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Pieter-Steph du Toit (Gallo Images)
Springbok and Stormers flank Pieter-Steph du Toit’s recovery from a leg injury is a long and arduous process.
Du Toit, the 2019 World Rugby Player of the Year, suffered the freak injury during a Super Rugby game against the Blues in March – just before the season was halted due to the coronavirus outbreak.
READ | Stormers doctor reveals rare injury that almost ended Pieter-Steph’s career
At the time, Stormers team doctor Jason Suter said the injury was incredibly rare and potentially career threatening.
Suter said there had been only 43 such cases listed in the literature worldwide and Du Toit could have lost his leg.
Fast-forward six months with the Stormers bracing for a return to rugby, head coach John Dobson says Du Toit is not fully recovered yet.
“Pieter-Steph is not ready yet and the truth is we don’t know when he’ll be ready,” Dobson told reporters during a virtual press conference on Thursday.
“We talked about the injury in March… of the [43] guys in the world that have had it, 21 have had amputations.
“It was predicted to be a six-month injury. There’s a nerve in that muscle which was damaged that sort of protects the knee. The muscle around that nerve is not growing back fast enough.”
Dobson said Du Tout would not be ready for next Saturday’s ‘Super Fan Saturday’ clash against the Lions in Pretoria and not for the start of the local competition on 10 October.
“It is showing signs of growth, so our hope is that he only misses the first two games. He will miss the start [of the local tournament], but he is training full out. He’s training properly, there’s no panic stations, it’s just that he’s not going to be ready for Marble (Super Fan Saturday) and probably not our first two games.
“Nerves are often open-ended injuries… they need to start regrowing and regenerating, so the doctor’s under pressure to give me an exact date, but I suspect it’s going to be certainly towards the back end of October at best.”
Biologic therapy for the skin condition psoriasis may reduce patients’ risk of heart disease, new research suggests.
Chronic inflammation in people with psoriasis is associated with the development of plaque in heart arteries, which increases the risk of coronary artery disease. In biologic therapy, patients receive protein-based infusions to reduce inflammation.
“This is the first time an imaging study in humans has shown what one year of ongoing, untreated inflammation can do to arteries of the heart, and that we can reverse this damage,” said study senior author Dr Nehal Mehta. He’s chief of the inflammation and cardiometabolic diseases lab at the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Prone to rupture
“Untreated inflammation is dangerous. You are just waiting for a heart attack or stroke to happen,” Mehta added.
This study focused on a dangerous type of coronary plaque called lipid-rich necrotic core. It’s composed of dead cells and cell debris, and is prone to rupture. Ruptured plaque can lead to a heart attack or stroke.
The study included 209 patients, aged 37 to 62, with psoriasis. They were selected to receive biologic therapy (124 patients) or assigned to the control group and received topical creams and light therapy (85 patients).
After one year of treatment, CT scans showed that patients who received biologic therapy had an 8% decrease in coronary plaque, while those in the control group had a slight increase.
The findings held even after the researchers adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors and psoriasis severity. The study was published on 15 September in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.
Just as beneficial as statin therapy
“Having inflamed plaque that is prone to rupture increases the risk of heart attack fivefold within 10 years,” Mehta said in a journal news release.
Treatment with cholesterol-lowering statins reduces coronary plaque approximately 6% to 8%, Mehta noted. “Similarly, our treatment with biologic therapy reduced coronary plaque by the same amount after one year. These findings suggest that biologic therapy to treat psoriasis may be just as beneficial as statin therapy on heart arteries,” he added.
Along with psoriasis patients, the study findings could have implications for people with other chronic inflammatory conditions such as HIV, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who also have an increased risk of heart disease, according to the researchers.
“We have never before been able to show healing of an inflamed plaque like this in humans. Biologic therapy reduces systemic inflammation and immune activation, and it has a favourable impact on improving overall vascular health,” Mehta said.
The authors said a larger study is needed to confirm the results.
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Researchers say your biological sex affects gene expression in nearly every type of tissue – influencing body fat, cancer and birth weight.
Gene expression is the amount of product created by a gene for cell function, the international team of researchers explained.
They said their findings could prove important for personalised medicine, creating new drugs and predicting patient outcomes.
“These discoveries suggest the importance of considering sex as a biological variable in human genetics and genomics studies,” said project leader Barbara Stranger, an associate professor of pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Unreported links
The researchers analysed 44 types of healthy human tissue from 838 people to find out if there were differences between women and men in the average amount of gene expression.
They discovered that 37% of all human genes were expressed at different levels in women and men in at least one type of tissue.
They also identified 369 instances where a genetic variant present in males and females affected gene expression to a different degree in each sex. This led to the discovery of 58 previously unreported links between genes and blood pressure, cholesterol levels, breast cancer and body fat percentage.
Gender differences in gene expression were also found for genes involved in how the body responds to medications, how women control blood sugar levels in pregnancy, how the immune system functions and how cancer develops.
Critical component of personalised medicine
“If specific genes or genetic variants contribute differentially to a given trait in males and females, it could suggest sex-specific biomarkers, therapeutics and drug dosing,” Stranger said in a Northwestern news release.
“In the future, such knowledge may form a critical component of personalised medicine or may reveal disease biology that remains obscured when considering males and females as a single group,” she said.
The study was published in the journal Science.
Image credit: iStock
16 September 2020, Pretoria – The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has taken the unusual step of employing over 700 cleaning staff, who were previously subcontracted, as permanent employees.
SARS has in previous years contracted cleaning services for its offices, but due to the contracts expiring every year, the organisation implemented a project to insource the cleaning staff permanently. The initiative will see 769 cleaning staff joining the ranks of SARS employees from 31 October 2020.
In explaining this decision, which bucks the conventional trend to outsource “non-core” services, Commissioner Kieswetter explains: “While at times it makes commercial sense to insource certain services, like facilities cleaning and security, it is not always the best value proposition for the individual employees. When we reviewed the renewal of these services, we realised that our reduced requirements for office space would lead to a reduced service with fewer number of individuals, and depending on who the successful bidder ends up being appointed, it would likely have a negative impact on a large number of employees as well as be disruptive for everyone concerned.
“We also wanted to create a sense of belonging for these employees who, for all intents and purposes, but for their formal employment contract, worked for SARS. This new arrangement brings job certainty and greater dignity to the affected individuals. In our evaluation of the decision, we also realised that a number of the cleaning staff were sufficiently qualified, and have the potential, subject to development, to progress and be considered for career progression within SARS, but would also become more employable beyond SARS. In a country with tragically high levels of unemployment, we could not contemplate a decision that would have implied potentially over 300 individuals joining the ranks of the unemployed. I am pleased that we were able to improve the prospect for affected individuals without additional cost to SARS.”
The employees identified for career progression will be upskilled in other SARS disciplines and placed into vacancies, as and when vacancies become available, within the organization, where they can further develop themselves professionally.
With the country’s unemployment levels being so high, SARS is proud to make a difference in the lives of South African citizens, who, as permanent employees, will also receive benefits such as membership to the Government Employee Pension Fund (GEPF), medical aid and group life cover as part of their total packages.
SARS is also currently working on considering a similar approach for our security services in the continued battle to reduce unemployment in our country.
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| Remuneration: | R45000 – R50000 per month |
| Benefits: | Attractive benefits |
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Middle-aged men who were anxious or depressed teens are at increased risk for heart attack, according to a large, long-term study.
It included more than 238 000 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive exams when they were 18 or 19 years old and were followed to age 58.
Men diagnosed with anxiety or depression in their late teens had a 20% higher risk of heart attack than those who didn’t, the study showed.
‘Be vigilant’
The findings only reflect an association. The link was partly, but not fully, explained by poorer ability to cope with everyday stress and lower physical fitness in teens with the mental health conditions, according to findings presented at a virtual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.
The takeaway: “Be vigilant and look for signs of stress, depression or anxiety that is beyond the normal teenage angst: Seek help if there seems to be a persistent problem,” suggested study author Cecilia Bergh, a senior lecturer in health sciences at Orebro University in Sweden.
“If a healthy lifestyle is encouraged as early as possible in childhood and adolescence it is more likely to persist into adulthood and improve long-term health,” she said in a meeting news release.
Bergh said researchers already knew that men who were physically fit but stressed as teens seemed less likely to maintain fitness.
Strategies to deal with stress
“Our previous research has also shown that low stress resilience is also coupled with a greater tendency towards addictive behaviour, signalled by higher risks of smoking, alcohol consumption and other drug use,” she noted.
Better fitness in youth is likely to protect against heart disease, particularly if people stay fit as they age, Bergh said, adding that exercise may also alleviate negative consequences of stress.
“This is relevant to all adolescents, but those with poorer well-being could benefit from additional support to encourage exercise and to develop strategies to deal with stress,” she said.
Research presented at meetings is typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Image credit: iStock
| Remuneration: | negotiable To be discussed |
| Location: | Cape Town |
| Education level: | Diploma |
| Job level: | Mid |
| Own transport required: | Yes |
| Travel requirement: | Occasional |
| Type: | Permanent |
| Reference: | #OM/GD/SM |
| Company: | Cape Group of Companies |
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Posted on 17 Sep 15:04
A lot of kids have been pushing up the scale numbers while home during the pandemic – and parents need to take steps to prevent the dreaded “quarantine 15”, an expert says.
“During the school year, most parents rely on schools to provide their child with regular exercise,” said Dr Joyce Samuel, an associate professor of paediatrics at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
Get outside every day
“Because of the ongoing situation surrounding Covid-19, it is important for parents to focus on their child’s health and ensure they are getting the proper exercise and nutrition to avoid child obesity,” Samuel said in a centre news release.
If your children are learning remotely, she noted there are plenty of apps with videos for short, home-based workouts that usually require little or no equipment. Another option is to get outside for a daily 30-minute walk or jog.
“As long as you are maintaining physical distancing and staying with members of your household, this is a safe way to get some fresh air and regular exercise,” Samuel said.
Other exercise suggestions for children include: jumping rope or running to help strengthen bones; playing games like tug-of-war to strengthen muscles; aerobic activities like bike riding or walking to benefit the heart; outdoor sports; scooter riding; tag, and neighbourhood scavenger hunts.
Schedule activities for children several times a week, Samuel said.
Many kids are stressed
In terms of diet, provide children with meals that have both protein and produce. Frozen fruits and vegetables are a good, cheaper alternative to fresh produce, as long as there’s no added sugar, syrup or salt.
Limit unhealthy drinks and snacks like chips, cookies, candy and gummies. Encourage children to drink water instead of soda, juices or sports drinks.
“As parents, we need to understand that a healthy diet and exercise provide great benefits to our children’s minds and bodies,” Samuel said. “Many kids are stressed right now due to all of the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, and doing regular exercise is a great way to relieve stress and develop healthy habits at a young age.”
Adequate sleep is also crucial in preventing obesity: eight to 10 hours a night for teens and nine to 12 hours a night for children ages six to 12. Reducing screen time can also help lower the risk of becoming overweight.
“Later bedtimes have been shown to be associated with obesity, so putting the devices away at a reasonable bedtime and getting back to a more typical sleep schedule is another way to combat obesity,” Samuel said.
Image credit: iStock
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