New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.

Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.

“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”

While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”

The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.

Two years ago, Wendy Hasnip, 47, experienced a brain injury that left her speechless for two weeks. When she finally recovered, she found herself talking with what seemed to be a French accent. “I phoned a friend the other day, and she spent the first ten minutes laughing,” Hasnip said at the time. “While I have nothing against the French, this is not me.”

Hasnip suffered from foreign accent syndrome, a rare condition in which people find themselves speaking their own language like someone from a foreign country. The condition usually occurs in people who have experienced a head injury or a stroke—a sudden loss of consciousness, or movement caused by a blocked or broken blood vessel in the brain.

The condition was first identified during the Second World War in a Norwegian woman whose head was hit by shrapnel during an attack by the German military. The woman recovered but was left with a German-sounding accent, to the horror of fellow villagers who shunned her after that.

Researchers at Oxford University have now discovered that victims of foreign accent syndrome suffer from damage to several parts of the brain. The combined effect of that damage makes victims lengthen certain syllables, mispronounce sounds, and alter their normal voice. Those changes in speech add up to what sounds like a foreign accent, says one of the researchers, Jennifer Gurd, an expert in the scientific study of nerves and relevant diseases.

Another researcher, John Coleman, an expert in language, says victims of the syndrome don’t acquire a true foreign accent. Their strangely altered speech only resembles the foreign accent with which it has a few sounds in common.

Clinical trials of the United States biotech company Gilead Sciences' experimental drug Remdesivir have begun on Wednesday in Wuhan, Hubei province, the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Experts hope this drug, along with others that have shown to be effective against the virus in animal tests, can also work well in actual human patients.

The Phase III trials have been approved by China's National Medical Products Administration and will be conducted by the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences on patients at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital.

The project will study a total of 761 patients in two trials -- one trial is to assess the drug's potency on 308 cases with mild or moderate infections, and the other is on 453 severely infected patients, Cao Bin, the head of the clinical trial and vice-president of the friendship hospital, said in a launch ceremony on Wednesday.

Remdesivir is an investigational nucleotide analog with broad-spectrum antiviral activity that has not been approved anywhere globally.

It has demonstrated effectiveness in vitro and in animal models against viral pathogens MERS and SARS, which are also coronaviruses and are structurally similar to the novel coronavirus from Wuhan.

2020-02-07