In the United States, incidence rates of early-onset colorectal cancer have nearly doubled between 1992 and 2013 (from 8.6 to 13.1 per 100,000), with most of this increase due to early-onset cancers of the rectum. Approximately 1 in 10 diagnoses of colorectal cancer in this country occur in people under 50.

Researchers have observed the rise particularly among people born since the 1960s in studies from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan. During the same period there have been major changes in diets among younger generations across the developing world. Such changes include decreases in consumption of fruits, non-potato vegetables, and calcium-rich dairy sources. This is coupled with an increase in processed foods (e.g., meats, pizza, macaroni and cheese, etc.) and soft drinks. Average nutrient intakes of fiber, folate, and calcium among the U.S. population are also lower than recommended.

The increase in early onset colorectal cancer is concerning to researchers because these cancers often have worse outcomes than those diagnosed in older people. It has led to recommendations that colorectal cancer screening begin at younger ages.

Previous research has outlined potential risk factors for early-onset colorectal cancer including greater consumption of processed meat, reduced consumption of vegetables and citrus fruit, greater body mass index, sedentary lifestyles, greater alcohol use, smoking, reduced aspirin use, and diabetes. However, researchers have yet to perform a comprehensive, large-scale evaluation that compares the magnitude of these risks with those for late-onset colorectal cancer and assesses whether the risks for early-onset colorectal cancer correlate with specific types of colorectal cancer.

Using data pooled from 13 population-based studies, researchers here studied 3,767 colorectal cancer cases and 4,049 controls in people under 50 and 23,437 colorectal cancer cases and 35,311 controls in people 50 or above years.

Early-onset colorectal cancer was associated with not regularly using aspirins, greater red meat intake, lower educational attainment, heavier alcohol use, and (interestingly enough) also alcohol abstinence. Researchers also found that lower total fiber intake was linked more strongly to rectal than colon cancer.

Several other colorectal cancer risk factors trended toward an association with early-onset colorectal cancer, including history of diabetes and lower folate, dietary fiber, and calcium intake. However, neither BMI nor smoking were risk factors in the early-onset group, in contrast to the late-onset group.

According to Richard Hayes, the senior investigator for this research: "this first large-scale study of non-genetic risk factors for early-onset colorectal cancer is providing the initial basis for targeted identification of those most at risk, which is imperative in mitigating the rising burden of this disease."

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According to the researchers, approximately one third of adults are obese and require much larger doses of vitamin D to satisfy their requirement. "This vitamin D metabolite is better absorbed in patients with fat malabsorption syndromes and since it is not as fat soluble, it does not gets diluted in the body fat and is effective in raising and maintaining blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D in obese people," explained corresponding author Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., MD, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics and molecular medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

Healthy adults, adults with a fat malabsorption syndrome and obese adults were compared to evaluate if a more water-soluble form of vitamin D3 known as 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 was more effective than the same dose of vitamin D3 in improving their vitamin D status. The researchers observed that compared to healthy adults only about 36 percent of orally ingested vitamin D3 was found in the blood of patients with fat malabsorption syndromes including patients who had gastric bypass surgery. When the same adults ingested 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 the patients with fat malabsorption syndromes were able to absorb it as well as the healthy adults thereby raising their vitamin D status to the same degree. A similar observation was made in the obese subjects compared to the healthy controls. "Therefore using 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 could be a novel approach for treating vitamin D deficiency in patients with fat malabsorption syndromes and obese adults," added Holick.

Vitamin D deficiency not only results in bone loss increasing risk for fracture but causes the painful bone disease osteomalacia. Patients who are vitamin D deficient with osteomalacia have unrelenting achiness in their bones and muscles. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with an increased risk of many chronic illnesses including multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, neurocognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer's disease as well as infectious diseases including COVID.

These findings appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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Called A-76 and roughly the shape of Manhattan but more than 70 times bigger, it was picked up on satellite images and is "currently the largest berg in the world", the ESA said Wednesday.

The iceberg is around 170 kilometres (105 miles) long and 25 kilometres wide, with an area of 4,320 square kilometres, slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca.

The berg, which broke off the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf, was originally spotted by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed using images from the Copernicus satellite.

It takes the place as the world's largest from the A-23A iceberg—approximately 3,880 sq km in size—which is also in the Weddell Sea.

In November last year, what was then the world's largest iceberg appeared to be on a collision course with a remote South Atlantic island home to thousands of penguins and seals, threatening to impede their ability to gather food.

The iceberg, known as A68a, had also broken off from the Larsen Ice Shelf, which has warmed faster than any other part of Earth's southernmost continent.

A68a, which was 160 kilometres long and 48 kilometres across, broke apart before it could cause any damage to the abundant wildlife in the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia.

Earth's average surface temperature has gone up by one degree Celsius since the 19th century, enough to increase the intensity of droughts, heat waves and tropical cyclones.

But the air over Antarctica has warmed more than twice that much.

Major chunks of the Peninsula's Larsen Ice Shelf—which had been stable for more than 10,000 years—disintegrated within days in 1995, and again in 2002. This was followed by the breakup of the nearby Wilkins Ice Shelf in 2008 and 2009.

A process known as hydrofracturing was likely the main culprit in both cases, earlier research has shown.

Hydrofracturing occurs when water -– which is heavier than ice –- pours through cracks in the surface of ice shelves caused by surface warming, violently forcing the fractures to zip open, causing and iceberg to break off.

Icebergs are traditionally named after the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally detected, then a sequential number.

If they break apart more letters are added to differentiate the fragments.

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The China Manned Space Agency gave no details on what the reasons were, and said only that a new launch time would be "determined later," the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The blast-off was to have taken place just days after China landed a rover on Mars, as it hustles ahead with its extraterrestrial ambitions.

Beijing has pumped billions into its space programme in a bid to make up ground on pioneers Russia and the United States, with ambitious projects in Earth orbit and the landing of uncrewed craft on the Moon and Mars.

But it was heavily reprimanded by the United States and many experts for a potentially dangerous breach of space etiquette for letting a massive rocket segment free-fall to Earth earlier this month after launching the core module of China's space station.

In the now-delayed mission, the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft was to have blasted off on a 14-tonne Long March 7 rocket, and had been expected to carry essentials such as food and space suits to the core module.

The space station—named Tiangong, meaning "heavenly palace"—will need around 10 missions in total to complete assembly in orbit.

Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, said the construction of the space station has entered a "critical stage".

It is expected to remain in low Earth orbit for up to 15 years.

With the possible retirement of the International Space Station after 2028, China's could become the only human outpost in Earth orbit.

Although Chinese authorities have said they are open to foreign collaboration on their space station, the scope of that cooperation is as yet unclear.

But the European Space Agency has already sent astronauts to China to train for work inside Tiangong when it is ready.

The latest cargo launch was to have come days after China landed its Zhurong rover on Mars, becoming only the third nation to successfully land a craft on the red planet.

The rover is expected to soon start studying Martian geology, spending around three months taking photos and harvesting data from a vast northern lava plain.

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Top infectious diseases official Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday sought to clarify lingering confusion over the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s new mask guidance, warning many Americans are “misinterpreting” the rule-change to mean everyone can stop wearing their face coverings. 

KEY FACTS

Using an observatory on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, astronomers have spotted the highest energy light ever, gamma ray photons up to 1.4 petaelectronvolts (PeV). They have traced these extreme photons back to a dozen of their likely sources: powerful factories in the Milky Way Galaxy that accelerate charged particles called cosmic rays. The results are challenging theorists’ understanding of what these factories are and how they generate such high-energy light.

“The findings are extremely important and impressive,” says Petra Huentemeyer, an astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University and spokesperson for a rival gamma ray telescope, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) in Mexico. “It’s a giant leap toward finally understanding the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays.”

Discovered more than 100 years ago, cosmic rays are charged particles, including protons and other atomic nuclei, that have been accelerated nearly to the speed of light. Their sources are poorly understood because interstellar magnetic fields bend them on their path to Earth. However, as cosmic rays rocket away from their sources, they also emit photons, usually about one-tenth as energetic as the cosmic rays themselves, that follow a straight path to Earth. Although Earth’s atmosphere blocks this gamma ray light, when the photons slam into air molecules, they create showers of secondary particles and faint blue Cherenkov light that astronomers can look for.

China’s Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) aims to catch the air showers associated with the highest energy gamma rays, which in turn correspond to the highest energy cosmic rays. LHAASO is a cluster of detectors spanning more than 1 square kilometer on Haizi Mountain, 4410 meters above sea level in Sichuan province. More than 5000 detectors spread across the site capture particles associated with the highest energy strikes, while more than 1000 muon detectors, buried underground, help rule out particle showers associated with unrelated cosmic rays that constantly pepper Earth. Before LHAASO began operations in 2019, most detectors worked in much lower energy bands. But the new results show the universe is capable of far higher accelerations.

Muon detectors, buried under mounds of dirt, help distinguish gamma rays from unrelated cosmic rays. JIN LIWANG/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/NEWSCOM
 

Plastic Waste Makers index identifies those driving climate crisis with virgin polymer production

Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals.

Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world’s plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis.

The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill.

It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.

ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China’s oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes.

Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

The enormous plastic waste footprint of the top 20 global companies amounts to more than half of the 130m metric tonnes of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis says.

Single-use plastics are made almost exclusively from fossil fuels, driving the climate crisis, and because they are some of the hardest items to recycle, they end up creating global waste mountains. Just 10%-15% of single-use plastic is recycled globally each year.

The analysis provides an unprecedented glimpse into the small number of petrochemicals companies, and their financial backers, which generate almost all single-use plastic waste across the world.

Al Gore, the environmentalist and former US vice-president, said the groundbreaking analysis exposed how fossil fuel companies were rushing to switch to plastic production as two of their main markets – transport and electricity generation – were being decarbonised.

“Since most plastic is made from oil and gas – especially fracked gas – the production and consumption of plastic are becoming a significant driver of the climate crisis,” said Gore.

“Moreover, the plastic waste that results – particularly from single-use plastics – is piling up in landfills, along roadsides, and in rivers that carry vast amounts into the ocean.”

The plastic waste crisis grows every year. In the next five years, global capacity to produce virgin polymers for single-use plastics could grow by more than 30%.

By 2050 plastic is expected to account for 5%-10% of greenhouse gas emissions.

“An environmental catastrophe beckons: much of the resulting single-use plastic waste will end up as pollution in developing countries with poor waste management systems,” the report’s authors said. “The projected rate of growth in the supply of these virgin polymers … will likely keep new, circular models of production and reuse ‘out of the money’ without regulatory stimulus.”

The report said the plastics industry across the world had been allowed to operate with minimal regulation and limited transparency for decades. “These companies are the source of the single-use plastic crisis: their production of new ‘virgin’ polymers from oil, gas and coal feedstocks perpetuates the take-make-waste dynamic of the plastics economy.”

The report said this undermines the shift to a circular economy, including the production of recycled polymers from plastic waste, reusing plastic and using substitute materials. Just 2% of single-use plastic was made from recycled polymers in 2019.

“Plastic pollution is one of the greatest and most critical threats facing our planet,” said Dr Andrew Forrest AO, chairman of the Minderoo Foundation. “The current outlook is set to get worse and we simply cannot allow these producers of fossil fuel-derived plastics to continue as they have done without check. With our oceans choking and plastic impacting our health, we need to see firm intervention from producers, governments and the world of finance to break the cycle of inaction.”

Source: Twenty firms produce 55% of world’s plastic waste, report reveals

According to a new study by Duke Health researchers, the average three-month blood glucose levels of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease influenced their chance of having more severe scarring in the liver, which can lead to liver failure.

Lead author of the study, Duke Health endocrinologist Anastasia-Stefania Alexopoulos, M.B.B.S., said severe liver disease related to fatty liver is on the rise.

"It's becoming one of the leading causes of liver transplants and liver mortality," Alexopoulos said. "But we don't have any effective treatments that are FDA approved, so really what it comes down to is finding other things we can do to help lower the risk of fatty liver disease progressing to these really poor outcomes."

The study, appearing online in the journal Hepatology, examined the documented glucose levels of 713 adult patients with fatty liver disease prior to a liver biopsy.

The team—including collaborating senior authors associate professor Andrea Coviello, M.D., and professor Manal F. Abdelmalek, M.D., both in the Department of Medicine—found that higher average blood glucose levels in the year leading up to a liver biopsy were associated with more severe swelling of liver cells. For every 1 percentage point increase in hemoglobin HbA1c (a measure of average glucose levels) in the year preceding biopsy, the chances for severe fibrosis rose by 15%.

Similarly, researchers also found that those with moderate glucose control over a period of five years, rather than good control, had more severe swelling of liver cells and a higher likelihood of having advanced liver scarring.

Alexopoulos says these findings are particularly significant for patients with diabetes because a significant portion of that patient population also has nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

"What I really hope is for more people treating diabetes to be aware of fatty liver," Alexopoulos said.

Alexopoulos also said the findings may lead clinicians to reconsider their diabetes treatment approach to prescribe diabetes medications that are known to both improve glucose control and promote weight loss.

"A lot of the times in diabetes we're thinking about heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol—we're thinking about all these complications," Alexopoulos said. "I want fatty liver to be added in there."

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In a small study of severely malnourished children in Uganda, researchers found that providing them with a mix containing cowpea flour improved their ability to absorb nutrients and gain weight, while maintaining their gut microbiome comparable to healthy children.

According to the researchers, the findings, published today in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, lay the foundations for larger trials with cowpea-based supplements and highlight the critical role of gut health in restoring nutrition in children with severe acute malnutrition.

Acute malnutrition is a major contributor to child mortality around the world. It remains a leading cause of death in children under five years of age and increases their risk of life-threatening events such as pneumonia, diarrheal disease or infections. Children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated with nutrient-rich, milk-based formulas to restore weight and nutrition, but despite treatment many will later go on to die.

Professor Gary Frost, head of the Center for Translational Nutrition and Food Research at Imperial College London, said: "These are children who have been admitted to hospital and often have other disease, such as bacterial sepsis, which complicates the picture—so they are very fragile.

"High quality feeds are lifesaving for many thousands of children. But sadly, when children are severely malnourished they can struggle to absorb nutrients and despite initial improvements in hospital, many remain very weak and will later go on to die."

"We have been able to show that legume-enriched feeds are well tolerated by these very sick children, and they may also protect their 'good' gut microbes, compared to traditional feeds. Our hope is that this kind of intervention will help them to grow stronger by enabling their bodies to absorb more of the nutrients from the feed."

More than 'calories in'

Researchers at Imperial College London have been exploring the links between gut health and nutrition, with the aim of improving outcomes for severely malnourished children. Growing evidence suggests that gut microbes feed on carbohydrates from our diet, releasing nutrients which maintain the lining of the gut. Without this regular supply of nutrients, the gut lining deteriorates and becomes 'leaky," reducing our ability to absorb nutrients and increasing the risk of bugs entering the bloodstream where they can cause infection.

Previous research by the Imperial team has shown that increasing dietary fiber can help to overcome this 'leaky gut' syndrome and improve the absorption of nutrients, so they designed and tested a new feed fortified with cowpea—which contains a source of easily fermentable carbohydrates and fiber, both known to be key in maintaining gut health.

In a small proof of concept trial, researchers recruited 58 hospitalized children in Uganda with severe acute malnutrition to receive one of three feeds: a conventional feed; a feed containing the plant compound inulin; and a feed fortified with cowpea flour. Children in all three groups received antibiotics and other medical treatments, as needed, in addition to the feed.

Led by Ph.D. candidates Nuala Calder and Kevin Walsh, the team measured changes to weight after seven days of treatment, along with fecal sampling to look at changes to the makeup of their gut microbiome. The children were also followed up at 28 days.

The researchers found that overall, all feeds resulted in comparable weight gain after one week, and duration of hospital stay did not vary between groups. However, the cowpea feed limited the damage to gut microbes associated with antibiotic treatment—which can reduce the richness of the microbiome by killing off key groups of bugs. The same effect was not seen in conventional feeds or those enriched with inulin—a compound derived from plants—highlighting the role of fiber and other elements in the legume feed.

Following 28 days, there was limited difference in mortality between the groups, and sadly, despite treatment 12 children died (3, 6 and 3 from the respective groups). But analysis suggested that across the groups, children that died had higher levels of gut dysfunction and altered levels of short chain fatty acids, indicating reduced diversity of gut microbes.

Protecting gut bugs

Professor Frost said: "Our major finding was that the cowpea enriched feeds actually protect the gut bugs when these children are given antibiotics, so we know that the feed is actually helping the microbiota to survive some of the concurrent medical therapy these children are receiving.

"We also found that the children that died tended to have a worse gut problem than those who survived, so it has highlighted that the gut is very important in rescuing children from severe malnutrition. These legume enriched feeds may be a small step towards improving outcomes for those children."

Professor Kathryn Maitland, Professor of Tropical Pediatric Infectious Disease at Imperial and based in Kenya, said: "This is a very small study, but it's an important first step. The role the gut actively plays in the pathology of severe malnutrition has not been fully appreciated, and there are multiple parameters that need fixing. Fortifying feeds with legumes can go some way towards that. Many of these children may receive multiple antibiotics, which kills the microbiota, leaving only the microbes that are bad for human health, and these legume enriched feeds may actually help to resist that."

Future trials are now planned to test the legume-enriched feeds in larger numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition in more regions. The team believes that if the feeds could be produced regionally, using legumes such as cowpea which can be grown and milled in East Africa, it could help to reduce the dependency on internationally produced feeds which may be more expensive and less effective.

Professor Maitland added: "Many feeds which are imported to East Africa are based on cow's milk, or a dried form of it. They can contain a lot of sugars, such as sucrose and lactose, and these children can't absorb this. In fact, quite a lot of these malnourished children may develop severe diarrhea from these feeds as they are lacking the enzymes to properly digest and absorb them, so our next steps are to tackle that as well.

"We think that the next iterations of our feed will include legumes, but will also not include any aspect of cow's milk, replacing the sucrose with other carbohydrate sources. This also means that they can be produced locally."

Professor Frost added: "We know that we can reverse the malnutrition, but this isn't really fixing the whole problem. This approach is a radical change for these children. It's taking a very different view of feeding. It's not just about the nutrients flowing in, it's about how compounds in plants are metabolized, and underlying gut health."

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