Researchers have found genetic mutations that affect whether a woman is likely to have her baby early or carry it to full term. 

Even late preterm babies, those born between 34 and 36 weeks of gestation, are more likely to die or experience problems, even if they are the size and weight of some full-term infants born after 37 to 41 weeks in the womb. 

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among children younger than 5 worldwide. These babies have higher death rates even into adolescence and beyond.

Several studies show health problems related to preterm birth persist through adult life, problems such as chronic lung disease, developmental handicaps, vision and hearing losses. The World Health Organization reports that every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born early, and this number is rising. Until now, little was known about the causes, but these findings could help solve the mystery.

Beginning of a journey

Dr. Louis Muglia coordinated the study of the DNA of more than 50,000 pregnant women. The study identified six gene regions, which influence the length of pregnancy and the timing of birth. While the study doesn’t provide information about how to prevent prematurity, Muglia says it could eventually do that. 

“It’s just the beginning of the journey, but at least we know now, what the foundation is,” he says.

Muglia is co-director of the Perinatal Institute, which focuses on preterm babies, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He’s also the principal investigator of one of the March of Dimes’ five prematurity research centers. The March of Dimes helped pay for the study along with the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other medical research institutes.

Muglia said scientists have known for a long time that preterm birth is a combination of genetic and environmental factors. This study showed the genes involved were from the mother. 

“For the first time, we have an idea of what tissue in the mom is the one that is likely driving the one for preterm birth,” Muglia says.

Selenium

One of the genes identified is involved in how the body uses selenium, a common mineral provided in food or supplements, but not currently included in vitamins women commonly take while pregnant. Selenium supplements are low-cost, and if the results are confirmed, this supplement could save millions of lives. Supplements including folic acid have been shown to greatly reduce birth defects, so much so that food in many countries is fortified with this particular B vitamin.

Another gene indicated that cells that line the uterus play a larger-than-expected role in the length of pregnancy.

The researchers were from the U.S. and from Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. They only tested women of European descent, so more work needs to be done involving women of other races and ethnic origins. 

But their study does open up areas for researching potential diagnostic tests, new medications, improved dietary supplements or other changes that could help more women have full-term pregnancies, all areas which will require several more years of study.

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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An international team of researchers has identified — for the first time — six genes that determine the length of pregnancy and whether a baby is born preterm. Preterm birth is a major cause of infant death and disability. Now, as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists may have clues about preventing prematurity.
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Washington, D.C., is home to nine species of bats. They play a vital role in the ecosystem, but biologists are worried that some may have contracted a deadly disease called white-nose syndrome. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias went on a so-called bat walk with the researchers on an island in the middle of Washington’s Anacostia River.
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Asia-Pacific — home to more than half the world’s population and some of its fastest-growing economies — is a key battleground in the fight against pollution, one of the biggest threats to the planet and its people, the U.N. environment chief said.

An estimated 12 million people die prematurely each year because of unhealthy environments, 7 million of them due to air pollution alone, making pollution “the biggest killer of humanity,” Erik Solheim told the first Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment in Bangkok this week.

Humans have caused pollution and humans can fix it, said Solheim, executive director of UN Environment, in an interview with Reuters at the four-day summit.

“The struggle for a pollution-free planet will be won or lost in Asia — nowhere else,” said the former Norwegian minister for environment and international development.

The sheer size of Asia-Pacific, as well as its continued economic growth, put it at the heart of the challenge, he added.

The region’s development has been accompanied by worsening pollution of its air, water and soil. Its emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide doubled between 1990 and 2012, and the use of resources such as minerals, metals and biomass has tripled, according to the United Nations.

World Health Organization figures also show Asia has 25 of the world’s 30 most-polluted cities in terms of fine particles in the air that pose the greatest risks to human health. The pollution comes largely from the combustion of fossil fuels, mostly for transport and electricity generation.

Solheim said Asia is also a major contributor of plastic polluting the world’s oceans — and solutions can be found in the region. He pointed to a huge beach cleanup campaign in Mumbai that inspired Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to overhaul the country’s waste management system.

“There’s enormous environmental opportunity,” Solheim said. “Asia has by and large strong governments, and they have the ability to fix problems.”

Coal no longer king?

Solheim said fighting pollution by moving toward renewable energy sources such as wind and solar would also benefit efforts to curb climate change, which scientists say is stoking more deadly heatwaves, floods and sea-level rise around the world.

But environmentalists worry that Asia’s demand for coal, the most polluting of the major fossil fuels, is likely to grow for years to come.

Figures from a forum organized by the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Singapore earlier this year show that some 273 gigawatts of coal power are still being built, although much more has been put on hold.

In July, analysts told Reuters that Japan, China and South Korea are bank-rolling coal-fired power plants in Indonesia despite their pledges to reduce planet-warming emissions under the Paris climate deal.

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement seeks to limit the rise in average world temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Experts say curbing or ending the use of coal is required if this goal is to be reached.

Globally, many countries — including China — are shutting down or suspending plans for coal-fired power plants as costs for wind and solar power plummet.

Solheim is optimistic, noting that the International Energy Agency significantly raised its five-year growth forecast for renewables led by China, India, the United States and Mexico.

“There are very, very few people in the world who believe that the future is coal,” he said. “I think we will see the shift [to renewables] happening much faster than people tend to believe.”

On U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull his nation out of the Paris Agreement, Solheim sees a silver lining.

“The surprising judgment of history may be that Donald Trump did a lot of service to this fight against climate change by withdrawing, because he galvanized the reaction of everyone else,” said Solheim.

“All the big, iconic companies of modern capitalism — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon — they immediately said, ‘We will move into the green economy.'”
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Scientists have accused the alcohol industry of misleading the public over the link between alcohol and cancer.

Researchers looked at the websites of 28 global organizations representing the alcohol industry, and concluded that the vast majority distort or misrepresent the evidence of an alcohol-related cancer risk.

“What you might see is that certain health problems related to alcohol consumption are mentioned on the website, but cancer is missing, or specific types of cancer are missing, particularly breast cancer or colorectal cancer,” said Mark Petticrew, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the research.

The Washington-based International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, or IARD, is accused of misleading the public over the risk of contracting specific types of cancers, and trying to confuse the issue by highlighting a range of other risk factors.

In a statement provided to VOA, the IARD disputed the conclusions, saying: “We believe in sharing the current state of the scientific evidence and stand by the information that we publish on drinking and health.”

Petticrew compares the industry’s actions with those of the tobacco giants, which for a long time disputed the link between cancer and smoking.

“In the U.K., around 4 percent of cancers are attributable to alcohol consumption,” Petticrew said. “I think what’s important to remember is that the risk itself is quite low for people who consume at low levels. But the fact is that the information about the risk that is disseminated by these organizations is distorted and misrepresented.”

The report says further research is needed on whether the alcohol industry is distorting information on other risks, such as cardiovascular disease.
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At least 1.4 million people uprooted by Boko Haram’s insurgency in northeast Nigeria are living in ‘cholera hotspots,’ prey to an outbreak of the deadly disease which is sweeping through camps for the displaced, the United Nations said on Thursday.

An estimated 28 people have died from cholera in the conflict-hit region, while about 837 are suspected to have been infected with the disease, including at least 145 children under the age of five, said the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF).

The outbreak was first identified last week in the Muna Garage camp in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, which is the heart of jihadist group Boko Haram’s brutal eight-year campaign to carve out an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria.

About 1.8 million people have abandoned their homes because of violence or food shortages, U.N. agencies say, and many live in camps for the displaced throughout northeast Nigeria.

Several aid agencies last month told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Nigeria’s rainy season could spread disease in already unsanitary displacement camps, and 350,000 uprooted children aged under five are at risk of cholera, UNICEF said.

“Cholera is difficult for young children to withstand at any time, but becomes a crisis for survival when their resilience is already weakened by malnutrition, malaria and other waterborne diseases,” UNICEF’s Pernille Ironside said in a statement.

“Cholera is one more threat amongst many that children in northeast Nigeria are battling today in order to survive,” added Ironside, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Nigeria.

UNICEF said aid agencies have set up a cholera treatment centre at the Muna Garage camp, chlorinated water in camps and host communities to curb the outbreak, and mobilised volunteers and local leaders to refer suspected cases to health facilities.

The disease, which spreads through contaminated food and drinking water, causes diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. It can kill within hours if left untreated, but most patients recover if treated promptly with oral rehydration salts.

The latest figures represent a 3.3 percent fatality rate – well above the 1 percent rate that the World Health Organization rates as an emergency. The short incubation period of two hours to five days means the disease can spread with explosive speed.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in the conflict with Boko Haram, at least 2.2 million have been displaced, and 5.2 million in the northeast are short of food, with tens of thousands living in famine-like conditions, U.N. figures show.
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SpaceX launched the Air Force’s super-secret space shuttle on Thursday, a technology tester capable of spending years in orbit.

The unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, as schools and businesses boarded up for Hurricane Irma.

It’s the fifth flight for one of these crewless minishuttles, known as the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.

The two Air Force space planes have already logged a combined 5 ½ years in orbit. But officials won’t say what the spacecraft are doing up there. The last mission lasted almost two years and ended with a May touchdown at the runway formerly used by NASA’s space shuttles. The first one launched in 2010.

As has become customary, SpaceX landed its leftover booster back at Cape Canaveral for eventual reuse.

This was the first time SpaceX has provided a lift for the experimental minishuttle. The previous missions relied on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets. Air Force officials said they want to use a variety of rockets for the X-37B program, to launch quickly if warranted.

The Boeing-built minishuttle is 29 feet long, with a 14-foot wingspan. By comparison, NASA’s retired space shuttles were 122 feet long, with a 78-foot wingspan.

SpaceX stopped providing details about the X-37B’s climb to orbit, a few minutes after liftoff at the Air Force’s request. The booster’s return to SpaceX’s landing zone at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, however, was broadcast live.

“The Falcon has safely landed,” a SpaceX launch controller announced. Cheers erupted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

It was SpaceX’s 16th successful return of a first-stage booster. Booster rockets are normally discarded at sea.
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Giving the poorest people in the world’s fast-growing cities access to affordable, clean energy supplies, while wiping out the use of hazardous solid fuels is essential for urban economies to grow on a warming planet, researchers said.

Some half a billion people in urban areas still cook with traditional fuels like wood, said a report from the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI). It urged cities to boost access to solar power and other clean energy sources, and make buildings and domestic appliances more efficient.

“You cannot be a modern, prosperous city in the 21st century unless the energy access challenge is addressed,” Michael Westphal from the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Providing energy services for the under-served really will enhance the environment and the economy for the whole city. It’s only when everyone in the city has dependable energy that the city will thrive,” said the report co-author.

Rising migration to already polluted cities means they cannot afford to rely on fossil fuel-based systems developed in rich countries, and should concentrate on clean, cheap energy sources that produce less greenhouse gases, said the report.

Up to 97 percent of people in cities in Latin America and East and South Asia had access to electricity in 2012. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate was less than 60 percent, with services often inefficient and unreliable, said the WRI report.

Around 95 million of the 131 million people in urban areas who do not have electricity are in sub-Saharan Africa, it added.

In 2010, as many as 550,000 people died prematurely from indoor pollution due to fuels such as wood and coal, underlining why cities should provide better access to electricity and gas, and promote efficient cookstoves, the report said.

Pricing is key when it comes satisfying growing energy demand. Residents of Nairobi’s Kibera slum spend up to 40 percent of their income on fuel, while high connection charges make grid power unaffordable in some cities, said the report.

Sliding solar costs

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Slum dwellers are among those worst-affected by poor energy access, the report said. Some governments don’t want to provide infrastructure that could legitimize informal settlements, while lack of tenure and illegal electricity tapping are a hurdle for utilities, it noted.

In some regions, over 15 percent of electricity is lost due to inefficiencies or theft, while 20 percent is stolen in India, said the report.

The potential for solar energy in cities is considerable as equipment costs continue to fall, with community-owned systems helping make services available more widely, it said.

A scheme in Bengaluru, India, allows people to sell power back to the grid, while homeowners in Gujarat are leasing roof space to solar power companies, it noted.

Pay-as-you-go schemes in Kenya, meanwhile, enable consumers to pay for solar systems over a year while buying units of electricity as needed.

Better energy supplies are also important to support the millions of tiny businesses people run from home, and improving the energy efficiency of public buildings like schools and hospitals can cut costs and pollution, the report added.
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