Muscle-Building Exercise, Weapon Carrying, And Physical Fighting
Since the COVID pandemic began, gun violence and school violence have been on the rise while there has been an emphasis on muscularity as today’s body ideal for many boys. A new study published on May 12, 2022 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence has revealed a link between the two. Cross-sectional data from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (U.S.) were analyzed (N = 4120). Three forms of weapon carrying (general, on school grounds, gun carrying) and two forms of physical fighting (general, on school grounds) were assessed. Over 75% of participants reported engaging in muscle-building exercise. One in five (19.8%) participants reported any general weapon carrying in the past 30 days, 3.3% reported any weapon carrying at school in the past 30 days, 6.5% reported any gun carrying in the past 12 months, 28% reported any general physical fighting in the past 12 months, and 10.7% reported any physical fighting at school in the past 12 months.
Evaluation Of Age Patterns Of COVID-19 Mortality By Race And Ethnicity In The U.S.
As reported on May 17, 2022 in JAMA Network Open, reductions in COVID-19 mortality among older populations are remarkable. From March 2020 to October 2021, declines in death rates for the various racial and ethnic and sex combinations were especially large among those aged 80 to 84 years and those 85 years or older. Despite the availability of effective vaccines, COVID-19 mortality rose among younger adults. Possible factors underpinning these changing patterns are higher vaccination prevalence and less exposure to infection among older individuals. This advantage may have increased over time as younger individuals returned to work and other activities and the Delta variant emerged. Limitations included the use of provisional mortality data and the exclusion of other racial and ethnic groups owing to data quality issues. The rise in mortality rates among young adults underscores the value of increasing the lagging vaccination rate in this population.
HEALTH TECHNOLOGY CORNER
Machine Learning-Based In-Hospital COVID-19 Disease Outcome Predictor (CODOP)
Scientists have developed and validated CODOP, an algorithm to help identify who is most at risk of dying from COVID-19 when admitted to a hospital, according to a report of a study published on May 17, 2022 in eLife. This machine learning-based tool was trained, tested, and validated with six cohorts encompassing 29,223 COVID patients from more than 150 hospitals in Spain, the USA, and Latin America during 2020-22. CODOP uses 12 clinical parameters commonly measured at hospital admission for reaching high discriminative ability up to nine days before clinical resolution, it is well calibrated, and it enables an effective dynamic risk stratification during hospitalization. Furthermore, CODOP maintains its predictive ability independently of the virus variant and the vaccination status. The performance of this tool in heterogeneous and geographically disperse patient cohorts and the easiness of use strongly suggest its clinical utility, particularly in resource-limited countries.
Scent Dogs Detect Coronavirus Reliably From Skin Swabs
Results of a study published in May 2022 in BMJ Global Health involve estimating scent dogs’ diagnostic accuracy in identification of individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 in comparison with reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Researchers conducted a randomised triple-blinded validation trial, and a real-life study at the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport, Finland. This controlled investigation comprised four identical sets of 420 parallel samples (from 114 individuals tested positive and 306 negative by RT-PCR), randomly presented to each dog over seven trial sessions. The validation experiments had an overall accuracy of 92% (95% CI 90% to 93%), a sensitivity of 92% (95% CI 89% to 94%) and a specificity of 91% (95% CI 89% to 93%) compared with RT-PCR. One finding highlights the importance of continuous retraining as new variants emerge. Using scent dogs may present a valuable approach for rapid screening of large numbers of individuals.