Public Health Experts Push for Global Approach to Vaccinations
Relatives of a patient who died of COVID-19 mourn outside a government COVID-19 hospital in Ahmedabad, India, on April 27, 2021.
Ajit Solanki / AP
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In It Together May 3, 2021
As the coronavirus surges in places like India and Brazil, public health experts warn that while these situations may seem far away from the United States, their impacts are not.
Dr. Louise Ivers is the executive director of the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. She said that she feels privileged to be in Massachusett, where the vaccine rollout is going quite well. But she also said that the health of residents here and throughout the United States and the world depends on a unified response, particularly as new coronavirus variants continue to emerge.
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A new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study has identified for the first time how the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), an environmental chemical receptor, drives immunosuppression in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and that its removal from malignant cells can result in tumor rejection.
Published in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study findings provide new insight into the biology of cancer immunosuppression, and identify a new target for cancer immunotherapy treatment.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (immunotherapy drugs) are some of the most important treatments that have emerged for treating many cancers, including OSCC. Targeting immune checkpoint molecules such as PD-1, PD-L1 and CTLA4 has demonstrated that immunosuppression plays a significant role in OSCC pathology. But immune checkpoint inhibitors are only effective for about 30 percent of cancer patients, so there is a critical need for researchers to identi
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(Boston) If you come from a family where people routinely live well into old age, you will likely have better cognitive function (the ability to clearly think, learn and remember) than peers from families where people die younger. Researchers affiliated with the Long Life Family Study (LLFS) recently broadened that finding in a paper published in
Gerontology, suggesting that people who belong to long-lived families also show slower cognitive decline over time.
The Long Life Family Study has enrolled over 5,000 participants from almost 600 families and has been following them for the past 15 years. The study is unique in that it enrolls individuals belonging to families with clusters of long-lived relatives. Since 2006, the LLFS has recruited participants belonging to two groups: the long-lived siblings (also called the proband generation) and their children. Since they share lifestyle and environmental factors, the spouses of these two groups have also been enrolled in
Individuals from long-lived families show slower cognitive decline
If you come from a family where people routinely live well into old age, you will likely have better cognitive function (the ability to clearly think, learn and remember) than peers from families where people die younger. Researchers affiliated with the Long Life Family Study (LLFS) recently broadened that finding in a paper published in
Gerontology, suggesting that people who belong to long-lived families also show slower cognitive decline over time.
The Long Life Family Study has enrolled over 5,000 participants from almost 600 families and has been following them for the past 15 years. The study is unique in that it enrolls individuals belonging to families with clusters of long-lived relatives. Since 2006, the LLFS has recruited participants belonging to two groups: the long-lived siblings (also called the proband generation) and their children. Since they share lifestyle and environmental factors, the spouses
Listen • 5:43
Epidemiologists are taking stock of what they’ve learned throughout the pandemic and what they might do differently next time.
Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with
Eleanor Murray, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org. Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.