News You Can Use
The High Costs of Couch Potato-ing
Half a billion people worldwide will develop a noncommunicable disease like diabetes or heart disease because of a lack of physical activity by 2030, according to WHO’s first-ever Global Status Report on Physical Activity.
Disturbing data:
*81% of adolescents and 27.5% of adults are not meeting WHO’s recommended physical activity levels.
*The cost of not exercising will add $27 billion in extra health care costs per year.
*47% of the new NCD cases will result from hypertension.
*43% will result from depression.
*Fewer than half of 194 countries studied have a national policy on physical activity; and of those, less than 40% were “operational.”
The prevention mission: Governments need to urgently promote exercise and its benefits, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, per The Guardian.
The evidence of exercise’s benefits is “convincing, cost effective and practical,” the report notes, adding that regular exercise trims the risk for premature death by 20% to 30%. Global Health News 10/19/22
More Evidence . . . Vaccines Work
Giving Toledo, Brazil, a Shot
Last May, a researcher approached Gabriela Kucharski, the secretary of health in Toledo, Brazil, with a proposal from Pfizer: As part of a vaccination study in Brazil, the company wanted to find out if COVID-19 could be stopped by vaccinating an entire city. Was Toledo interested? Since COVID-19 vaccines were scarce in the country at the time, it was a boon she couldn’t turn away.
Knowing only 1 city of 8 could be chosen, Kucharski and colleagues got to work meticulously compiling metrics for the study application. Toledo got the vote.
Within a week of the vaccine rollout, ~1/3 of the city's population showed up for the shot. By January 2022, 91% of citizens ages 12+ were fully vaccinated, and as the next wave rolled in, the death rate plummeted tenfold.
NPR Goats and Soda
The Epi-Center
Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.
A new, deadlier form of fentanyl has arrived in Virginia, worrying officials charged with curbing Virginia’s resurgent opioid epidemic. The drugs are lab-made opioids known as nitazenes, and are estimated to be several times more potent than fentanyl, the opioid responsible for three out of every four overdose deaths in Virginia …
. . . because the drugs are more potent, they may require several doses of naloxone to actually reverse an overdose, according to early research on nitazenes published by the CDC.
“We don’t know that they’re resistant; we just don’t know what the protocols are for using naloxone for these other drugs,” said Michelle Peace, forensic toxicologist at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Peace said it’s become far easier to find and buy synthetic drugs online by way of forums and that the more powerful nitazenes are attractive to users who have become tolerant of other opioids, even fentanyl.
“The piece that the public needs to know is that they can’t really trust what they’re buying on the internet. That sounds like it should be obvious, but it’s not,” said Peace. Richmond.com
