Age-Specific Mortality During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Unravelling the Mystery of High Young Adult Mortality

The worldwide spread of a novel influenza A (H1N1) virus in 2009 showed that influenza remains a significant health threat, even for individuals in the prime of life. This paper focuses on the unusually high young adult mortality observed during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Using historical records from Canada and the U.S., we report a peak of mortality at the exact age of 28 during the pandemic and argue that this increased mortality resulted from an early life exposure to influenza during the previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889–90. We posit that in specific instances, development of immunological memory to an influenza virus strain in early life may lead to a dysregulated immune response to antigenically novel strains encountered in later life, thereby increasing the risk of death. Exposure during critical periods of development could also create holes in the T cell repertoire and impair fetal maturation in general, thereby increasing mortality from infectious diseases later in life. Knowledge of the age-pattern of susceptibility to mortality from influenza could improve crisis management during future influenza pandemics.

“The war is over – and I must go” Egon Schiele, 1890–1918.

     

Is Consumer Response to Plain/Standardised Tobacco Packaging Consistent with Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Guidelines? A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies

Background and Objectives

Standardised or ‘plain’ tobacco packaging was introduced in Australia in December 2012 and is currently being considered in other countries. The primary objective of this systematic review was to locate, assess and synthesise published and grey literature relating to the potential impacts of standardised tobacco packaging as proposed by the guidelines for the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: reduced appeal, increased salience and effectiveness of health warnings, and more accurate perceptions of product strength and harm.

Methods

Electronic databases were searched and researchers in the field were contacted to identify studies. Eligible studies were published or unpublished primary research of any design, issued since 1980 and concerning tobacco packaging. Twenty-five quantitative studies reported relevant outcomes and met the inclusion criteria. A narrative synthesis was conducted.

Results

Studies that explored the impact of package design on appeal consistently found that standardised packaging reduced the appeal of cigarettes and smoking, and was associated with perceived lower quality, poorer taste and less desirable smoker identities. Although findings were mixed, standardised packs tended to increase the salience and effectiveness of health warnings in terms of recall, attention, believability and seriousness, with effects being mediated by the warning size, type and position on pack. Pack colour was found to influence perceptions of product harm and strength, with darker coloured standardised packs generally perceived as containing stronger tasting and more harmful cigarettes than fully branded packs; lighter coloured standardised packs suggested weaker and less harmful cigarettes. Findings were largely consistent, irrespective of location and sample.

Conclusions

The evidence strongly suggests that standardised packaging will reduce the appeal of packaging and of smoking in general; that it will go some way to reduce consumer misperceptions regarding product harm based upon package design; and will help make the legally required on-pack health warnings more salient.     

The cover of living and dead corals from airborne remote sensing

Trends in coral cover are widely used to indicate the health of coral reefs but are costly to obtain from field survey over large areas. In situ studies of reflected spectra at the coral surface show that living and recently dead colonies can be distinguished. Here, we investigate whether such spectral differences can be detected using an airborne remote sensing instrument. The Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (Itres Research Ltd, Canada) was flown in two configurations: 10 spectral bands with 1-m² pixels and 6 spectral bands with 0.25-m² pixels. First, we show that an instrument with 10 spectral bands possesses adequate spectral resolution to distinguish living Porites, living Pocillopora spp., partially dead Porites, recently dead Porites (total colony mortality within 6 months), old dead (>6 months) Porites, Halimeda spp., and coralline red algae when there is no water column to confuse spectra. All substrata were distinguished using fourth-order spectral derivatives around 538 nm and 562 nm. Then, at a shallow site (Tivaru) at Rangiroa Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago (French Polynesia), we show that live and dead coral can be distinguished from the air to a depth of at least 4 m using first- and fourth-order spectral derivatives between 562–580 nm. However, partially dead and recently dead Porites colonies could not be distinguished from an airborne platform. Spectral differences among substrata are then exploited to predict the cover of reef substrata in ten 25-m² plots at nearby Motu Nuhi (max depth 8 m). The actual cover in these plots was determined in situ using quadrats with a 0.01-m² grid. Considerable disparity occurred between field and image-based measures of substrate cover within individual 25-m² quadrats. At this small scale, disparity, measured as the absolute difference in cover between field and remote-sensing methods, reached 25% in some substrata but was always less than 10% for living coral (99% of which consisted of Porites spp.). At the scale of the reef (all ten 25-m² quadrats), however, disparities in percent cover between imagery and field data were less than 10% for all substrata and extremely low for some classes (e.g. <3% for living Porites, recently dead Porites and Halimeda). The least accurately estimated substrata were sand and coralline red algae, which were overestimated by absolute values 7.9% and 6.6%, respectively. The precision of sampling was similar for field and remote-sensing methods: field methods required 19 plots to detect a 10% difference in coral cover among three reefs with a statistical power of 95%. Remote-sensing methods required 21 plots. However, it took 1 h to acquire imagery over 92,500 m² of reef, which represents 3,700 plots of 25 m² each, compared with 3 days to survey 10 such plots underwater. There were no significant differences in accuracy between 1-m² and 0.25-m² image resolutions, suggesting that the advantage of using smaller pixels is offset by reduced spectral information and an increase in noise (noise was observed to be 1.6–1.8 times greater in 0.25-m² pixels). We show that airborne remote sensing can be used to monitor coral and algal cover over large areas, providing that water is shallow and clear, and that brown fleshy macroalgae are scarce, that depth is known independently (e.g. from sonar survey).     

Pds5p regulates the maintenance of sister chromatid cohesion and is sumoylated to promote the dissolution of cohesion

Pds5p and the cohesin complex are required for sister chromatid cohesion and localize to the same chromosomal loci over the same cell cycle window. However, Pds5p and the cohesin complex likely have distinct roles in cohesion. We report that pds5 mutants establish cohesion, but during mitosis exhibit precocious sister dissociation. Thus, unlike the cohesin complex, which is required for cohesion establishment and maintenance, Pds5p is required only for maintenance. We identified SMT4, which encodes a SUMO isopeptidase, as a high copy suppressor of both the temperature sensitivity and precocious sister dissociation of pds5 mutants. In contrast, SMT4 does not suppress temperature sensitivity of cohesin complex mutants. Pds5p is SUMO conjugated, with sumoylation peaking during mitosis. SMT4 overexpression reduces Pds5p sumoylation, whereas smt4 mutants have increased Pds5p sumoylation. smt4 mutants were previously shown to be defective in cohesion maintenance during mitosis. These data provide the first link between a protein required for cohesion, Pds5p, and sumoylation, and suggest that Pds5p sumoylation promotes the dissolution of cohesion.     

Papaverine induces apoptosis in vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells

Papaverine is a vasodilator commonly used in the treatment of vasospasmic diseases such as cerebral spasm associated with subarachnoid hemorrhage, and in the prevention of spasm of coronary artery bypass graft by intraluminal and/or extraluminal administration. In this study, we examined whether papaverine in the range of concentrations used clinically causes apoptosis of vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells. Apoptotic cells were identified by morphological changes and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. In porcine coronary endothelial cells (EC) and rat aortic smooth muscle cells (SMC), papaverine at the concentration of 10(-3) M induced membrane blebbing within 1 hour of incubation. Nuclear condensation and fragmentation were found after 24 hours of treatment. The number of apoptotic cells stained with the TUNEL method was significantly higher in the EC and the SMC after 24 hours of incubation with papaverine at the concentrations of 10(-4) and 10(-3) M than their respective controls. Acidified saline solution (pH 4.8, as control for 10(-3) M papaverine hydrochloride) did not cause apoptosis in these cells. These results showed that papaverine could damage endothelial and smooth muscle cells by inducing changes which are associated with events leading to apoptosis. Since integrity of endothelial cells is critical for normal vascular function, vascular administration of papaverine for clinical use, especially at high concentrations (> or = 10(-4) M), should be re-considered.     

Roles of Fe superoxide dismutase and catalase in resistance of Campylobacter coli to freeze-thaw stress

We demonstrated that oxidative stress plays a role in freeze-thaw-induced killing of Campylobacter coli following analysis of mutants deficient in key antioxidant functions. Superoxide anions, but not H(2)O(2), were formed during the freeze-thaw process. However, a failure to detoxify superoxide anions may lead to spontaneous disproportionation of the radicals to H(2)O(2).     

Variation among strains of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vasculorum from Mauritius and other countries based on fatty acid analysis

Fatty acid profiling was used to study variation amongst strains of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vasculorum (Xcv). They could be divided into five groups using cellular fatty acid profiles. Group A strains represent a new and little known taxon and all came from plants of broom bamboo (Thysanolaena maxima) from Mauritius. Group B strains included the Xcv pathotype reference strain and were from palms, broom bamboo and sugarcane from Mauritius, Reunion and Australia. Group C contained southern African and Malagasy strains from sugarcane and maize, together with X. campestris pv. holcicola strain. No Mascarene strains fell into this group. Group D strains isolated from sugarcane, maize and royal palm (Roystonea regia) were from Mauritius and Reunion, the earliest known strains coming from Réunion. These groups represented in the Mascarene Islands possibly belong to three different Xanthomonas species. A further Group E comprised one Xcv strain (NCPPB 182) from Puerto Rico, one X. vasicola pv. holcicola strain plus 6 other unclassified Xanthomonas strains causing red stripe disease symptoms in sugarcane. Three of these groups occur on Mauritius and two occur on Réunion. Group B strains originally caused serious problems in noble canes. As resistant interspecific hybrids were introduced, group D strains appeared in Mauritius possibly being introduced from Reunion but having similar host ranges within the Gramineae and Palmae. The findings that 3 of these groups (A, B, D) can cause gumming disease in a grass species (T. maxima) and that 2 of them (B, D) also cause gumming disease in sugar cane (Gramineae) and palms (Palmae) is unusual.