someone has early-stage Alzheimer's disease, potentially paving the way for an inexpensive and convenient disease screening. Researchers found that urinary formic acid is a sensitive marker of subjective cognitive decline that may indicate the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease. To reach this conclusion, the researchers tested a large group of patients with Alzheimer's disease of different levels of severity and healthy controls with normal cognition to identify differences in urinary biomarkers. Formic acid is a metabolic product of an organic compound formaldehyde. They found that urinary formic acid levels were significantly increased in all the Alzheimer's groups compared with the healthy controls, including the early-stage subjective cognitive decline group, and correlated with a cognitive decline. This suggests that formic acid could act as a sensitive biomarker for early-stage Alzheimer's disease, according to the study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. "Alzheimer's disease is a continuous and concealed chronic disease, meaning that it can develop and last for many years before obvious cognitive impairment emerges," said the authors. "The early stages of the disease occur before the irreversible dementia stage, and this is the golden window for intervention and treatment. Therefore, large-scale screening for early-stage Alzheimer's disease is necessary for the elderly," they wrote. The current diagnostic techniques include positron emission tomography brain scans, which are expensive and expose the patient to radiation. There are also biomarker tests that can reveal Alzheimer's disease, but these require invasive blood draws or a lumbar puncture to obtain cerebrospinal fluid, which can be off-putting for patients. A total of 574 people participated in the study, and participants were either healthy volunteers with normal cognition, or had differing degrees of disease progression, ranging from subjective cognitive decline to fully-fledged disease. Interestingly, when the researchers analysed urinary formic levels in combination with blood-based Alzheimer's biomarkers, they found that they could more accurately predict what stage of the disease that a patient was experiencing. "Urinary formic acid showed an excellent sensitivity for early Alzheimer's screening," said the authors.

London: Dogs are more effective at detecting Covid-19 infections through human sweat samples than the existing rapid antigen tests, according to a study. The study, published in the PLOS ONE, showed that dogs were 97 per cent effective at detecting Covid infection compared to PCR tests - the most accurate Covid test. On the other hand, the nasal antigen tests detected 84 per cent of positive Covid infections. The findings suggest a potentially less invasive and quicker Covid testing alternative. For the study, researchers at the Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris included PCR and sweat samples from 335 people and antigen tests from 234 people recruited in Paris from March 16 and April 9, 2021. The researchers examined five dogs trained to sniff out Covid-19 by examining both positive and negative tests to see if they could tell. They found canines were 100 per cent accurate in detecting positive Covid cases in asymptomatic individuals compared to PCR test results. The canines were slightly less effective at identifying negative coronavirus infections, detecting 90 per cent of negative cases compared to antigen tests that were 97 per cent accurate. "Non-invasive detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection by canine olfaction could be one alternative to nasopharyngeal swabs RT-PCR when it is necessary to obtain a result very quickly according to the same indications as antigenic tests in the context of mass screening," the researchers wrote in the paper. Previous studies have shown dogs to detect malaria, prostate cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and also breast cancer. (Agency) Read More► Diabetes Almost Doubles Risk of Death From Covid: Study

London: Women with asthma who are going through puberty, pregnancy or are menstruating, are at higher risk of severe asthma attacks and deaths due to the lung disease, according to a report. The study conducted by a non-profit Asthma and Lung UK highlights that female hormones can trigger asthma flare-ups, BBC reported. The findings calls for more research to examine the sex-related differences in the common lung condition. Asthma is a condition in which the airways narrow, swell and may produce extra mucus, making breathing difficult. It is characterised by wheezing, breathlessness, tightness in chest, and coughing. There are about 136 million women worldwide who suffer from asthma. The report showed that more than 5,100 women have died from an asthma attack, compared with under 2,300 men over the past five years in the UK. It noted that many people were unaware that fluctuations in female sex hormones can cause asthma symptoms to flare up or even trigger life-threatening attacks. "Asthma tends to be overlooked or dismissed," Dr Samantha Walker, director of research and innovation at Asthma and Lung UK, was quoted as saying. In childhood, asthma is more prevalent and severe in boys. However, after puberty, the situation reverses, and asthma becomes more prevalent and severe among women, the report said. The charity said the current "one size fits all" approach to asthma treatment is "not working" because it does not take into account the impact that female sex hormones during puberty, periods, pregnancy and menopause can have on asthma symptoms and attacks. More must be done to tackle the "stark health inequality", it added. "Gaps in our knowledge are failing women, leaving them struggling with debilitating asthma symptoms, stuck in a cycle of being in and out of hospital and in some cases, losing their lives," Sara Woolnough, chief executive of Asthma + Lung UK, was quoted as saying. "There is not enough research into why women are more likely to be hospitalised and die from asthma and what treatments, new and existing, could help women," added Mome Mukherjee, researcher at the University of Edinburgh. (Agency) Read More► Vitamin-D, Omega-3, Exercise Can Reduce Cancer Risk by 61%: Study

New York: People hospitalised during the pandemic both for Covid and other conditions have a higher rate of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections compared to patients hospitalised before the pandemic, according to a study. An estimated 1.2 million people worldwide died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant infections, and this number is predicted to increase ten-fold by 2050. There have been studies reporting that the pandemic was associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) secondary infections, possibly due to the increase in the use of antibiotics to treat Covid-19 patients and disruptions to infection prevention and control practices in overwhelmed health systems. The study, presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) being held in Portugal, evaluated the pandemic's impact on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in 271 hospitals across the US. The researchers assessed AMR rates per 100 hospital admissions before and during the Covid pandemic, and examined whether drug-resistant infections were acquired in the community-onset setting (defined as a culture collected less than two days after admission) or in the hospital-onset setting (more than two days after admission). In total, 1,789,458 patients were admitted to the hospital in the pre-pandemic period and 3,729,208 during the pandemic. The number of patients admitted to the hospital with at least one AMR infection was 63,263 in the pre-pandemic period and 129,410 during the pandemic. Patients who tested positive or negative for Covid had higher levels of AMR than patients before the pandemic, 4.92 per 100 admissions and 4.11 per 100 admissions, respectively. For hospital-associated infections, the AMR rate was 0.77 per 100 admissions before the pandemic and 0.86 per 100 admissions during the pandemic, and highest at 2.19 per 100 admissions in patients with Covid-19. When looking at community-onset infections, the AMR rate was 2.76 per 100 admissions in the pre-pandemic period, and 2.61 per 100 admissions during the pandemic. "These new data highlight the importance of closely monitoring the impact of Covid-19 on antimicrobial resistance rates, said Dr Karri Bauer from the US pharmaceutical company Merck. "It is particularly worrying that antibiotic resistance has been rising during the pandemic in both SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative patients. Hospital-acquired infections are a major concern, with antimicrobial resistance rates significantly higher during the pandemic than before," he added. (Agency) Read More► Omicron Ups Risk of Upper Airway Infections, Cardiac Arrest in Small Kids