Page 3 - Lancet Report

Nutrition support shown to prevent TB, related deaths in India: Lancet

A monthly food basket with adequate protein alongside effective therapy has been found to reduce new tuberculosis cases by nearly half among family members of TB patients in India, according to a study published in The Lancet Global Health journal. An international team of researchers enrolled household contacts of 2,800 patients with confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis across 28 TB units of the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme in four districts of Jharkhand. Household contacts in the intervention group received monthly food rations and micronutrients (750 kcal, 23 grams of protein per day with micronutrients). After screening all household contacts for co-prevalent tuberculosis, all participants were followed up actively until July 31, 2022, for the primary outcome of incident TB. Between August 2019 and January 2021, there were 10,345 household contacts, of whom 5,328 (948 per cent) of 5,621 household contacts in the intervention group and 4,283 (907 per cent) of 4,724 ..

Air pollution could be driving antibiotic resistance: New Lancet study

Controlling air pollution could aid in reducing antibiotic resistance, which is when disease-causing microbes are able to resist the drugs designed to kill them, according to new research published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. The association between PM2.5 air pollution and increase in antibiotic resistance has strengthened over time, with enhances in PM2.5 levels leading to larger increases in antibiotic resistance in more recent years, the analysis found using data for 116 countries from 2000 to 2018. Sources of PM2.5 include industrial processes, road transport, and domestic coal and wood burning. Previous research indicates 90 per cent of the world's population, or 7.3 billion people, are directly exposed to unsafe average annual PM2.5 levels, with 80 per cent of them living in low- and middle-income countries. PM2.5 air pollution was one of the leading factors driving antibiotic resistance, accounting for 11 per cent of changes in average antibiotic resistance level

India could face 3rd highest economic burden of COPD from 2020-50: Lancet

India is estimated to face the third highest economic burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from 2020-50 after China and the US, new research published in The Lancet Global Health journal said. The third leading cause of death worldwide, COPD caused 3.3 million deaths in 2019, it said, with China recording the highest toll, followed by India and the USA. The global death toll of COPD was found to have increased by 14.1 per cent between 2009 and 2019, an increase that the study attributed to factors such as urbanisation, air pollution, and tobacco use. Modelling COPD's economic burden for 204 countries and territories in 2020-50, the study found the disease to cost the world economy INT$4.3 trillion, the equivalent of a yearly tax of 0.11 per cent on global GDP and nearly half of India's total GDP in 2019. INT$, or International Dollar, is a hypothetical currency having the same purchasing power parity that the US dollar had in the United States at a given point in .

Hearing aids may reduce cognitive decline in adults: Lancet study

Hearing aids may protect against cognitive decline in older adults at greater risk of dementia, according to a study published on Tuesday in The Lancet journal. The findings are based on the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of its kind involving nearly 1,000 older adults from multiple locations across the US. "These results provide compelling evidence that treating hearing loss is a powerful tool to protect cognitive function in later life, and possibly, over the long term, delay a dementia diagnosis," said Professor Frank Lin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, US. "But any cognitive benefits of treating age-related hearing loss are likely to vary depending on an individuals' risk of cognitive decline," said Lin. Age-related hearing loss is extremely common, affecting two-thirds of adults aged over 60 globally, the researchers said. However, less than 1 in 10 individuals with hearing loss in low- and middle-income countries

Cancer care should focus on patients rather than commerce: Lancet

Cancer care and innovation should be focused on outcomes that matter to patients rather than the commercial bottom line, say cancer experts in a Comment published in The Lancet Oncology journal. According to the Comment, industry's control of the research agenda has created a system that is predominantly focused on new cancer medicines at the expense of investigating new approaches to surgery, radiotherapy, palliative care, and prevention. The authors, consisting of global oncologists and patient advocates, also establish core guidelines for the development of a new patient-centred movement in cancer care - Common Sense Oncology. They claim that there has been a shift over the past few decades from predominantly publicly funded clinical trials designed to answer questions important to patients, to industry-funded trials which aim to achieve regulatory approval or commercial advantage. "While many cancer treatments make a real difference in the lives of our patients, there are growi

Cost to cut sickle cell disease's risk beyond reach of most Indians: Lancet

The costs required to reduce the risk of sickle cell disease is beyond the reach of most individuals in India and sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease is most prevalent, says a new Commission published in The Lancet Haematology journal. The Commission publishes shortly after a recent study in the same journal found that the highest burden of sickle cell disease (SCD) disability was concentrated in western and central sub-Saharan Africa and India. The authors of the Commission also noted that there is a shortage of healthcare and scientific professionals with expertise in SCD, as well as a lack of trials aimed at developing novel treatments in these countries. SCD is a group of inherited red blood cell disorders that affect hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen through the body. The condition affects more than 20 million people worldwide. The recent study suggested there were 376,000 (3.76 lakh) global SCD-related deaths in 2021, compared to 34,400 cause-specific ...

Immunotherapy for lung cancer patients improves long-term survival: Study

For non-small cell lung cancer patients who are ineligible for standard of care platinum-based chemotherapy due to worries about their capacity to survive the treatment, the trial results

One-shot chikungunya vaccine found safe, effective in first phase 3 trial

A single-dose vaccine for chikungunya was found safe and produced a strong immune response against the viral disease, according to the first phase 3 trial of the preventive published in The Lancet journal. However, the researchers were unable to investigate whether the VLA1553 vaccine, developed by French biotech company Valneva, protects against subsequent disease since the study was not conducted in regions where chikungunya is endemic. Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne disease caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV), which is endemic in some regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It causes a fever in patients roughly four to eight days after they have been bitten by an infected mosquito. Symptoms include headaches, fatigue, nausea, and severe muscle and joint pain. The joint pain is often debilitating and usually lasts for a few days but may be prolonged, lasting for weeks, months or even years. Serious disease and death is rare, but older people and newborn babies are most a

Over 11.4% Indians diabetic, 35.5% suffer from hypertension: Lancet journal

The prevalence of diabetes in India is 11.4 per cent, while 35.5 per cent of people suffer from hypertension, according to the findings of a nationwide survey published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. The study, conducted by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and other institutes, also found that the prevalence of generalised obesity and abdominal obesity in India stood at 28.6 and 39.5 per cent, respectively. The results, assessing the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCD) across the states, are based on a survey of 1,13,043 (over 1.1akh) people (33,537 urban and 79,506 rural residents), in 31 states and Union Territories in the country, between 2008 and 2020. The survey also showed that 35.5 per cent of Indians suffer from hypertension, 15.3 per cent of people have pre-diabetes, while an alarming 81.2 per cent have dyslipidaemia -- the imbalance of lipids such as cholesterol, low-density

55% of cardiac deaths in India caused by delay in seeking care: Lancet

Those staying closer to a facility or families with higher income were more likely to reach within the first hour. In general, strokes reported greater delays

China's Covid-19 cover-up had huge help from Western elites: Report

WHO, the chief global health watchdog, played the role of a megaphone for China's claims about the virus' origin too many times to count, The New York Post wrote

Pfizer's new bivalent mRNA Covid booster vax highly effective: Lancet

The team found that those who received the bivalent booster dose had a 72% lower risk of Covid related hospitalisation and a 68% lower risk of Covid related death

Omicron XBB.1.5 variant is highly transmissible and infectious: Lancet

This indicated that an individual with the XBB.1.5 variant could infect 1.2 times more people in the population than someone with the parental XBB.1 variant

Pneumonia linked with higher death risk from respiratory infection as adult

Respiratory infections contracted during early childhood are associated with an increased risk in death from respiratory illness between the ages of 26 and 73 years, according to a study published in The Lancet journal. The study suggests that, although the overall number of premature deaths from respiratory disease was small, people who had a lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI), such as bronchitis or pneumonia, by the age of two were 93 per cent more likely to die prematurely from respiratory disease as adults, regardless of socioeconomic background or smoking status. Chronic respiratory diseases pose a major public health problem, with an estimated 3.9 million deaths in 2017, accounting for 7 per cent of all deaths worldwide, the researchers said. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) caused most of these deaths, they said. Infant LRTIs have been shown to be linked to the development of adult lung function impairments, asthma, and COPD, but it was previously unclear i

India may miss 2030 deadline for over half of health SDGs: Lancet study

India is not on target for over 50 per cent of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators related to health and social determinants of health seven years before the 2030 deadline, according to a study published in The Lancet journal. An international team of researchers found that over 75 per cent Indian districts are off target for crucial SDG indicators like access to basic services, poverty, stunting and wasting of children, anaemia, child marriage, partner violence, tobacco use, and modern contraceptive use. For these indicators, more than 75 per cent of the districts were off-target. These districts are concentrated in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Odisha. "India is not on target for 19 of the 33 SDGs indicators ... Because of a worsening trend observed between 2016 and 2021, and assuming no course correction occurs, many districts will never meet the targets on the SDGs even well after 2030," the authors of the study ...

No new Covid variants emerged during China's recent outbreak: Lancet study

Two known Omicron sub-variants rather than any new variants have chiefly been responsible for the recent COVID-19 surge in China, according to a study of cases in Beijing published in The Lancet Journal. The analysis suggests Omicron sub-variants, BA.5.2 and BF.7 among the most dominant variants in Beijing during 2022 accounted for more than 90 per cent of local infections between November 14 and December 20, 2022. The results represent a snapshot of the pandemic in China, due to the characteristics of Beijing's population and the circulation of highly transmissible COVID-19 strains there, the researchers said. China is widely reported to have ended its zero-Covid strategy on December 7, 2022. Since the lifting of these strict COVID-19 control policies which included targeted lockdowns, mass testing and quarantine surging case numbers have raised concerns that new variants could emerge. In the three years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the emergence of variant

Planting trees could cut deaths from higher temperatures by third: Study

Planting more trees could decrease deaths from higher summer temperatures in cities by a third, according to a modelling study published in The Lancet journal. The study of 93 European cities found that increasing tree cover up to 30 per cent can help lower the temperature of urban environments by an average of 0.4 degrees Celsius and prevent heat-related deaths. Of the 6,700 premature deaths attributed to higher temperatures in cities during 2015, one third of these (2,644) could have been prevented by increasing urban tree cover up to 30 per cent, the researchers said. These findings highlight the need for more sustainable and climate-resilient strategies to be integrated into local policy decisions to aid climate change adaptation and improve population health, they said. "We already know that high temperatures in urban environments are associated with negative health outcomes, such as cardiorespiratory failure, hospital admission, and premature death," said study lead author, .

Booster dose of Covishield offers best immune response: Lancet study

A booster dose of Covishield offers the best immune response, irrespective of whether the primary doses were of Covishield or Covaxin, according to a new study conducted in India and published in The Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia journal. According to the study, even though homologous and heterologous boosting with Covishield or Covaxin in Covishield or Covaxin primed individuals are immunogenic and safe, boosting with Covishield produced better binding and functional antibodies, irrespective of whether the primary vaccination series used Covishield or Covaxin. Primary SARS-CoV-2 vaccination has been shown to wane with time and provide lower protection from disease with new viral variants, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to recommend the administration of booster doses. The study, conducted by researchers from Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, determined the safety and ...

Molnupiravir does not cut deaths in high risk Covid patients: Lancet study

Using the antiviral drug molnupiranir does not decrease deaths or hospital admissions among COVID-19 patients who are vaccinated and at higher risk of mortality, according to a study published in The Lancet journal. The trial with over 25,000 participants, however, suggests that patients taking molnupiravir recovered faster -- on average 4.2 days quicker -- compared to patients in the control group. Previous studies suggested that molnupiravir is effective at reducing hospital admissions in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 and WHO recommends its use for patients with the highest risk of hospital admission. However, studies have so far been conducted in largely unvaccinated populations and prior to the emergence of the Omicron variant. The new study was carried out in a vaccinated population where most COVID-19 infections were the Omicron variant. Molnupiravir is one of the more expensive antivirals used to treat COVID-19, with a seven-day course costing around USD 700 in th

India sees most number of cervical cancer cases, deaths in Asia: Lancet

Lancet report titled, "Global estimates of incidence and mortality of cervical cancer in 2020: a baseline analysis of the WHO Global Cervical Cancer Elimination Initiative," highlights glaring reality