Women who are deficient in iodine and trying to get pregnant may have half the chance of conceiving compared to women with healthy iodine levels, according to a recent U.S. study.

Researchers followed more than 500 women trying to conceive over about five years and found that, overall, those with moderate to severe iodine deficiency had 46 percent lower odds, per cycle, of becoming pregnant.

“Our finding that moderate deficiency is associated with difficulty conceiving has important public health implications,” said lead study author Dr. James Mills of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

“We were surprised that moderate to severe deficiency was so common and that it reduced the chance of a woman becoming pregnant by almost 50 percent in each menstrual cycle,” he told Reuters Health by email.

Iodine plays a vital role in brain development during pregnancy, but past research finds that about 30 percent of women of childbearing age have iodine blood levels below the target of 100 micrograms per liter, the authors note in Human Reproduction.

Current U.S. guidelines suggest that pregnant and breastfeeding women take a supplement containing 150 micrograms of iodine, but these recommendations don’t address what women should do before they become pregnant.

Mills and his colleagues analyzed data from 2005 to 2009 on 501 women who, when they enrolled in the study, had recently discontinued contraception to become pregnant. At the outset, researchers collected urine samples for iodine analysis. Women also reported on risk factors related to infertility during interviews and then over the next 12 months kept daily journals and used fertility monitors to time sexual intercourse and ovulation. They also used digital pregnancy tests at home to identify pregnancies and menstruation cycles.

The research team found that 44 percent of the urine samples were in the deficient range for iodine. Almost a quarter of all samples were in the moderate to severe deficiency range, with less than half of the recommended level.

At 12 months after enrollment, 332 women (71 percent) had become pregnant, 42 (10 percent) did not, and the rest dropped out of the study for various reasons.

Future studies will also examine the relationship between iodine status and other aspects of reproduction, such as thyroid problems and fetus development.

“Although it is challenging to find women who are about to try to become pregnant and monitor them, it is important to replicate these findings,” Mills said.

No easy answers

It’s tough to give advice to women regarding iodine levels, testing and supplements, said Sarah Bath of the University of Surrey in the U.K.

“Unfortunately, there is no method of assessing iodine status in individuals, so people cannot get tested to know whether they have an adequate amount,” she told Reuters Health by email. “The test used in this study can only be applied to large groups.”

The study also didn’t look at the effect of iodine supplements on conception, only the comparison between a group of women with inadequate iodine versus a group with adequate iodine, she added.

“This study doesn’t provide evidence that iodine supplementation is beneficial in those trying to conceive,” she said. “If people do consider an iodine supplement, however, they should not take a kelp or seaweed supplement, as this can lead to excessive iodine intake.”

Choosing a diet with an adequate amount of iodine is key, both Mills and Bath advised. Iodine levels in food can vary by country and type of food, and high levels of iodine can also be an issue, so “more is better” isn’t necessarily true either, they added. Good sources of iodine can be found in fish, especially white fish, seafood, milk and dairy products. Some salts contain iodine, but women shouldn’t consume more salt just to get more iodine.

“This issue has not yet been addressed for women trying to conceive,” Mills added. “Therefore, choosing the right diet is prudent … and many experts believe that taking prenatal vitamins that contain iodine is a good idea.”
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After three decades and 15 billion dollars, just three countries still harbor polio. Those three countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, all suffer from violent insurgencies. A new study is one of the first to document how a lack of security sets back efforts to eradicate the paralyzing disease. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a report.
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Polio cases in Pakistan rose by 73 percent during the most intense periods of civil conflict there in recent years, according to a new study.

The report, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  is one of the first to provide concrete evidence of the impacts insecurity has on efforts to eradicate the paralyzing disease.

Over the past three decades, polio has gone from infecting more than 1,000 children per day to just a handful of cases per year. But experts say as long as the disease circulates anywhere, it remains a threat to unvaccinated children everywhere. 

WATCH: The fight against polio continues

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Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the last three countries on Earth that have not stopped the disease from spreading. 

All three suffer from violent militant attacks. 

The polio eradication campaign has overcome violence before. Vaccinators have brokered cease-fires in El Salvador, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere, all of which are now polio-free. 

“The question is, is the effect (of insecurity in Pakistan) big enough to really be a barrier to polio eradication?” asked lead author Amol Verma at the University of Toronto. 

“Our study suggests that yes, it is,” Verma said.

While polio vaccination teams have been singled out for attacks, including a mother and daughter in Quetta earlier this month, Verma and colleagues looked at violence more generally. They studied casualty figures from terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, drone strikes and gun battles tallied from news reports at pakistanbodycount.org and other sites.

They compared these data to monthly, district-by-district statistics on new polio cases, and data from polio campaigns on the numbers of children reached. 

Although conflicts sometimes forced the cancellation of a campaign, the violence had an impact even when vaccinators continued their work. 

“Even when vaccination campaigns were carried out in times of high insecurity, the vaccination coverage was about 5 percent lower than in times of low insecurity,” Verma said. 

Health workers have been “rather heroic in trying to reach people in these very difficult-to-reach regions,” he added, explaining that vaccinators would reach everywhere they could, but knew some areas were too dangerous.

Those unreachable areas added up to more than a quarter-million children not getting vaccinated, and a 73 percent increase in newly paralyzed children.

“Even though it’s only a 5 percent reduction in vaccination rates, that is enough to allow the virus to continue to be circulated and transmitted,” he said.

The study authors acknowledge that campaign officials sometimes falsify records, and population data in Pakistan are limited. 

“Despite data collection issues and the inherent difficulty of accurately quantifying levels of insecurity and its impact, the authors have statistically shown that a causal relationship between insecurity and polio incidence exists,” said Richard Sullivan, co-director of the Conflict and Health Research Group at King’s College London, who was not involved with this study.
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The moon is providing a rare triple treat this week.

On Wednesday, much of the world will get to see not only a blue moon and a supermoon, but also a total lunar eclipse, all rolled into one. There hasn’t been a triple lineup like this since 1982 and the next won’t occur until 2037.

The eclipse will be visible best in the western half of the U.S. and Canada before the moon sets early Wednesday morning, and across the Pacific into Asia as the moon rises Wednesday night into Thursday.

The U.S. East Coast will be out of luck; the moon will be setting just as the eclipse gets started. Europe and most of Africa and South America also will pretty much miss the show.

A blue moon is the second full moon in a month. A supermoon is a particularly close full or new moon, appearing somewhat brighter and bigger. A total lunar eclipse — or blood moon for its reddish tinge — has the moon completely bathed in Earth’s shadow.

“I’m calling it the Super Bowl of moons,” lunar scientist Noah Petro said Monday from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Others prefer “super blue blood moon.”

Either way, it’s guaranteed to impress, provided the skies are clear.

The moon will actually be closest to Earth on Tuesday — just over 223,000 miles (359,000 kilometers). That’s about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) farther than the supermoon on Jan. 1. Midway through Wednesday’s eclipse, the moon will be even farther away — 223,820 miles (360,200 kilometers) — but still within unofficial supermoon guidelines.

While a supermoon is considered less serious and scientific than an eclipse, it represents a chance to encourage people to start looking at the moon, according to Petro.

“I’m a lunar scientist. I love the moon. I want to advocate for the moon,” he said.

Throw in a blue moon, and “that’s too good of an opportunity to pass,” according to Petro.

As the sun lines up perfectly with the Earth and then moon for the eclipse, scientists will make observations from a telescope in Hawaii, while also collecting data from NASA’s moon-circling Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2009.

Just like the total solar eclipse in the U.S. last August cooled the Earth’s surface, a lunar eclipse cools the moon’s surface. It’s this abrupt cooling — from the heat of direct sunlight to essentially a deep freeze — that researchers will be studying.

Totality will last more than an hour.

“The moon is one of the most amazing objects in our solar system,” Petro said. “It really is the key to understanding the solar system, through interpreting the geology and surface of the moon.”

NASA plans to provide a live stream of the moon from telescopes in California and Arizona, beginning at 5:30 a.m. EST.
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New data from 22 high- and low-income countries show antibiotic resistance to a number of serious bacterial infections is growing at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization surveyed one-half million people with suspected bacterial infections between March 2016 and July 2017.

The survey, the first of its kind, is vital in improving and understanding the extent of antimicrobial resistance in the world. World Health Organization Spokesman Christian Lindmeier, tells VOA the findings raise many red flags.

“The data that these countries provided show us that in some of the most common bacteria, the most commonly reported resistant bacteria, we find the resistance of sometimes up to 65 even up to 82 percent, depending on the bacteria. And… these are really alarming data,” he said.

The most commonly reported resistant bacteria include e-coli bacterial infection, staph infections, pneumonia and salmonella. The World Health Organization is encouraging all countries to set up good surveillance systems for detecting drug resistance. This, it says, will provide needed information to tackle what it calls one of the biggest threats to global public health.

If drug resistance is not successfully tackled, Lindmeier warns the world could return to the dangerous days before penicillin was invented.

“A simple infection, a cut, minor surgery suddenly can turn into a potentially most dangerous, life-threatening situation because infections would then prove drug resistant,” he said. “A cancer treatment for example would become a huge challenge on top of the cancer because the already low immune system could not be boosted any more with antibiotics. Any infection would pose an additional risk.”

Lindmeier says some countries are taking these warnings to heart. For example, he notes Kenya is enhancing its national antimicrobial resistance system, Tunisia is now collecting national drug-resistant data, and Korea is strengthening its surveillance system.

 
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To mark World Leprosy Day, the World Health Organization is calling for the eradication of this ancient disfiguring disease by combating the stigma and discrimination that discourages people from seeking the help they need.

Leprosy, a hideously disfiguring disease that has blighted the lives of countless millions since Biblical days, is curable. And yet, the World Health Organization reports more than 200,000 people, most in Southeast Asia, are affected with the disease and new cases continue to arise every year.

Leprosy is a chronic bacterial disease with a slow incubation period of about five years. In some cases, symptoms may occur within one year, but can take as long as 20 years to appear.

Leprosy was eliminated globally as a public health problem in 2000, but the disease persists in individuals and communities. WHO spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, tells VOA this is unacceptable, as an effective treatment exists that can fully cure people of leprosy.

“Since ’95, WHO has provided this multi-drug therapy free of cost to all leprosy patients in the world,” he said. “In 2016, WHO launched global leprosy strategy, 2016-2020, accelerating toward a leprosy-free world. This is basically to revamp the efforts for leprosy control. The strategy focuses on avoiding disabilities, especially among children.”

This year’s World Leprosy Day focuses on preventing disabilities in children. WHO reports children account for nearly nine percent of all new cases of leprosy, including almost seven percent of those with visible deformities.

The U.N. health agency notes early diagnosis and early treatment can prevent disability. It says disabilities do not occur overnight, but happen after a prolonged period of undiagnosed and untreated disease.

Unfortunately, it notes many people do not seek help until it is too late and deformities already have appeared. This is because of the stigma and discrimination associated with leprosy.

WHO is calling for laws discriminating against people with leprosy to be abolished and replaced with policies promoting inclusion of such people within society.
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A common ingredient of toothpaste could be developed to fight drug-resistant strains of malaria. Scientists at Britain’s Cambridge University found that triclosan has the potential to interrupt the infection at two critical stages — in the liver and the blood. Faith Lapidus reports.
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President Donald Trump’s description of the climate on planet Earth doesn’t quite match what data show and scientists say.

In an interview with Piers Morgan airing Sunday on Britain’s ITV News, the president said the world was cooling and warming at the same time and that claims of melting ice caps haven’t come true.

TRUMP: “There is a cooling, and there’s a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. That wasn’t working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place.”

Ten different climate scientists contacted by The Associated Press said the president was not accurate about climate change. Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis responded in an email: “Clearly President Trump is relying on alternative facts to inform his views on climate change. Ice on the ocean and on land are both disappearing rapidly, and we know why: increasing greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that trap more heat and melt the ice.”

THE FACTS: The world hasn’t had a cooler-than-average year since 1976 and hasn’t had a cooler-than-normal month since the end of 1985, according to more than 135 years of temperature records kept by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The last four years have been the four hottest years on record globally, with 2010 the fifth hottest year, according to NOAA. Every year in the 21st century has been at least three quarters of a degree (0.4 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average and in the top 25 hottest years on record, NOAA records show.

And while a good chunk of the United States had a frigid snap recently, most of the rest of the world was far warmer than normal, according to temperature records.

Zeke Hausfather of the Berkeley Earth temperature monitoring program, initially funded by nonscientists who doubt that the world is warming, said in an email: “The world has been warming steadily over the past 50 years, with 17 of the past 18 years being the warmest since records began in the 1850s. It is not accurate to say that the climate has been ‘cooling as well as warming.’”

TRUMP: “The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records. They’re at a record level.”

THE FACTS: It is a bit more nuanced, but not quite right.

While a small number of experts a decade ago had predicted that Arctic would be free of summer sea ice by now, most mainstream scientists and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not, instead they said Arctic sea ice would shrink, which it has, said Pennsylvania State University ice scientist Richard Alley. Most scientists, including the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, are predicting that the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice sometime around the 2040s.

The Arctic set a record for the lowest amount of sea ice in the winter, when sea ice usually grows to its maximum levels, in March 2017. In 2012, the Arctic set a record for lowest sea ice levels. 

Sea ice recovered slightly from that record and in 2017 in September, the annual low was only the eighth lowest on record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. But the 10 lowest years of sea ice have been all in the last 11 years. Arctic sea ice is declining at a rate of 13.2 percent per decade, according to NASA.

Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said the Antarctic sea ice pack, less directly influenced by global climate change, varies from year to year. Antarctica hit a record low for sea ice in March 2017, the same month the Arctic hit a record winter low. Antarctic sea ice also reached a record high in 2014.

“Both of the large ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing hundreds of billions of tons of ice per year. Sea ice continues to decline significantly in the Arctic decade by decade, and the thickness of Arctic ice is now less than 50 percent of what it was 40 years ago,” National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Ted Scambos said in an email.
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