United States: A new study reveals that any sedentary behavior that involves sitting, reclining, or lying down during the day can raise a person’s risk of heart disease or death.

Folks who sit for more than 10.5 hours a day, including work and leisure time, have a higher risk of heart failure and heart disease death, regardless of whether they meet guidelines for exercise, studies show, as reported by HealthDay.

“Our findings support cutting back on sedentary time to reduce cardiovascular risk, with 10.6 hours a day marking a potentially key threshold tied to higher heart failure and cardiovascular mortality,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Too much sitting or lying down can be harmful to heart health, even for those who are active.”

These findings are in line with another research conducted recently and published in the journal PLOS One, which revealed that as people remained inactive for more time, their hearts grew faster. This was the case regardless of how the people followed the basic guidelines of at least 30 minutes of exercise per day.

Key Findings

In the new research, participants of the UK ongoing research project called Biobank study involving nearly 90,000 people were included. The amount of time spent on sedentary behavior per day was 9.4 hours among the participants.

After an average follow-up of eight years, about 5% of the patients had developed an irregular heartbeat, 2% had developed heart failure, just under 2% had suffered a heart attack, and about 1% died of heart-related disease, the researchers discovered.

It was found that sedentary behavior gradually raised the chances of abnormal heartbeat and heart attack among individuals studied on the subject.

As the sedentary time increased, people’s risk for heart failure and heart-related death did not escalate until they sat more than 10.6 hours a day. However, after that it increased to a moderate level of risk.

Exercise Isn’t Enough

The subjects who spent more time sitting in cars, watching and at their desks were more likely to have heart failure or die from heart-related causes, even if they exercised 150 minutes a week.

“Future guidelines and public health efforts should stress the importance of cutting down on sedentary time,” Khurshid said in a news release. “Avoiding more than 10.6 hours per day may be a realistic minimal target for better heart health.”

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Charles Eaton of Brown University in Rhode Island pointed out that people always overestimate their level of physical activity and underestimate their periods of inactivity, as reported by HealthDay.

Reducing sitting time by 30 minutes per day with any form of physical activity also decreases heart health risks, opined Eaton, who directs Center for Primary Care and Prevention at Brown.

Moderate-to-vigorous activity reduced the risk of heart failure by 15% and of fatal heart disease by 10%; light activity lowered heart failure risk by 6% and fatal heart disease risk by 9%.

United States: Strategies adopted by the federal Government to ensure that children did not access vaping products include closing shops that sell the products to under-aged people, but new research shows children can still get the products from online shops. The Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act (2020) was supposed to ban sales of e-cigarettes via the USPS and to introduce mandatory picture identification for delivery. But there is evidence of the shortcomings indicated in a study and people can easily make online purchases, as reported by HealthDay.

What the Study Found

Researchers tested the purchase of flavored nicotine vaping products from 78 online retailers, attempting to have the products delivered to their homes. The results were troubling:

• 78% of deliveries occurred without any ID check or interaction with delivery personnel.
• 16% involved interaction, but no ID verification.
• Only 5.7% had their ID checked, but it wasn’t scanned.

The study found that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivered 80% of the orders, despite a federal law prohibiting the USPS from shipping tobacco products. This clear violation of the law points to gaps in enforcement and further exposes the vulnerability of online tobacco sales.

Issues with Online Age Verification

While websites use age-gating technology to prevent underage purchases, it is easily bypassed by minors who provide false information. Unlike physical stores where clerks can check IDs in person, online systems cannot verify the buyer’s identity. Thomas Carr, director of national policy for the American Lung Association, stresses the simplicity of circumventing these age checks, making it easier for minors to get their hands on e-cigarettes.

Health Risks for Teens

Nicotine in particular, in flavored products that are marketed towards young people is very toxic and addictive for teenagers. This is according to Dr. Harati who explains that nicotine damages the developing hard hence making teenagers highly susceptible to substance dependence, as reported by HealthDay.

Calls for Stronger Action

The online cigarettes sale loopholes are slammed by health organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Lung Association of today. Therefore, there is a need to implement additional e-cigarette delivery restraints and the prohibition of more flavors. It has been found that making the products less appealing and harder to access can contribute to the safeguarding of youths from the risks of vaping.

United States: The World Health Organization isolated the mpox virus to the region of Congo, where they identified a new and more infectious variant, stating that the cases there seem to be ‘stabilizing’ although the epidemic continues to grow in other areas of Congo, Burundi, and Uganda.

Mpox Outbreak Continues to Spread

Reporting its findings on Monday, the UN health agency noted that the number of mpox infections ‘stands in an upward trend but splayed signs of a slowdown in South Kivu, where the more transmissible variant of mpox was found to have been circulating early this year among sex workers and miners in the gold mining town of Kamituga, as reported by HealthDay.

Nevertheless, WHO agreed that testing is still a limitation and isn’t as prevalent at the moment, which hinders understanding of how the virus is transmitted.

Testing Remains a Limitation

The World Health Organization announced that Congo had less than 100 laboratory-confirmed mpox cases in the week prior to August 20th, compared to nearly 400 in the week of July 27th. Lately, experts have opined that the infections have started leveling off, giving an opportunity for health officials to put an end to the outbreak.

Currently, approximately 50,000 individuals in Congo have been vaccinated against mpox; according to Africa CDC, around 3 million vaccines are required to contain the outbreak.

Concerns Over Virus Spread in Other African Nations

Last week, the director of Africa CDC, Dr. Jean Kaseya, claimed that the virus is still actively spreading on the continent, noting that 19 nations were affected in the current outbreak. He frightened the audience by saying that if Africa is not given more resources to contain the virus, it puts humanity in danger of the virus spreading worldwide.

According to WHO, the mpox outbreak in Burundi is attributed to the newer strain and the symptoms are less severe — thus, those with symptoms may not know they’re passing it on. In the past two weeks, Burundi has confirmed more than 200 new mpox cases per week, with most patients being children and young adults.

WHO stated that in Uganda, which confirmed 100 new cases of the virus last week, the virus continues to be transmitted mainly through sexual contact, and the majority of patients are adults.

Mpox is mainly transmitted from skin-to-skin contact with infected people or contact with their materials like clothes or bedsheets that contain the skin containing the outbreak’s virus such as monkeypox because it was first observed in monkeys. It will sometimes result in the development of skin lesions on the body that could make some people avoid touching others.

WHO to Convene Experts

In August WHO said that the rapid infection spread of mpox in Congo and other African countries is a global health emergency. Overall, more than 46,000 people have been reported sick in terms of suspected AFM across Africa, with 1,081 deaths, as reported by HealthDay.

Next Monday WHO also added that an expert group meeting would be held to debate whether mpox still represents an international emergency.

The week before last, Great Britain reported what was the first case of this more contagious type of mpox spreading outside of Africa. Our study detected mpox in one person who had recently traveled to Africa and in three of his/her household companions. All of them are presently receiving treatment at two different hospitals in London.