Reminder to achieve high levels of rotavirus vaccination in babies
Annually, among under-fives in Europe, rotavirus gastroenteritis is responsible for 75 000 to 150 000 hospitalisations and up to some 600 000 medical encounters in emergency departments or outpatient clinics. This is cited by Cohen et al (2022), who observe that rotavirus vaccines have been available since 2004; are highly effective in preventing rotavirus diarrhoea; and since 2006 the World Health Organization has recommended that rotavirus vaccination should be included in all national infant vaccination programmes.
In the UK, human rotavirus vaccination (HRV) was introduced into the infant immunisation schedule in 2013, and the effectiveness of two doses of HRV in preventing laboratory-confirmed rotavirus gastroenteritis was reported as 85% in children aged <1 year, and 54% in children >1 year. The authors further note that initial fears that implementation of rotavirus universal mass vaccination (UMV) would result in an overall increase in the incidence of intussusception in young children have been unfounded.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors detect ‘a new urgency to achieve high levels of paediatric vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases, including rotavirus gastroenteritis’, and anticipate that rotavirus UMV can be expected to reduce the number of preventable illnesses, hospitalisations and deaths caused by rotavirus gastroenteritis at a time when healthcare systems are preoccupied and overwhelmed with SARS-CoV-2.
Barriers to primary care provider-led cancer survivorship care and how these can be overcome
In 2018, an estimated 48.3 million individuals were living as cancer survivors globally, and the number of cancer diagnoses worldwide is projected to rise by 47% between 2020 and 2040. Yet, as the number of cancer survivors and new cancer patients increase, it is anticipated that the care of these patients may need to be transferred to primary care providers before patients’ 5-year survival marks are reached.
In this scoping review, Hayes et al (2022) aimed to determine the barriers to primary care provider-led cancer survivorship care (<5 years after initial cancer treatment) experienced by healthcare systems around the world, and to consider potential solutions that would succeed within a developed country. A total of 97 articles published in the United States, Canada, Australia, European Union, and the UK were evaluated.
The results showed that the four most often discussed barriers to primary care provider-led survivorship care in healthcare systems were: (1) insufficient communication between primary care providers and cancer specialists, (2) limited primary care provider knowledge, (3) time restrictions for primary care providers to provide comprehensive survivorship care, and (4) a lack of resources such as survivorship care guidelines.
The authors identified three possible solutions to address these challenges: (1) improving interdisciplinary communication, (2) bolstering primary care provider education, and (3) providing survivorship resources.
Vegan diets and risk of sarcopenia in older adults
Vegan diets are strictly plant-based, excluding all foods of animal origin, but the effects of a vegan diet on skeletal muscle mass and strength in older age are unknown. In this context, Domic et al (2022) state that the loss of muscle mass and strength in an aging population is a growing public health concern. In community-dwelling older adults, the estimated prevalence of sarcopenia -a muscle disorder characterised by low muscle strength and low muscle mass or quality - ranges from 9.9% to 40.4%.
In this perspective, Domic et al (2022) note that the main contributors to dietary protein intake among older adults are meat, dairy and cereal products. With animal-based foods contributing substantially to dietary protein intake in older adults’ current diets, exchanging omnivorous portions with vegan portions of equivalent size may affect the amount of food and the protein source ingested.
Given the lower bioavailability and functionality of vegan diet-derived proteins in a vegan diet, the lower essential amino acid (EAA) content, and specific EAA deficiencies in proteins derived from plant-based foods, the authors suggest ‘that a vegan diet increases the risk of an inadequate protein intake at an older age and that current strategies to improve the anabolic properties of plant-based foods are not feasible for many older adults.’
Relationship between social media use, psychological distress and life satisfaction
With evidence suggesting that greater wellbeing predicts better health, longevity, greater psychological functioning and lower mental illness, Jarman et al (2022) sought to investigate the potential role of social media use in relation to wellbeing. They cite evidence for the dramatic rise in social media use ‘with the proportion of adults who use at least one social media platform growing from 37% in 2009 to 72% in 2019’.
This study aimed to examine the temporal relationships between social media use and psychological distress and life satisfaction among a representative sample of 7331 adults (median age 52 years; 62.4% women), and to determine whether these relationships differed by age group and gender.
The study found that higher psychological distress and lower life satisfaction predicted higher social media use more strongly than the reverse direction. Although the study's findings were relatively consistent across age and gender, ‘results suggested that women and middle- and older-aged adults experience detrimental effects of social media use on wellbeing. Paradoxically, these effects may drive subsequent increased use of social media, perhaps because adults experiencing psychological distress or lower life satisfaction may tend to use social media as a means of alleviating poor well-being’. But this maladaptive coping mechanism seems to drive increased social media use which in turn can exacerbate poor wellbeing.