Category Archives: Biological Sciences

COVID-19 and Alcohol Use: Why Managing Your Alcohol Consumption is Crucial During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted on October 13, 2020 by | Leave a comment

The Now

COVID-19 has taken the world by storm, forcing whole countries to shut down and people to self-isolate. Whilst self-isolation and the shutdowns are effective methods of preventing the spread of COVID-19, they also have their collateral effects. A recent report published by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction found that 25% of Canadians (aged 35-54) are drinking more while at home during the COVID-19 pandemic because of either boredom, stress, and/or lack of a regular schedule.

Image: Nanos/Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction

A similar increase was seen in Australia where there was an increase of around 30% in alcohol bought compared to last year. Alcohol while being a great way to relax also has many negative effects that in a time such as the COVID-19 pandemic can result in some very dangerous situations.

The Truth 

One misconception about alcohol that has been debunked by the World Health Organization (WHO) was that drinking alcohol can provide you extra immunity against the COVID-19 disease.

Image: WHO/Europe /Twitter

In contrast, a study concluded that alcohol might increase one’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 disease. Alcohol consumption has a documented role in disrupting one’s immune system. It can do so by disrupting physical, chemical, and cellular responses that are apart of the body’s first line of defense. Furthermore, alcohol can impair t-cell recruitment which means there is a lower number of total white blood cells that can go out and destroy the invaders, this results in a weaker immune system. This can be dangerous especially with COVID-19 looming as a strong immune system can help fight off COVID-19 with ease but with a weak one COVID-19 becomes a much greater threat.

From this, it can be understood that limiting the number of alcoholic drinks that you intake to a low-to-moderate amount will be beneficial for you.

Dr. Charity Baker states “Alcohol isn’t healthy and never was”

Alcohol can not only damage the immune system, but there is also a growing concern that the sudden increase in alcohol usage during the COVID-19 pandemic may result in greater cases of alcoholism. This is a concern as it can lead to many health problems that range from mental disorders to liver/heart problems; in a family setting, this can result in domestic violence and child negligence which can develop into many other long-term problems such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The Future 

The future is dependent on what actions people decide to take now. The increase in alcohol drinking which is collateral of COVID-19 can become a problem if not addressed properly. The way to prevent an increase in alcoholism and all of the consequential problems is to lower your alcohol intake to a low-to-moderate amount, which is considered to be a maximum of 1 -2 drinks a day.  The societal and economical effects of COVID-19 are here to stay for many years. If alcohol drinking is not controlled during this COVID-19 pandemic, these effects will also persist for many more years to come.

– Harman Sandhu

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Video

Your Posture Impacts More Than You Think

Posted on October 12, 2020 by | 1 comment

“Hey, sit up straight!” “Stop slouching!” Growing up, I’m sure we have all been scolded by our parents at the dinner table for having poor posture, without realizing why it was such an issue. Even though comments like these tend to get on our nerves from time to time, we aren’t reminded of our posture for no reason.

Ever since lockdown was declared due to COVID-19, the majority of university students have slowly adapted to the routine of working from home, as we now spend an abundant amount of time in front of screens, and developing excessive sedentary behaviour. This increased exposure to digital device usage serves as hazardous beginning stages for the development of poor posture and health risks.

What Is Posture and What Does Good Posture Look Like?

Posture is based on the body’s positioning and alignment in conjunction with the force of gravity. Whenever we are sitting, standing or lying down, gravity plays a vital role in exerting force on our joints, ligaments and muscles.

To indicate good posture when sitting at a desk or your personal work environment, your chair should be adjusted appropriately so that your feet rest flat on the floor and knees bent naturally. If you spend an adequate amount of time sitting in front of a computer screen, your monitor should be positioned at eye level or slightly below eye level to decrease strain on the neck.

Demonstrates the requirements for achieving correct sitting posture
Photo by Sophia, Jack
Source: bestchairlist.com

Long-Term Health Risk Factors

While not everyone is fortunate enough to have a dedicated and ergonomically friendly workstation, this leaves many working from sofas, beds, and chairs with a lack of proper support. As a result, some of the most common yet vital long-term health factors are at risk.

A recent study analyzed the pain and disability situation of individuals working from home during the COVID-19 isolation process. It was discovered upon the 87 volunteers who were included in a digital media questionnaire which focused on the transition from working in offices, that 50.6% of individuals suffered from low back pain, 44.8% from shoulder pain, and 35.6% from knee pain. This demonstrates that postural stress is closely associated with poor workstation ergonomics.

Pie graph analysis of pain resulting from working at home during COVID-19 isolation
Photo by PEKYAVAS, Nihan
Source: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ijdshs/issue/56796/772675

The Influence of Posture on Daily Activities

Brian Betancourt, exercise physiologist and Dr.Jose Mena, interventional spine specialist, summarize the effects of poor posture in the neck from daily activities while elaborating on a unique piece of advice to combat poor posture.

Looking Forward 

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we work as we slowly become more susceptible to health risks from developing poor sedentary posture. During this isolation process, it’s important that we consider our posture to avoid being negatively affected in areas of our body, over the course of heavy work sessions. This will ultimately allow us to freely engage and participate in meaningful activities in the long run.

– Gordon Wu

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Image

COVID-19: Could the common cold help protect you?

Image: Mojca J / Pixabay

The common cold is never any fun to deal with, however it might also provide you with some protection from COVID-19, a recent study suggests.

Research from infectious disease experts at the University of Rochester Medical Center have also suggested that people who have had COVID-19 may be immune to it for a long time, possibly even for the rest of their lives.

What’s the foundation?

Even though the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is relatively new, it falls under a category of beta coronaviruses that cause about 15-20% of common colds.

Image: Daniel Roberts / Pixabay

When you catch a cold, your body fights against the virus through your immune system. However, as your body does this, the immune system “remembers” the virus for the future. This is so the next time that virus enters your system, your immune system will be able to fight back even faster.

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Video:  How immunity defenders work against COVID-19

The evidence

The study focused on memory B cells — immune cells that can last for decades. Since memory B cells can survive for decades, they could protect COVID-19 survivors from future infections for a long time, but further research is needed to confirm this.

Image: Ahmad Ardity / Pixabay

The researchers compared blood samples from 26 people who were recovering from mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms and 21 healthy people who had their samples collected 6-10 years ago — long before they could be exposed to COVID-19.

The study found that B cells from the immune system that attacked previous cold-causing coronaviruses seemed to also recognize the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19 as a result of memory B cells being activated.

“When we looked at blood samples from people who were recovering from COVID-19, it looked like many of them had a pre-existing pool of memory B cells that could recognize SARS-CoV-2 and rapidly produce antibodies that could attack it,” said study authour Mark Sangster.

The study authors believe this could mean that anyone who has ever been infected by a common coronavirus — which is almost everyone, may have some amount of immunity to COVID-19.

What’s for the future?

The researchers will “now we need to see if having this pool of pre-existing memory B cells correlates with milder symptoms and shorter disease course — or if it helps boost the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines,” said study co-authour David Topham.

More information

The Government of Canada has more information and resources regarding COVID-19 .

 

– Amrit Jagpal

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Posted on October 5, 2020 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

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Mitigating Climate Change: Carbon Capture

Posted on October 5, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Climate change is the change of weather and the rise of sea levels on the planet Earth. Climate change is an extremely relevant global issue since it can lead to flooding and extreme weather conditions which can endanger life on earth. As a result, it is of utmost importance to find solutions that can help mitigate the effects of climate change. One of the main causes of climate change is the release of excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Image: Climate Change
Source: CC0 Public Domain

A solution to climate change

One solution that scientists have proposed in order to reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to capture carbon dioxide in the air and use the captured carbon dioxide as a source of chemical carbon for other processes. This process is known as “carbon capture and utilization” (CCU). Although the potential benefits of CCU are very promising, changing the carbon dioxide into a different form and using it in other chemical processes has been proven to be difficult, mainly due to the thermodynamic stability of carbon dioxide. Although CCU has gained major traction over the past few years, it will still require a lot of time before it can be used industrially worldwide. Scientists are currently in the process of trying to find the least costly, and most efficient means of capturing carbon emissions to reduce climate change. 

YouTube Preview Image                                                      Video: Carbon Capture Plant in Squamish, BC

Carbon capture methods

One of the carbon capturing methods that has been showing promise in recent scientific studies, is the adsorption of carbon dioxide through the use of solid sorbents. Adsorption is the adhesion or the clinging of gas molecules onto a surface. In this case, the carbon dioxide molecules will stick to the solid surface of the sorbent, which leads to successful carbon capturing. The solid sorbents used in this method can be made of “porous carbonaceous materials, zeolites, alumina, silica, (or) metal-organic frameworks.” Adsorption of carbon dioxide can be categorized into two variations; physical and chemical adsorption. In physical adsorption, the transfer of carbon dioxide into the solid sorbent occurs due to the van der Waals interactions between the sorbent and the carbon dioxide. The issue with these physical sorbents is that they have “poor selectivity for CO2, and low CO2 adsorption capacities.” A means of improving both the carbon dioxide selectivity and the carbon dioxide adsorption capacities of these sorbents is by adding basic groups to the sorbent surface, which can strengthen its interactions with the acidic carbon dioxide. These sorbents primarily use alkalis to act as basic groups. In terms of alkali-based sorbents, scientists have been favouring the use of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate. Although carbon dioxide absorption via solid sorbents is very promising, more scientific work needs to be done to improve the adsorption capabilities of sorbents.

Another carbon capturing method that scientists have been favouring is the separation of carbon dioxide via membranes. These membranes are selectively permeable to carbon dioxide which leads to separation of carbon dioxide from other chemicals.

All in all, the development of these innovative carbon capturing mechanisms is helping to mitigate climate change and scientists are working hard to refine these techniques. 

– Yoshinao Matsubara

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Toward enzymatic blood conversion: A promising solution for blood shortage and transfusion incompatibility

Posted on October 5, 2020 by | Leave a comment

What do you do when a patient requires blood transfusion, but the specific blood type is inadequate in the blood bank? Blood shortage has become a concern worldwide. According to American Red Cross, approximate 36,000 units of red blood cells (RBCs) are needed daily in the U.S, yet 13 million units are collected in a year, resulting in an average daily shortage of 400 units. And, this crisis usually expands during extraordinary situations. A recent example is the critical blood shortage during COVID-19 pandemic.

To solve the challenge, chemists have taken a step forward to examine the structure of RBCs and consider what if we convert all blood types to the universally accepted O blood. The importance of such research is that the barrier of blood transfusion between different types no longer exists. Hence, blood supply increases to ease the shortage.

What are blood types and transfusional barrier?

Image credit: InvictaHOG

There are four major blood types: A, B, AB, and O. Although blood might look the same and do the same job, such as carrying oxygen for respiration, transfusing incompatible blood type will trigger fatal immune responses. That is because of the additional sugar molecule, called antigen, attaching to the core sugar structure on a RBC. Type A blood has A antigens. Similarly, type B blood has B antigens. Moreover, type AB blood contains both A and B antigens. Importantly, type O has none of them.

Image credit: Marius Lixandru

Due to the presence of either A or B antigen, A-blood people cannot transfuse with type B; B-blood people cannot transfuse with type A. Consequently, AB-blood people cannot take either A or B but only with AB blood. Only O blood is the universally accepted type because it shares without being recognized as an outsider by our immune system.

Origin of enzymatic blood conversion

The first idea of blood-type conversion can be traced back to 1980s, Goldstein and his colleagues used an enzyme found in coffee beans and have shown success in the complete enzymatic removal of B antigen, generating non-antigen blood (O blood). However, the conversion requires large quantity of enzymes and output a trace amount of type O. As a result, the work done by Goldstein is not suitable for practical use. Similarly, other research uses an enzyme found in fungi to remove A antigen but its efficiency is still inadequate.

Improving enzyme activity using enzyme engineering

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Description: How enzymes found in gut bacteria change blood types for transfusion

Great improvement in enzyme activity is recently done by Kwan’s team who modify sugar hydrolase (GH98) with 170-times higher enzyme activity than that of the original hydrolase from human gut bacteria using enzyme engineering. It is inspiring because GH98 enzyme can remove both A and B antigens, whereas other enzymes used in past research only remove either A or B antigens. Their research broadens the specificity of the enzyme and makes the blood conversion more promising and practical for resolving blood shortage.

– Calvin Pan

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