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Pot affects academic performance + Multiple sclerosis link + Malaria vaccine concerns

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How does smoking marijuana affect academic performance? Two researchers explain how it can alter more than just moods
https://theconversation.com/how-does-smo...ods-168158

EXCERPTS: In a trend that coincided with the pandemic, marijuana use among college students in 2020 reached levels not seen since the 1980s. [...] Research has consistently shown that people report using marijuana in order to feel the high, experience enhanced feelings, increase social connections or cope with certain feelings and moods.

[...] With 18 states legalizing cannabis for non-medical or “recreational” purposes – the first of which did so in 2012 – access to marijuana has increased, especially for college students over 21 years of age. ... As researchers who work with college students, we hear students say things like marijuana is “safe,” “natural” or that it’s “just weed,” but research tells a very different story about potential risks. This is particularly true with the high potency cannabis that dominates markets in legal and medical states.

Published research consistently shows that the more frequently a college student uses cannabis, the lower their GPA tends to be, the more they report skipping class and the longer it takes them to graduate.

Probably the most direct impact to academic performance is a relationship between marijuana use and impaired attention and memory. This relationship has been documented for years, including with college students.

The good news is that studies that follow people as they abstain show that when marijuana use stops, cognitive performance improves, though it can take 28 days of abstinence. So much of this depends on how often someone uses and the type or potency of marijuana they are using. But whatever the case, it certainly seems that the more frequently people use, the more likely they are to experience challenges with attention, memory and other cognitive abilities... (MORE)


Multiple sclerosis: the link with earlier infection just got stronger – new study
https://theconversation.com/multiple-scl...udy-169314

INTRO: For most of the time since the first description of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1868, the causes of this disabling disease have remained uncertain. Genes have been identified as important, which is why having other family members with MS is associated with a greater risk of developing the disease.

A recent study my colleagues and I conducted found that several types of infection during the teenage years are associated with MS after age 20. Our study didn’t investigate whether people who are more likely to have genetic risks for MS were also more likely to have worse infections. This might explain why people with MS also have more infections that need hospital treatment.
If this were the explanation, the infection would not be a risk factor triggering MS, it would only identify those more likely to have MS, anyway. Our new study, published in JAMA Network Open, examines this and shows that glandular fever (one of the infections most associated with MS risk) during the teenage years really is a risk factor for subsequent MS.

Some scientists have suggested that infections like glandular fever (also called infectious mononucleosis “mono” or “kissing disease”) might be worse in people who will go on to develop MS because their immune system is already different. But another explanation – the one that our study investigated – is that the infection triggers MS. It has also been argued that families with more infections are different in other ways from families who have fewer infections. Perhaps the differences between these families – not the infections themselves – are what helps to explain MS risk.

To confirm that infections are a true risk factor for MS, triggering the MS disease process, our latest study compared siblings in the same family... (MORE)


The malaria vaccine’s success story hides legitimate concerns
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health...e-concerns

EXCERPTS: The announcement by the WHO that a vaccine against malaria, more than thirty years in the making, could finally be recommended was greeted with joy in the media. But our vaccine efficacy expectations, raised aloft by the COVID-19 vaccines’ stunning results, need to be tampered down in this case. And while anti-vaccination activists claim, wrongly, that the approved RNA vaccines are “experimental” and are administered to people without their informed consent, the way in which the malaria vaccine’s implementation was pilot-tested in three African countries has raised the ethical questions of what constitutes research and whether or not proper consent was indeed secured in those children.

[...] Finally, a large clinical trial in thousands of children and infants yielded encouraging results in 2015 for a specific malaria vaccine that targeted the liver stage of the parasite’s life cycle. The vaccine is commonly called RTS,S (an initialism for a shockingly long descriptor), with Mosquirix as its trade name. Whether or not it will be a safe and effective “game-changer” requires a closer look at the results of its testing and how the testing itself was conducted.

[...] Mosquirix prevents 4 in 10 cases of malaria. In terms of efficacy, we have certainly seen better, with two doses of the MMR vaccine being 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps. Even the COVID-19 vaccines had higher efficacies in their clinical trials. When compared to the WHO’s goal of having licensed malaria vaccines with efficacies of at least 75% by the year 2030, Mosquirix clearly doesn’t check the box.

But given the enormity of the problem, preventing 4 in 10 cases of malaria is still an impressive achievement, especially given that Mosquirix is the only vaccine of a crop of 25 to successfully make it through all three phases of human testing. This vaccine could save the lives of tens of thousands of children each year. However, as the results of the Mosquirix clinical trials came to light, a number of key questions lingered. Would a four-dose regimen of the vaccine be feasible in the real world of sub-Saharan Africa, where most people are affected by malaria? Would vaccine recipients assume they were fully protected and dismiss other protective measures, like insecticide-treated bed nets? Given the complexities of malaria, the potential for reinfection, and the relatively short length of the phase III trial, would the vaccine really prevent deaths in the long run?

[...] But what about the potential risks of the Mosquirix vaccine detected in the clinical trial? Were they seen in the pilot roll-out? According to the WHO, it is now clear that there is no link between the vaccine and these original concerns, but the lack of follow-up at an individual level, the low vaccine coverage, and the short duration of this pilot study (which, to be fair, is still on-going) mean that the actual effect of the vaccine on female mortality, real or not, may have been missed, according to a 2020 analysis by Dr. Christine Benn of the University of Southern Denmark and colleagues. These safety signals, for meningitis, cerebral malaria, and deaths from all causes in girls, have to be sufficiently addressed. A petition, which now has close to 35,000 signatures, is calling for the WHO to be more transparent about its pilot evaluation and to answer the ethical questions that have been raised.

[...] Treatment with the drug artemisinin, which led to the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has saved millions of lives, but the emergence of drug resistance in Southeast Asia is sounding the alarm. A vaccine, even if it does not prevent every case of malaria, would be a useful part of the armamentarium.

But doubts remain, in my mind, about Mosquirix’s safety. It is worth pointing out that travellers to Africa will, by and large, not be eligible for Mosquirix, as the WHO has recommended its use only in children at the moment. This vaccine is meant for the children who live in countries where malaria is widespread. There are, of course, other vaccines in the works, like R21/MM which was recently tested in a phase II clinical trial with 450 children and found to have an efficacy of up to 77%. We will have to see if it and others can clear the hurdle of making it through a phase III trial.

It is high time Africa got a safe and effective vaccine against malaria, but ethical standards and transparency cannot be sacrificed. A vaccine’s protection does not simply come from its building blocks. It also comes from trust... (MORE - missing details)
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