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Gerard Piqué Breaks Silence on Shakira Split and How It Affects Their Kids – E! NEWS
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How babies refusing bottles and only wanting to breastfeed affects moms
He started to have more difficulties feeding her when she turned 3 months old. She would eat from the bottle only under specific conditions, such as while being bounced or held in a certain position. Then, my daughter began to refuse the bottle and cry whenever it appeared in front of her.
Instead of taking shifts, I now had the full burden of feeding as well as putting her down for all naps and bedtime, since she would sleep only after eating. I could no longer leave the house for any meaningful length of time, since she refused to breastfeed outside the house. I was exhausted, felt trapped and started to regret ever breastfeeding in the first place.
New moms are usually warned about introducing a bottle too early for fear of babies rejecting the breast for the faster-flowing bottle. But I hadn’t heard a thing about bottle refusal before experiencing it firsthand — and it was taking a toll on my mental health.
It turns out that my experience was not uncommon.
Clare Maxwell, a midwife and researcher, struggled with bottle refusal by her younger son, James.
She offered one at 12 weeks with no luck but kept trying, with a deadline looming for when she had to return to work at seven months. Maxwell bought more than 10 different brands of bottles, hoping that one would stick. She varied the milk temperature, had others attempt to feed him. Nothing worked.
“I immediately started to look for any papers on bottle refusal, or any research at all, and there was nothing,” said Maxwell, senior lecturer in Midwifery at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain.. “It was as if it didn’t exist.”
Yet, parenting forums were flooded with thousands of posts seeking help for the same issue, so Maxwell set out to investigate.
In 2020, Maxwell and her colleagues published a study on the experiences of 841 mothers whose breastfed babies would not accept a bottle. They had posted an online questionnaire to a handful of breastfeeding groups based in North West England and had to close it down after two weeks because of an overwhelming number of responses. Nearly 30 percent of mothers reported that bottle refusal had made worse their overall breastfeeding experience.
The mothers gave different reasons for introducing a bottle, such as returning to work or simply wanting to stop breastfeeding. Some women had to take exams or driving tests or attend such events as weddings or funerals.
Others had serious health-related conflicts, including needing treatment for cancer, undergoing a surgical procedure or requiring medication not safe to take while breastfeeding. Methods to try to overcome bottle refusal had a low success rate — except forcing their baby to go “cold turkey,” which can lead to dehydration.
During visits with medical professionals, over 80 percent of mothers reported they were met with a lack of helpful advice or support.
“Many health-care professionals have just shrugged their shoulders in a way that suggested I just needed to get on with it,” one respondent recalled.
Another wrote that the only advice she received “was that it was massively important to exclusively [breastfeed] and bottles were what bad mothers did. … [They] were more concerned that baby would get nipple confusion and stop feeding.”
Parents-to-be are commonly warned that exposure to artificial nipples might sabotage breastfeeding and told not to introduce a bottle before the fourth week. According to the World Health Organization’s “Ten steps to successful breastfeeding” tips, health-care providers should “Counsel mothers on the use and risks of feeding bottles, teats and pacifiers.”
But is nipple confusion real? The evidence is shaky, at best.
A 2015 review paper in the Journal of Perinatology found 14 studies that both supported and refuted nipple confusion. But none establish causality — in other words, no research exists that conclusively shows that artificial nipples are the reason some infants refuse the breast.
“At the end of the day, I don’t believe in the concept of nipple confusion,” said Emily Zimmerman, a speech-language pathologist and neuroscientist who co-wrote the paper. “The messaging [around nipple confusion] has made mothers and caregivers really stressed about adding pacifiers and bottles to their regimen.”
Zimmerman directs Northeastern University’s Speech and Neurodevelopment Lab, which studies the interplay between sucking, feeding and early infant vocal development.
As part of her research, she uses a pacifier attached to a pressure transducer system to measure an infant’s suck response pattern and how it changes in response to different stimuli. With the bottle, milk is released immediately upon sucking. With the breast, a baby must first engage in nonnutritive sucking — like the kind used with a pacifier — to trigger the mother’s let-down reflex. Once milk flows, the baby will switch to a different, nutritive suck pattern.
“Something the studies in my lab have shown is that full-term healthy babies are typically able to suck on any pacifier, bottle, nipple, breast, finger without an issue, and go back and forth,” Zimmerman said. “So the infant is able to adapt and modify.”
She also said that, in newborns, sucking starts out as a reflex controlled by the brainstem, a brain region that regulates many involuntary actions such as breathing and heartbeat even in adults.
By around age 6 months, sucking has largely transitioned to a volitional action, as a result of greater involvement by the cerebral cortex. This area of the brain plays a role in many higher-order functions, including attention, perception, awareness and thought. So bottle refusal may occur because some babies simply develop a strong preference for the breast over artificial substitutes — and they now have the means to express that preference.
But Maxwell pointed out that other babies reject the bottle in the first few weeks of life, so there isn’t one right answer. In her case, her son, James, finally accepted a bottle from Maxwell’s identical twin sister. But for the majority of mothers in her study — approximately 60 percent — nothing worked.
My daughter, now over a year old, also never took a bottle again after three months. I almost hired a postpartum doula who supposedly specialized in bottle refusal, but she wanted a $3,240 to solve the problem. And when I visited a lactation consultant, she tried to convince me that the inside of my baby’s mouth wasn’t shaped correctly and suggested that she needed occupational therapy.
Instead, at about 6 months old, I decided to just give up on bottles and exclusively breastfeed, which as a self-employed mother working from home I had the luxury of doing. I slowly ramped up her solid food intake.
Would I choose to breastfeed again, knowing what I know now? Probably yes. But with greater awareness and education around bottle refusal during pregnancy, I might have been more prepared mentally and felt less alone in my situation.
“I think health professionals avoid talking about it because they don’t know what the impact will be on mothers’ decision to breastfeed,” Maxwell said. “But we deserve to know, so that as mothers, we can make these kinds of informed choices on our own.”
Why do people like being tipsy? Here’s how alcohol affects the brain.
Initially, the strangers did not smile much. But as they consumed their vodka cranberry drinks, their expressions changed. They not only smiled more, but also caught each other’s smiles, and spoke more in succession. And they shared more of what researchers called “golden moments” when all three strangers smiled as one.
“It feels like the group is really coming together, and I think they’re part of that social, tipsy kind of experience,” said Michael Sayette, director of the Alcohol and Smoking Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh who was a co-author of the study.
What is it about being tipsy that is enjoyable?
Alcohol disinhibits the brain
Drinking is societally accepted but “alcohol is just like any other drug,” said Jodi Gilman, psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School and director of neuroscience for Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Addiction Medicine. “It affects the brain.”
Ethanol, the remarkably simple chemical compound that gives alcoholic drinks their buzz, permeates the cells of our body and brain within minutes of consumption. There is still a lot we do not know about alcohol’s effects on the brain. “It has such widespread effects in the brain,” said Jessica Weafer, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky. Unlike other drugs that affect particular brain regions or act on specific receptors, “alcohol is just kind of going all over the brain” making it difficult to study, she said.
Alcohol is widely known to be a depressant, meaning it generally suppresses neural activity in the brain. It amplifies the effects of brain chemicals that inhibit neural activity — GABA and glycine — by acting on the same receptors those neurotransmitters bind to. At the same time, alcohol inhibits the effects of excitatory brain chemicals, producing a double-whammy of reducing brain activity.
As most people who drink may know, alcohol has a biphasic effect: initially and in low doses, it produces a buzz where we feel stimulated and disinhibited like we can dance or converse forever, before sleepiness settles in.
This rise and fall of our spirits corresponds with the rise and fall of our blood alcohol levels.
A look inside the inebriated brain
To see what happens in the inebriated brain, researchers gave willing participants alcohol via IV lines while they lay down inside fMRI neuroimaging scanners.
Alcohol may cause us to become disinhibited by dampening activity in parts of our frontal cortex, which is important for executive control functions such as inhibiting behaviors we don’t want to do. By inhibiting our inhibitions, alcohol makes us feel more stimulated.
Being pleasantly buzzed also releases dopamine and increases activity in the striatum, a key brain region associated with rewarding stimuli. Weafer and her colleagues found that neural activity in the striatum corresponded to how stimulated alcohol made the participants feel.
The participants were getting the alcohol intravenously, but still “they enjoy it, even though they are just kind of laying down in a scanner,” Weafer said.
Alcohol affects the emotion centers of the brain as well. In one study, alcohol dampened the neural responses in the amygdala to negative facial expressions, which may be a reason drinking can serve as a social lubricant, said Gilman, who led the study.
A bit of liquid courage may help us become less sensitive to rejection or social anxiety. But it could also lead to bar fights or inappropriate behavior when someone has had too much to drink.
Social context matters, too
The intoxicating powers of alcohol are not pharmacological alone.
“The funny thing about brains is that brains like to hang out with other brains,” Sayette said. “What does the brain look like when you drink varies dramatically, depending on whether you’re by yourself, or whether you’re in a social situation.”
Being around others in a social setting can itself be intoxicating, and alcohol seems to amplify the good feelings. It also provides a signal to others that we are letting our hair down, which does not require an intoxicating dose to see the mood effects, Sayette said.
He points to a study in the 1970s that asked how people felt after they came into the lab and drank by themselves or in a group. When people drank alone, they talked more about the physiological effects such as dizziness than changes to their mood. But when drinking in a social context, they talked more about feeling elated and not the body effects.
“It’s not distilled down to extra release of dopamine,” Sayette said. “That’s too simplistic.”
How to enjoy, responsibly
Even though studies show that no amount of alcohol is healthy and alcohol use disorders can be deadly, many can enjoy a couple of drinks on occasion.
When going out for a night of drinking, here are what researchers recommend:
Have a plan. How much will you drink? How will you get home? These decisions are easier to make when you aren’t disinhibited.
Eat food beforehand. This slows down alcohol metabolism. And drink plenty of water.
Know your limits. Each person has a different tolerance level. Slurring speech or loss of coordination can be warning signs to slow down. “You need to know when you’re feeling like you have lost control of your drinking,” Gilman said.
Know why you are drinking. If you are drinking to numb negative feelings or despite negative consequences, that could be a sign to talk to someone for help.
“It is certainly possible to be a responsible drinker,” Gilman said. “I think many people can have a drink at the holidays and be totally fine.”
Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.
Corporal Punishment Affects Brain Activity, Anxiety, and Depression
Summary: Corporal punishment increases the risk of developing anxiety and depression in adolescents, researchers report. Additionally, corporal punishment alters brain activity and impacts brain development.
Source: Elsevier
Don’t spank your kids. That’s the conventional wisdom that has emerged from decades of research linking corporal punishment to a decline in adolescent health and negative effects on behavior, including an increased risk for anxiety and depression.
Now, a new study explores how corporal punishment might impact neural systems to produce those adverse effects.
Corporal punishment can be simply defined as the “intentional infliction of physical pain by any means for the purpose of punishment, correction, discipline, instruction, or any other reason.” This violence, particularly when inflicted by a parent, evokes a complex emotional experience.
The researchers, led by Kreshnik Burani, MS, and working with Greg Hajcak, Ph.D., at Florida State University, wanted to understand the neural underpinnings of that experience and its downstream consequences.
The study appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
The researchers conducted a longitudinal study on 149 boys and girls ages 11 to 14 from the Tallahassee, FL, area. Participants performed a video game-like task and a monetary guessing game while undergoing continuously recorded electroencephalography, or EEG—a noninvasive technique to measure brain-wave activity from the scalp.
From the EEG data, the researchers determined two scores for each participant—one reflecting their neural response to error and the other reflecting their neural response to reward.
Two years later, participants and their parents completed a series of questionnaires to screen for anxiety and depression and to assess parenting style. As expected, kids who had experienced corporal punishment were more likely to develop anxiety and depression.
“Our paper first replicates the well-known negative effect that corporal punishment has on a child’s well-being: we found that corporal punishment is associated with increased anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescence. However, our study goes further to demonstrate that corporal punishment might impact brain activity and neurodevelopment,” said Burani.
That was reflected by larger neural response to error and a blunted response to reward in the adolescents who received physical punishments.
“Specifically,” Burani added, “our paper links corporal punishment to increased neural sensitivity to making errors and decreased neural sensitivity to receiving rewards in adolescence.
In previous and ongoing work with Dr. Hajcak, we see that increased neural response to errors is associated with anxiety and risk for anxiety, whereas decreased neural response to rewards is related to depression and risk for depression.
Corporal punishment, therefore, might alter specific neurodevelopmental pathways that increase risk for anxiety and depression by making children hypersensitive to their own mistakes and less reactive to rewards and other positive events in their environment.”
Cameron Carter, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, said of the findings, “Using EEG, this study provides new insights into the mechanisms that may underlie the adverse effects of corporal punishment on mental health in children as well as the neural systems that may be affected.”
The work provides new clues as to the neural underpinnings of depression and anxiety and could help guide interventions for at-risk youth.
See also
About this neurodevelopment research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Elsevier
Contact: Press Office – Elsevier
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Corporal Punishment is Uniquely Associated with a Greater Neural Response to Errors and Blunted Neural Response to Rewards in Adolescence” by Kreshnik Burani et al. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Abstract
Corporal Punishment is Uniquely Associated with a Greater Neural Response to Errors and Blunted Neural Response to Rewards in Adolescence
Background
Although corporal punishment is a common form of punishment with known negative impacts on health and behavior, how such punishment affects neurocognitive systems is relatively unknown.
Method
To address this issue, we examined how corporal punishment affects neural measures of error and reward processing in 149 adolescent boys and girls from 11- to 14-year-olds (Mage = 11.02, SDage = 1.16). Corporal punishment experienced over the lifetime was assessed using the Stress and Adversity Inventory (STRAIN). Additionally, participants completed a flankers task and a reward task to measure the error-related negativity (ERN) and the reward positivity (RewP), respectively, as well as measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Results
As hypothesized, participants who experienced lifetime corporal punishment reported more anxiety and depressive symptoms. Experiencing corporal punishment also was related to a larger ERN and blunted RewP. Importantly, corporal punishment was independently related to a larger ERN and a more blunted RewP beyond the impact of harsh parenting and lifetime stressors.
Conclusion
Corporal punishment appears to potentiate neural response to errors and decrease neural response to rewards, which could increase risk for anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Too Much Motivation Affects Our Decision-Making
Summary: Motivation influences neural networks associated with perception and impacts our decision-making skills.
Source: University of Geneva
In a good or a bad mood, focused or distracted, in dire or no need: our internal states directly influence our perceptions and decision-making.
While the role of motivation on the performance of behavioural tasks has been known for more than a century – thanks to the work of psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dilligham Dodson – its precise effect on the brain remains unclear.
A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the EPFL, has revealed how motivation alters the neural circuits responsible for sensory perception preceding decision-making in mice.
This study reveals why a level of motivation that is too high or too low can affect our perception and therefore our choices.
These results, featured in the journal Neuron, open up new perspectives in learning methods.
Going to work early in the morning, choosing a restaurant at lunchtime: many of our decisions are motivated by needs, such as earning a living or satisfying our hunger.
However, decision-making is a complex process, which can also be influenced by external factors, such as the environment or other individuals, and by our internal states, such as our mood, our level of attention or our degree of motivation.
The laboratory of Sami El-Boustani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine of the UNIGE and recipient of an Eccellenza fellowship (SNSF), is studying the neural circuits involved in decision-making. In recent work, carried out in collaboration with Professor Carl Petersen’s team at EPFL, his lab has studied the role played by a specific internal state – motivation – in perception and decision-making.
For more than a century it has been known that a relationship between motivation and performance exists thanks to the work of American psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dilligham Dodson. Too much or too little motivation is detrimental to performance. However, the way in which this impacts our neural circuits remains unclear.
‘‘We wanted to observe how sensory information transmitted by neurons in the cortex is altered by the degree of motivation and to what extent the latter can have an effect on learning and performance in a decision-making task,’’ explains Sami El-Boustani, the lead author of the study.
The research team developed a behavioral paradigm involving mice in a controlled water consumption regime. They first trained these rodents to respond to tactile stimuli via two whiskers (A and B) and to produce an action – licking a spout – only for whisker A in order to obtain a drop of water.
Following this training, these mice reacted mainly to the stimulation of whisker A, thus indicating their ability to discriminate between these two sensations. Finally, the researchers conducted these experiments at decreasing levels of thirst in order to vary the motivation of the rodents to participate in the task.
State of hyper-motivation blurs sensory information
In a state of great thirst – therefore of great motivation – rodents performed poorly. They licked the spout indiscriminately, without distinguishing between the whiskers stimulated.
In contrast, in a state of moderate thirst, the choice of their action became optimal. They mainly licked the spout when whisker A was stimulated. Finally, when they were not very thirsty, their performance in the task dropped again.
By observing the activity of neuronal populations responsible for perceptual decision-making in these mice, the researchers discovered that neurons in these circuits were flooded with electrical signals when mice were hyper-motivated. Conversely, in a state of low-motivation, the signals were too weak.
‘‘Hyper-motivation leads to strong stimulation of cortical neurons, which causes a loss of precision in the perception of tactile stimuli,’’ says Giulio Matteucci, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sami El-Boustani’s laboratory and the study’s first author.
In contrast, in the low-motivation state, the accuracy of the sensory information was recovered, but the strength of the signal was too low for it to be transferred correctly. As a result, the perception of the stimuli was also impaired.
A new understanding of learning
These results open up new perspectives. They provide a possible neural basis for the Yerkes-Dodson Law.
‘‘They also reveal that the level of motivation does not only impact decision-making but also the perception of sensory information, which leads to the decision’’, explains Carl Petersen, Full Professor at the Brain Mind Institute of EPFL and co-senior author in the study.
This work also suggests that it is necessary to decouple acquisition and expression of new knowledge.
‘‘We observed that mice understood the rule very quickly but could only express this learning much later, depending on an altered perception linked to their level of motivation.’’
This unraveling of the role of motivation in learning opens the way to new adaptive methods that aim to maintain an optimal level of motivation during learning.
About this neuroscience and decision-making research news
Author: Antoine Guenot
Source: University of Geneva
Contact: Antoine Guenot – University of Geneva
Image: The image is in the public domain
See also
Original Research: Open access.
“Cortical sensory processing across motivational states during goal-directed behavior” by Sami El-Boustani et al. Neuron
Abstract
Cortical sensory processing across motivational states during goal-directed behavior
Highlights
- wS1-wS2-wM2 cortical pathway is involved in a two-whisker discrimination task
- Selectivity to sensory and motor events increases along this sensorimotor pathway
- Improved performance is explained by changes in thirst-related motivational states
- Sensory decoding of whisker identity in wS2-wM2 correlates with task performance
Summary
Behavioral states can influence performance of goal-directed sensorimotor tasks. Yet, it is unclear how altered neuronal sensory representations in these states relate to task performance and learning.
We trained water-restricted mice in a two-whisker discrimination task to study cortical circuits underlying perceptual decision-making under different levels of thirst.
We identified somatosensory cortices as well as the premotor cortex as part of the circuit necessary for task execution.
Two-photon calcium imaging in these areas identified populations selective to sensory or motor events. Analysis of task performance during individual sessions revealed distinct behavioral states induced by decreasing levels of thirst-related motivation.
Learning was better explained by improvements in motivational state control rather than sensorimotor association. Whisker sensory representations in the cortex were altered across behavioral states.
In particular, whisker stimuli could be better decoded from neuronal activity during high task performance states, suggesting that state-dependent changes of sensory processing influence decision-making.
First ever alopecia hair loss drug – which affects Jada Pinkett Smith – approved as NHS may pay
Regulators have given the green light to the first alopecia treatment proven to regrow hair.
Trials have shown that taking the daily pill can almost entirely reverse the condition that causes hair to fall out in clumps.
Called baricitinib, the drug is already in use on the NHS for a number of conditions, including arthritis, dermatitis and even severe Covid. It works by interrupting faulty signals that make the immune system attack hair follicles.
NHS spending chiefs will now review baricitinib and decide whether the health service will fund the treatment for alopecia.
Charities and doctors celebrated the news, and called for the NHS to pay for patients with the most severe form of alopecia to receive baricitinib as soon as possible.
‘This is a really important step in the right direction for a group of patients who up until now had no effective treatment options,’ says Sue Schilling, chief executive of the charity Alopecia UK.
‘Alopecia is an incredibly debilitating condition that leaves people depressed, anxious, and sometimes even suicidal. The NHS needs to fund this so patients can receive it for free.’
HIGH PROFILE: Actress Jada Pinkett Smith suffers with the condition alopecia
Trials have shown that taking a daily pill can almost entirely reverse alopecia which causes hair to fall out in clumps
Dr Paul Farrant, consultant dermatologist at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, says: ‘Given the clear benefits, it’s likely that people with the most severe form of alopecia will soon be able to access baricitinib.’
Alopecia is the term used to describe hair loss, which affects roughly 40 per cent of women, and 30 per cent of men at some point in their lives.
About 100,000 Britons have a condition called alopecia areata, where cells in the immune system attack hair follicles, for reasons not understood. Over a period of weeks, hair begins to come out in clumps, resulting in bald patches. Some people also lose eyebrows, eyelashes and hair elsewhere on the body.
The Matrix actress Jada Pinkett Smith suffers with the condition, which came to global focus in April when the Oscars host, comedian Chris Rock, made a joke about it and was slapped on stage by her husband, Will Smith.
Steroid treatments can be prescribed – either in a cream form, as an injection into the scalp or as pills – and are effective in one in five patients. But taking steroid pills long-term can dramatically increase the risk of serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes, so doctors recommend patients stop taking them after six weeks. Steroid creams can irritate the skin and cause agonising migraines.
Baricitinib, part of a family of drugs called JAK inhibitors, can be taken daily and continued indefinitely. Side effects are usually minimal because, unlike steroid drugs, this medication does not attack healthy immune cells.
Studies show that, for a third of patients, baricitinib sparks hair regrowth within three months and it continues to grow back. Patients who respond to the treatment see 80 per cent of their hair return. Some dermatology clinics are already offering patients baricitinib – at a cost of £1,000 a month – and charities are concerned the high price is forcing many to buy the drug abroad.
Baricitinib, part of a family of drugs called JAK inhibitors, can be taken daily and continued indefinitely
‘We’ve heard of a number of people buying it from overseas and taking it without medical supervision,’ says Schilling.
‘Taking a drug like this in large doses can be unsafe, especially without monitoring. This could be avoided if the treatment is available on the NHS.’
Dr Farrant says he has given baricitinib to more than 30 patients. ‘For those who respond, the effects can be transformative,’ he says. ‘They go from no hair to full hair.’
One patient to benefit from baricitinib is Tyson Braun, 37, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the US. He began to lose his hair at the age of 25, after suffering flu. ‘At first, it was just patches on my beard,’ he says. ‘Then the hair on my head was coming out too. Within a year I didn’t have any hair anywhere on my body.’
Tyson unsuccessfully tried a number of a treatments. Then two months ago, he got a prescription for baricitinib.
He says: ‘There’s already hair sprouting on my face, where I used to have a beard. And there’s even a bit on my head.
‘Every day it feels like there’s more. I never expected to have hair again. My two sons have only ever known me as bald. ‘It will take some explaining when it grows out even more.’
Your Blood Type Affects Your Risk of an Early Stroke, Scientists Find : ScienceAlert
People with one of the type A blood groups are more likely to have a stroke before the age of 60 compared with people with other blood types, researchers have found.
Blood types describe the rich variety of chemicals displayed on the surface of our red blood cells. Among the most familiar are those named A and B, which can be present together as AB, individually as A or B, or not present at all, as O.
Even within these major blood types, there are subtle variations arising from mutations in the genes responsible.
Now, genomic research has uncovered a clear relationship between the gene for the A1 subgroup and early onset stroke.
Researchers compiled data from 48 genetic studies, which included roughly 17,000 people with a stroke and nearly 600,000 non-stroke controls. All participants were between 18 and 59 years of age.
A genome-wide search revealed two locations strongly associated with an earlier risk of stroke. One coincided with the spot where genes for blood type sit.
A second analysis of specific types of blood-type gene then found people whose genome coded for a variation of the A group had a 16 percent higher chance of a stroke before the age 60, compared with a population of other blood types.
For those with a gene for group O1, the risk was lower by 12 percent.
The researchers note, however, that the additional risk of stroke in people with type A blood is small, so there is no need for extra vigilance or screening in this group.
“We still don’t know why blood type A would confer a higher risk,” says senior author and vascular neurologist Steven Kittner from the University of Maryland.
“But it likely has something to do with blood-clotting factors like platelets and cells that line the blood vessels as well as other circulating proteins, all of which play a role in the development of blood clots.”
While the study findings may seem alarming, that blood type could change early stroke risk, let’s put these results into context.
Each year in the US just under 800,000 individuals experience a stroke. Most of these events – around three out of every four – occur in people 65 years and older, with risks doubling every decade after the age of 55.
Also, the people included in the study lived in North America, Europe, Japan, Pakistan, and Australia, with people of non-European ancestry only making up 35 percent of participants. Future studies with a more diverse sample could help clarify the significance of the results.
“We clearly need more follow-up studies to clarify the mechanisms of increased stroke risk,” Kittner says.
Another key finding of the study came from comparing people who had a stroke before the age of 60 to those that had a stroke after the age of 60.
For this, the researchers used a dataset of about 9,300 people over the age of 60 who had a stroke, and some 25,000 controls over the age of 60 who didn’t have a stroke.
They found that the increased risk of stroke in the type A blood group became insignificant in the late-onset stroke group, suggesting that strokes that happen early in life may have a different mechanism compared to those that occur later on.
Strokes in younger people are less likely to be caused by a build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries (a process called atherosclerosis) and more likely to be caused by factors to do with clot formation, the authors say.
The study also found that people with type B blood were around 11 percent more likely to have a stroke compared to non-stroke controls regardless of their age.
Previous studies suggest that the part of the genome that codes for blood type, called the ‘ABO locus’, is associated with coronary artery calcification, which restricts blood flow, and heart attack.
The genetic sequence for A and B blood types have also been associated with a slightly higher risk of blood clots in veins, called venous thrombosis.
This paper was published in Neurology.
Security clearance is different for presidents, which affects Trump case
Typically, when a person gets access to restricted information, they are “read in” — a process that includes signing documents at the outset in which they acknowledge the legal requirements not to share information on sensitive programs with unauthorized people or keep classified documents in unauthorized places. When they leave such jobs, they are “read out,” again acknowledging in writing their legal responsibilities and declaring that they do not have any classified documents in their possession.
David Priess, a former CIA officer who is now the publisher of Lawfare, a national security website and podcast producer, said presidents are not read out of classified programs when they leave office. That, he said, “is because presidents are not formally read in.”
Said Priess: “There’s a myth out there that presidents have a formal security clearance. They don’t.”
The “commander in chief has the ability to classify or declassify documents,” Priess said, by virtue of having been elected president by the American people. “A former president might receive access to limited classified material after leaving office to assist with writing memoirs or at the discretion of the current president, but a formal security clearance isn’t involved.”
In past classified-mishandling cases involving non-presidents, the formal paperwork of being read in and out of classified matters has been an important part of the investigation. When retired general and former CIA director David H. Petraeus pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information, for example, the court papers stated he had repeatedly signed documents saying he would not improperly share or keep classified material.
Petraeus signed at least 14 such nondisclosure agreements over the course of his career in the military and intelligence work, including a declaration in 2006 that he “shall return all materials that may have come into my possession or for which I am responsible because of such access, upon demand by an authorized representative of the United States Government or upon the conclusion of my employment or other relationship with the United States Government.”
That same declaration says Petraeus understood that if he did not return such materials upon request, it could be a violation of the Espionage Act — the same section of the criminal code cited in the FBI’s search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this month.
In 2012, as Petraeus left the CIA, he signed a document that declared, “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” That document later became part of the case against him.
But Trump, like his predecessors, apparently did not sign such paperwork, which could have legal significance for how prosecutors view his case.
The Trump investigation grew out of a dispute in which the National Archives repeatedly pressed the former president to provide material that was considered government property under the Presidential Records Act. Eventually, Trump advisers turned over 15 boxes of material, including, the agency said, more than 100 classified documents, some of them top secret.
The return of those boxes from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in January set off alarm bells in the government that the former president or his aides had mishandled and kept significant amounts of sensitive national defense information. But Trump’s position as a former president means the criminal investigation may, by necessity, end up more focused on what Trump did starting in May, when he received a grand jury subpoena for any remaining material bearing classified markings, rather than his actions regarding items handed over in January.
If Trump did not fully comply with the subpoena, experts said, he could face legal jeopardy regardless of whether he was read out of classified programs when he left office.
“It is yet another reason why criminally investigating and prosecuting a former president has complexities,” said Brandon Van Grack, a lawyer in private practice who previously worked classified-mishandling cases when he was a federal prosecutor. “What it highlights is the criminal case is focused on what happened after May, not about what happened before then.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on how the apparent lack of a read-out or read-in for Trump might affect prosecutors’ legal analysis of the facts in the Trump case.
John F. Kelly, a onetime chief of staff to Trump who has said he disliked classification rules and distrusted intelligence officials, said government officials should have given the 45th president some kind of farewell debriefing about classified matters and documents when he left the White House.
“It would have been important to read him out because it would have been in some hopes that he would not violate all these rules on classified materials. The important message would have been, ‘Once you’re not the president anymore, all the rules apply to you,’ ” said Kelly.
A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about whether the former president received any kind of exit briefing about classified material. Trump has criticized the FBI for searching his home, and his defenders have claimed that he declassified the material he took with him before leaving office — though no evidence has been made public that he went through the process for doing that.
On Monday, Trump’s lawyers filed court papers seeking to have a special master appointed to review the material seized in the August search — a curious request given that such appointments are generally done to handle matters of attorney-client privilege, not classified information, and that the request didn’t come until two weeks after the search, meaning law enforcement officials have already been reviewing the seized material for a significant period of time.
A federal judge in Florida who received that request has asked Trump’s legal team to clarify why they made it, giving the lawyers until Friday to respond.
Mishandling of national security material is not the only crime being investigated in the Mar-a-Lago probe, and Trump’s status as a former president may not lessen his legal risk to the two other potential criminal charges listed on the search warrant: destruction of records and concealment or mutilation of government material.
Still, Ashley Deeks, a law professor at the University of Virginia who until recently was deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council, said the laws and practices regarding classified information place a president in a somewhat unique position.
“Because the president himself is the ultimate classifying authority, it makes sense that agencies do not formally read presidents in to classified programs,” Deeks said. “In terms of former presidents, Congress itself has recognized in statute that former presidents would still have access to at least some of their records, though Congress also has made clear that former presidents do not own those records personally.”
What stock buybacks are, and how a new 1% tax affects your portfolio
U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he delivers remarks on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 at the White House in Washington, July 28, 2022.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
The new 1% excise tax on corporate stock buybacks — a late addition to President Joe Biden’s sweeping tax, health and climate package — adds a new levy to the controversial practice.
But there are mixed views on how it may affect investors.
The Inflation Reduction Act provision levies a 1% excise tax on the market value of net corporate shares repurchased starting in 2023.
How stock buybacks work
When a profitable public company has excess cash, it can purchase shares of its own stock on the public market or make an offer to shareholders, known as a stock buyback or share repurchase.
It’s a way of returning cash to shareholders, explained Amy Arnott, portfolio strategist at Morningstar, and more widely used than dividends, a portion of company profits regularly sent back to investors.
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If overall shares are reduced, stock buybacks may also boost earnings per share, one method of measuring a company’s financial performance.
However, critics have argued buybacks often come with the new issuance of stock options for executives and other employees. Adding new shares can negate some, or all, of share reduction benefits for regular investors from buybacks.
‘Buyback monsters’ drive the trend
With low interest rates boosting profits and values, S&P 500 companies bought back a record $881.7 billion of their own stock in 2021, up from $519.8 billion in 2020, according to S&P Global data.
A significant percentage comes from a handful of so-called “buyback monsters,” with five companies — Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft and Bank of America — making up one-quarter of the dollar value of stock buybacks over the past year.
How the 1% tax on stock buybacks may affect investors
While the full impact on the stock market isn’t yet known, experts have mixed opinions on how the provision may affect individual portfolios.
“I don’t think it should have a major impact on investors,” Arnott said. But at the margins, companies with excess cash may be “slightly more likely” to pay dividends than buy back shares, she said.
It’s estimated that a 1% tax on share repurchases may trigger a 1.5% increase in corporate dividend payouts, according to the Tax Policy Center.
And increased dividends may have an unexpected impact, depending on where investors are holding these assets, said Alex Durante, federal tax economist at the Tax Foundation.
“People with taxable accounts may potentially be impacted,” he said.
Of course, the shift from buybacks to dividends may also change the expected tax revenue, Durante added.
The provision is expected to raise about $74 billion over the next decade, according to recent estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
However, since the new law won’t kick in until Jan. 1, 2023, some experts predict companies will accelerate “tax-free” stock buybacks through 2022, especially with stock prices still well below previous values.
General Motors on Friday announced it will resume and boost share repurchases to $5 billion, up from $3.3 billion previously left from the program. And Home Depot on Thursday announced a $15 billion share buyback program.