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Israeli researchers have identified two antibodies from the immune systems of COVID-19 patients who have recovered. These antibodies have a 95% chance of neutralising all known strains of SARS-CoV-2, including Omicron. The Tel Aviv University researchers stated that, particularly for at-risk groups and those with compromised immune systems, tailored therapy with antibodies and their delivery to the body in high quantities may serve as an efficient replacement for vaccinations.

The researchers claimed there is a chance that antibody therapy would reduce the requirement to administer repeated booster doses to the whole population each time a new variation appears.

The investigation, which was only just published in the journal Communications Biology, is an extension of initial work done in October 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. At that time, the scientists discovered nine antibodies that the patients made after sequencing all of the B immune system cells from the blood of persons who had recovered from the initial COVID-19 strain in Israel.

The researchers now found that some of these antibodies are very effective in neutralising the new coronavirus variants, Delta and Omicron. “In the previous study, we showed that the various antibodies that are formed in response to infection with the original virus are directed against different sites of the virus,” said Natalia Freund, who co-led the study.

“The most effective antibodies were those that bound to the virus’s ‘spike’ protein, in the same place where the spike binds the cellular receptor ACE2,” Freund said.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus uses the spike protein to infect and enter the cells. In the current study, the researchers proved that two other antibodies, TAU-1109 and TAU-2310, which bind the viral spike protein in a different area from the region where most of the antibodies were concentrated until now are actually very effective in neutralising the Delta and Omicron variants. “According to our findings, the effectiveness of the first antibody, TAU-1109, in neutralising the Omicron strain is 92 per cent, and in neutralising the Delta strain, 90 per cent.,” Freund said.

Also Read: Waiting list for eye transplantation at AIIMS, Delhi grows threefold after COVID

India saw a single-day rise of 6,395 new coronavirus infections, taking the tally of COVID-19 cases to 4,44,78,636, while the active cases declined to 50,342, according to the Union health ministry data updated on Thursday.

The death toll has climbed to 5,28,090 with 33 fatalities, including 14 deaths reconciled by Kerala, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The active cases comprise 0.11 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has increased to 98.70 per cent, the health ministry said.

A decline of 252 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.96 per cent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 1.88 per cent, according to the health ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,39,00,204, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent.

Covid vaccines

According to the ministry, 214.27 crore doses of Covid vaccines have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16.

Also Read: Seven hours of sleep is optimal in middle and old age: Research

It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4, three crore on June 23 last year and four crore on January 25 this year.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) released the National Eligibility Cumulation Entrance Test (NEET) UG-2022 results late on Wednesday night.

On July 17, the undergraduate medical admission exam had been held. Both ntaresults.nic.in and neet.nta.nic.in allow users to view test results.

In all, more than 18 lakh applicants registered for the NEET exam, which was held this year at 3,570 centres distributed throughout 497 Indian cities and 14 foreign locations.

Notably, the test’s tentative answer key was made public the week before, and applicants had until September 2 to object to the answer key.

Rajasthan’s Tanishka bagged the topmost rank among the 17.64 lakh candidates who appeared for the medical entrance exam.

Delhi’s Vatsa Ashish Batra and Hrishikesh Nagbhushan Gangule from Karnataka bagged 2nd and 3rd position respectively.

Notably, Tanishka shared the same score (715) with those on the second, third and fourth rank.

Among the top 50 candidates across the country who came out with flying colours, 18 are females on the list while there are 32 male candidates who made it into the list of the top 50 in India.

Others who featured in the top 10 in the country include Rucha Pawashe (715) from Karnataka, Errabelly Sidharth Rao (711) from Telangana, Rishi Vinay Balse (710) from Maharashtra, Arpit Narang (710) from Punjab, Krishna SR (710) from

Karnataka, Zeel Vipul Vyas (710) from Gujarat, and Haziq Parveez Lone (710) from Jammu and Kashmir.

As many as 4,29,160 males out of 7,63,545 who appeared in the exam and 5,63,902 females out of 10,01,015 cleared the NEET UG 2022.

Also Read: Researchers find DNA linked with physically active lifestyle

A smartphone app for eye patients is being developed by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to raise awareness of hospital admission, organ transplantation, and post-surgery follow-up.

Dr JS Titiyal, Chief, RP centre, AIIMS, Delhi said, “I think it’s a demand of time. COVID has also made us realise that you have to approach people in a different manner because a physical approach may be difficult sometimes. It’s only for people coming from far-off places.” “If we could be able to develop this app, phone based app where we can have the direct interaction with the patient and we are going to have a camera system in that which can take the photograph of the eye, especially the interior part, cornea, and this picture we can see in the national eye bank, which is 24 hours working every day and report back to patient if they are suffering for some disease. If they have been registered with us, we can tell them what is their timeframe for coming for admission and transplantation,” Dr Titiyal added on Wednesday.

He also pointed out the difficulty in the follow-up of a patient after any surgery.

“Third important thing is after we do a transplant surgery for patients, their follow-up becomes very difficult sometimes because if somebody develops a rejection after a transplant, it has to be taken care of within a few days. If a patient comes after one or two weeks, then you can reverse the rejection, such a critical time is there. And if this patient can get picked up by this app, then that patient can rush to a hospital nearby hospital,” said Dr Titiyal on the utility and importance of the app for follow-up of patients.

Also Read: Seven hours of sleep is optimal in middle and old age: Research

He said that the app can also be used to connect various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation.
“This is also used to connect to our various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation or they can take care of our post-transplant patients. We can train them and we can discuss with them so that we can advise them what treatment can be started for that patient at that particular time,” he said.

Dr Titiyal further informed that the app will be an AIIMS entity only and it will be a simple app.

“The App is going to be an AIIMS entity only, “This app is going to be AIIMS entity because this is not the very extraordinary type, it will be a simple app where you are going to have a photographic relationship. Fortunately, in India now every corner is connected with Wi-Fi. Everybody has a smartphone nowadays. So this is going to be a simple approach,” said Dr Titiyal.

An expert stated on Wednesday that COVID has severely impacted eye donations and transplants. However, with the decrease of COVID cases across the nation, the situation has begun to improve.

Dr JS Titiyal, Chief of RP Centre, AIIMS, Delhi said, “COVID really killed the eye donation movement in the country during the first wave of COVID. If COVID wave was going up, the collection or donation of eyes was going down.”

Dr Titiyal said that he had hoped to touch 3,000 transplantations per year, however, due to COVID, the target will take another nearly three years to achieve.

“I was hoping that we might touch 3,000 transplantation in a year, which was my goal at that time. But there was a sudden COVID arrival and now last year we could hardly do around 580 cases, which is 1/3rd of what we were doing earlier and there has been a three-fold increase in the number of cases which are being registered for transplantation, That means they are waiting for their turn for surgery,” he said.

However, the doctor stated that the donation has shown some uptick with the decline in the number of COVID cases.

“Now, fortunately, COVID is almost plateauing, similarly eye donation and collection is increasing day by day, which is a good sign for the entire country. I hope that this will be maintained so that we can effectively increase our donation, collection and transplantation also,” he said.

In the year 2018-2019, 2,500 tissues and more than 1,700 eye surgeries were conducted. AIIMS has the capacity to conduct 5000-6000 per year.

Also Read: Researchers find flu shot linked to lower risk of stroke

“If I see on national eye bank data before COVID in 2019. We had the maximum number of transplantation and collection at that time,” Dr Titiyal said.

“So, it is a real challenge for a subsequent time to come. For us. Unfortunately, we get patients from across the country because of the faith they have in AIIMS treatment. But the collection is not increasing,” he added.

AIIMS campaign for eye donation

AIIMS will be running various awareness campaigns for eye donations that include “Run for Eye Donation” which will be joined by the faculty, residents, students and staff of AIIMS on September 8.

According to studies, persons in their middle years and older should get seven hours of sleep every night, with too little or too much sleep being linked to worse mental and cognitive functioning.

Sleep is crucial for sustaining psychological health and supporting cognitive function. It also helps the brain stay healthy by getting rid of trash. As we age, our sleep habits frequently change, and we experience issues with falling and staying asleep as well as decreasing quantity and quality of sleep. It is believed that these sleep abnormalities may be a factor in the ageing population’s cognitive decline and mental illnesses.

In a study that was just published in Nature Aging, researchers from the UK and China looked at information from over 500,000 persons in the UK Biobank who were between the ages of 38 and 73. A series of cognitive tests and questions regarding participants’ sleep habits and mental health and wellbeing were also administered. Nearly 40,000 research participants had genetic and brain imaging data accessible.

The team’s analysis of these data revealed that poor sleep quality and quantity were both linked to a decline in cognitive abilities including processing speed, visual attention, memory, and problem-solving abilities.

The best amount of sleep for both cognitive function and mental health was seven hours per night, with participants who reported sleeping for longer or shorter periods of time feeling worse overall and having more symptoms of worry and despair.

Also Read: Researchers find DNA linked with physically active lifestyle

The interruption of slow-wave sleep, sometimes known as “deep sleep,” may be one reason for the link between inadequate sleep and cognitive deterioration, according to the researchers. It has been demonstrated that disruption of this kind of sleep is closely related to memory consolidation and the accumulation of amyloid, a crucial protein that, when it misfolds, can result in the “tangles” in the brain that are indicative of some types of dementia. Additionally, a lack of sleep may make it harder for the brain to get rid of pollutants.

The research team also discovered a relationship between sleep duration and variations in the structure of brain areas related to cognitive processing and memory, with bigger alterations linked to greater or fewer than seven hours of sleep.

It was also crucial for cognitive function, excellent mental health, and overall wellness to get a constant seven hours of sleep every night. Previous research has demonstrated that irregular sleep patterns are linked to increased inflammation, suggesting that older persons are more susceptible to illnesses connected with ageing.

Professor Jianfeng Feng from Fudan University in China said: “While we can’t say conclusively that too little or too much sleep causes cognitive problems, our analysis looking at individuals over a longer period of time appears to support this idea. But the reasons why older people have poorer sleep appear to be complex, influenced by a combination of our genetic makeup and the structure of our brains.”

Risk of excessive sleep duration

The results, according to the researchers, point to a possible risk factor for cognitive deterioration as people age: inadequate or excessive sleep duration. Previous research has suggested a connection between sleep length and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, both of which include cognitive loss as a characteristic symptom.

Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, one of the study’s authors, said: “Getting a good night’s sleep is important at all stages of life, but particularly as we age. Finding ways to improve sleep for older people could be crucial to helping them maintain good mental health and wellbeing and avoiding cognitive decline, particularly for patients with psychiatric disorders and dementias.”

In a comprehensive global study, scientists from Uppsala University found DNA regions associated with physical activity or leisure screen use. The findings indicate that a more sedentary lifestyle may be explained by how muscles adapt to training and demonstrate the health advantages of physical activity.

The study’s results were released in the Nature Genetics publication. It is commonly known that living an active lifestyle and spending less time sitting down are linked to greater health. People in better income nations appear to be growing less active, nevertheless, according to patterns across time.

The genetic reason for why some people are more physically active than others is also known from twin and family studies, although the scientific underpinnings of this phenomenon are still poorly understood.

Researchers from Uppsala University integrated genetic information from more than 700,000 participants in 51 research projects in order to better understand the processes that affect physical exercise and its function in illness prevention. They did this in order to identify 99 DNA areas that are connected to the amount of time people report spending engaging in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity or watching a screen in their free time.

“We know that people tend to overreport how much time they spend on physical activity, but around half of the DNA regions we identified also show robust associations with physical activity as measured using devices that people wore during daily life. This adds further credibility to our findings,” says Ruth Loos from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, at the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers then demonstrated that decreased screen time decreases the risk of obesity using DNA variations as instrumental factors. Less screen time and more time engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical exercise also lower the risk of developing diabetes, ADHD, depression, and an earlier mortality age.

Also Read: Parents’ eating habits affects their teens’ emotional eating

“We confirmed that physical activity has beneficial effects on health outcomes. We also found that all outcomes that we examined are driven by physical activity’s beneficial effect on body mass,” says Zhe Wang from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and first author of the paper.

Additional research revealed that DNA polymorphisms linked to screen time during leisure are more frequently found among genes whose activity in skeletal muscle is altered by strength training. This shows that by changing the reaction to exercise, these genes may affect the chance of pursuing an active lifestyle.

More in-depth study on one gene led to the discovery of a DNA variation that alters a protein building block found only in fast-twitch skeletal muscle fibres.

“Our results show that this change results in more elastic muscle fibres that can deliver less force, but are likely less susceptible to exercise-induced muscle damage. We think that this reduced risk of muscle damage after exercise makes it easier for people to have a more active lifestyle,” says co-author Andrew Emmerich from the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University.

Genes that may lead to less physical activity

In total, the researchers identified 46 genes in the 99 DNA regions that could be relevant for linking genetics and physical activity. The findings suggest that pathways related to locomotion and muscle weakness due to dysfunction of the muscle fibre are probably involved.

“We cannot currently claim that these 46 genes cause someone to be more or less physically active in daily life, but they provide great leads for further studies. Perhaps in the future it will even be possible to trigger the beneficial effects of physical activity without the need to be physically active,” says Marcel den Hoed, researcher at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University, and lead author of the paper.

A study suggests that receiving an annual flu vaccine may reduce the risk of stroke. The American Academy of Neurology’s medical journal reported the study’s findings.

“Studies have shown that getting the flu increases your risk of having a stroke, but research is still being collected on whether getting the flu vaccine can help protect against a stroke,” said study author Francisco J. de Abajo, MD, MPH, PhD, of the University of Alcala in Madrid, Spain. “This observational study suggests that those who have a flu shot have a lower risk of stroke. To determine whether this is due to a protective effect of the vaccine itself or to other factors, more research is needed.”

The most prevalent kind of stroke, ischemic stroke, which is brought on by a restriction in blood flow to the brain, was the subject of the study.

In order to gather data for the study, researchers searched a Spanish healthcare database for individuals who were at least 40 years old and had their first stroke within the previous 14 years. Five persons of the same age and sex were compared to each stroke victim. There were 71,610 persons who did not suffer a stroke and 14,322 people who did.

Then, for individuals who did not experience a stroke, the researchers looked at whether persons had gotten the influenza vaccination at least 14 days before to the stroke.

In comparison to 40.5% of those who did not have a stroke, 41.4% of those who did had had the flu vaccination. However, those who received the injection had a higher likelihood of being older and having additional health issues, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that would increase their risk of having a stroke. After adjusting for those variables, researchers discovered that those who took a flu vaccination had a 12% lower risk of having a stroke than people who did not.

Also Read: Here’s how you can take care of your gut health

Additionally, the risk of stroke was examined to determine if the pneumococcal vaccination had any preventive effects.

“These results are yet another reason for people to get their yearly flu shot, especially if they are at an increased risk of stroke,” de Abajo said. “To be able to reduce your risk of stroke by taking such a simple action is very compelling.”

As an observational research, it cannot be concluded that the flu vaccination lowers the risk of stroke. Only an association is displayed. Other elements that potentially have an impact on stroke risk were not assessed.

It’s crucial to maintain healthy gut health, which goes beyond regular bowel movements. Additionally, it is crucial that the bacteria and microorganisms in the gut be in good health since they facilitate and improve digestion. The normal operation of the immune system is also influenced by the bacteria in the gut.
In order to prevent various health issues, it is crucial that you take proper care of your digestive system. Eating the correct foods and drinking the proper liquids keeps your digestive tract in good shape and feeds the bacteria and germs there.

It is crucial to maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria and microorganisms since they assist in preventing bloating and other digestive discomforts. Here, look at the many drinks that might aid to enhance your digestive health.

1. Matcha green tea: This tea contains natural ingredients that support the health of the gut flora. This beverage is a good choice for gut health due to the polyphenols called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) that are present in them.
2. Kombucha: This beverage lessens the imbalance between beneficial and harmful microorganisms in the gut, lowering the risk of digestive upset. Additionally, it lessens oxidative stress and inflammation.
3. Water: Water is vital, and this is true even for gut health. Water consumption aids in the proper absorption of nutrients as well as the efficient transit of meals through the digestive system.
4. Kefir: Kefir is fermented, and fermentation aids in maintaining a healthy balance of intestinal flora. Additionally, kefir aids in the breakdown of carbs and is advantageous for lactose intolerant persons.

Disclaimer: The advice provided in this article is general in nature and not intended to be taken as expert medical advice. Before beginning any exercise programme or altering your nutrition, always speak with your doctor or a dietitian.

Also Read: WHO South-East Asia Region to accelerate progress for NCD prevention and control

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