Research Roundup: Determining Your Biological Age; Liver Disease; Teenage Blunt Use; Nursing Homes; Covid

Scientific American: 'Inflammation Clock' Can Reveal Body's Biological Age
A new type of age ‘clock’ can assess chronic inflammation to predict whether someone is at risk of developing age-related disorders such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease. The clock measures ‘biological age’, which takes health into consideration and can be higher or lower than a person’s chronological age. The inflammatory ageing clock (iAge), reported on 12 July in Nature Aging, is one of the first tools of its kind to use inflammation to assess health. Other age clocks have used epigenetic markers, chemical groups that tag a person’s DNA as they age and are passed along as cells divide. The researchers who developed iAge hope that, because inflammation is treatable, the tool could help doctors determine who would benefit from intervention—potentially extending the number of years a person lives in good health. (Kozlov, 7/14)

ScienceDaily: Revealing The Mystery Behind The Threat Of Non-Alcoholic Liver Disease
Researchers revealed how non-alcoholic fatty liver disease can develop into a life-threatening complication. Their discovery will accelerate the search for therapeutic solutions. (Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health, 7/13)

American Academy Of Pediatrics: Trends And Factors Related To Blunt Use In Middle And High School Students, 2010–2020 
Blunt use is a popular mode of marijuana consumption among adolescents in the United States, but little is known about how its prevalence has changed over time or factors associated with its use. With this study, we assessed trends and correlates of past (ever used but not in the past 30 days) and current (used in past 30 days) blunt use among adolescents in Florida. (Kalan et al., 7/1)

In research about nursing homes —

CIDRAP: Nursing Home Intervention Tied To Fewer Antibiotics In Advanced Dementia
Antibiotic use, and misuse, in the nation's nursing homes has long been a concern for infectious disease professionals and antibiotic resistance experts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 70% of nursing home residents receive one or more courses of antibiotics a year. The primary reasons for such frequent antibiotic use in long-term care is that residents are often frail and have underlying conditions that make them more vulnerable to bacterial infections, especially those involving the skin, urinary tract, and respiratory tract. (Dall, 7/16)

CIDRAP: Multidrug-Resistant Organisms Reduced In Nursing Home Residents' Rooms
A multicomponent intervention implemented at nursing homes in Michigan significantly reduced the prevalence of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in residents' rooms, according to the results of a randomized clinical trial reported today in JAMA Network Open. Using a cluster-randomized trial design, researchers from the University of Michigan and the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System compared the presence of MDROs in patients and their room environments at 3 nursing homes that implemented the intervention with the MDRO presence at 3 control nursing homes. The intervention included enhanced barrier precautions, chlorhexidine bathing, MDRO surveillance, environmental cleaning education and feedback, hand hygiene promotion, and healthcare workers' education and feedback. Control nursing homes continued standard care practices. (7/16)

And in covid research —

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Antibodies Linger 9 Months Post-Infection, Data Reveal
Out of 86 people who were most likely exposed to COVID-19 in February or March 2020, all but 1 were seropositive in November 2020 but results varied among tests, according to a study today in Nature Communication. This group was part of a larger population study in the 3,000-person city of Vo', Italy. Researchers from the University of Padua and Imperial College London analyzed polymerase chain reaction diagnoses in February and March 2020 or serologic assay data in May 2020 for more than 85% of the Vo' area population and determined that the area's seroprevalence was 3.5% by May 2020. In November, 86 of 101 participants who were seropositive in May were tested again, and 85 (98.8%) tested positive to at least one assay by Abbott, DiaSorin, or Roche, while 30.9% of 81 were positive to all three. (7/19)

CIDRAP: Real-World Study Shows Good COVID Results For Monoclonal Antibodies
A real-world Mayo Clinic study shows similarly low hospitalization rates among 3,596 high-risk US adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 treated with one of two monoclonal antibodies. The observational study, published yesterday in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, used electronic health records to compare 28-day all-cause death rates and COVID-19–related hospital admissions in 2,747 patients who received an infusion of bamlanivimab and 849 given casirivimab-imdevimab from Nov 19, 2020, to Feb 11, 2021. The drugs were started within 10 days of symptom onset. (7/20)

CIDRAP: Study: Azithromycin Doesn't Prevent COVID-19 Symptoms In Outpatients 
A single dose of the broad-spectrum antibiotic azithromycin didn't change the proportion of US COVID-19 patients reporting symptoms by 14 days, finds a randomized, controlled trial published late last week in JAMA. ... In a UCSF news release, lead study author Catherine Oldenburg, ScD, MPH, said that the findings don't support the routine treatment of COVID-19 outpatients with azithromycin, an inexpensive antibiotic broadly used in coronavirus patients in the United States and abroad. "The hypothesis is that it has anti-inflammatory properties that may help prevent progression if treated early in the disease," she said. "We did not find this to be the case." (Beusekom, 7/19)