Your ideas about antibiotics are probably outdated

“Always finish your antibiotics” is no longer considered medical best practice for all conditions.

Surprised? You’re not alone.

A new study has found that almost 90% of Americans believe that it’s always best to take the full course of antibiotics, even when you feel better—consistent with long-running but now outdated health campaigns.

The reality is more complicated. Sometimes shorter courses are safer, and sometimes longer courses are best.

The survey demonstrates a need for better communication between doctors and patients about what’s healthiest.

“Historically, there was very strong guidance by major health organizations and clinicians that you must always finish the course,” says Alistair Thorpe, research assistant professor of population health sciences at University of Utah Health and first author on the study.

“Now, we’re seeing a growing body of evidence saying that that is not always the case. And oftentimes, shorter durations of antibiotics are as effective and safe as longer alternatives.”

The results appear in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The research team surveyed 1,475 people across the country on their attitudes about antibiotic course length. They asked participants whether they’d feel more comfortable taking a three- to five-day course of antibiotics if they had pneumonia, as is recommended by current guidelines, or if they’d prefer an antibiotic course of a week or more, which is recommended by outdated guidelines. While shorter courses of antibiotics are as effective and safer for pneumonia than longer ones, about 60% of people says they’d rather take the longer course.

One of the main reasons people gave for preferring longer antibiotic courses was that they had been told to “always finish their antibiotic course”—88% of respondents had heard of, and agreed with, this common mantra. Most had been told this by their clinician, and many had also heard it via a public health campaign.

A strong body of scientific evidence shows that, for many common infections, shorter courses of antibiotics work as well as longer courses and are less likely to cause side effects. Still, there are some cases, like tuberculosis, where longer courses are most effective.

The study authors suggest that doctors and public health campaigns use several evidence-informed strategies to better communicate the complex reality of antibiotic course length—for instance, avoiding overly simplistic claims that either shorter or longer courses are universally better, and acknowledging that as scientific evidence accumulates over time, health recommendations can change.

To patients who have been prescribed antibiotics, Thorpe recommends having an open conversation with your doctor about the appropriate course length and adherence plan to get health advice that’s specific to your situation.

“Discuss with your clinician what the right duration is for you and when the right time is to stop your course,” Thorpe says.

“Getting advice directly from a clinician on a one-to-one basis about what is most appropriate for you in that situation is the right way to go.”

Thorpe emphasizes that the changing recommendations are a positive outcome of increasing knowledge.

“Evidence is growing and guidance is evolving on antibiotic use, which is a normal process and a good sign that we are working to improve how we provide care,” he says.

“Our knowledge about how best to use antibiotics has changed, but it has changed because we’re learning more, and it’s important that we make sure we are communicating this well to the public.”

The work was supported by the Jon M. Huntsman Presidential Endowed Chair of the population health sciences department at the University of Utah, internal research funds from the internal medicine department at the University of Utah, and from the medicine department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the American Heart Association.

Content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.

Source: University of Utah

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Foreign tariffs made US whiskey cheaper in some places

A new study finds that one side effect of Trump-era trade wars has been cheaper whiskey in much of the United States.

But if you live in whiskey hubs Kentucky or Tennessee? Your prices actually went up.

In 2018, the Trump administration imposed a series of tariffs, kicking off a trade war with many prominent trade partners. In response, Mexico, the European Union, Canada, and China imposed substantial tariffs on whiskey produced in the US.

“Distilled spirits are an interesting sector because consumers have significant preferences, which can influence pricing on a market-to-market basis,” says Carly Burd, coauthor of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of accounting at North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management.

“Whiskey constituted the vast majority of US liquor exports prior to 2018, and we wanted to examine how US whiskey producers responded to a sudden decrease in foreign sales.”

For this study, the researchers collected sales data on 8,674 stores over the course of the 2018 calendar year. The researchers looked at the cost of 2,514 unique whiskey products—all of which measured 750 milliliters in volume. Ultimately, the researchers had data on 11.4 million sales of whiskey products.

The researchers looked at how much the cost of US whiskeys changed before and after the introduction of export tariffs and compared it to the cost of imported whiskeys over the same time period. The imported whiskeys served as a control group, since they were not subject to US tariffs in 2018.

“Overall, US whiskey producers responded to export tariffs by decreasing the cost of whiskey in order to increase domestic sales,” says Burd. “However, there were significant exceptions.

“For example, producers actually increased the price of locally-produced whiskeys in Kentucky and Tennessee. Those two states produce the vast majority of whiskey sold in the US, and our theory is that consumers purchasing whiskey in those states were willing to pay a premium for locally-produced products.”

On average, whiskey prices either didn’t change or went up slightly in states where there was already significant demand for whiskey products, and went down everywhere else.

“One important factor here is that whiskey has to be aged, so producers are unable to rapidly increase or decrease supply,” says Burd.

That means whiskey producers couldn’t respond to decreased exports in 2018 by quickly scaling back production. This is likely a big reason producers opted to pursue a dynamic pricing model. And continued trade policy uncertainty has likely played a role in continuing to discourage supply chain responses; pricing responses are faster and more flexible.

“Whiskey is a good case study for understanding the ways in which political tensions, trade disputes, and tax changes can pose significant challenges for domestic producers—and how producers adapt those challenges,” says Burd.

“It also illustrates how the impact of trade policy on consumers can vary significantly in different parts of the country.”

The paper appears in the journal The Accounting Review.

The paper was coauthored by Duke Ferguson, an assistant professor of business and economics at the University of Kentucky.

Source: North Carolina State University

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Why do you have reread some sentences and not others?

New research digs into why we breeze through some sentences in a book or article but have to reread others to comprehend their meaning.

A team of linguists and data scientists has found a partial answer in AI—some of this processing parallels that of neural-network-based large language models (LLMs).

However, other aspects of why we read this way cannot be explained by these technologies, revealing where human and AI language processing diverge and maintaining the mystery of some stages of the reading process.

The new study by researchers from New York University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that humans and AI process language in similar ways during the earliest moments of reading: both rely on next-word predictions. However, as reading continues and passages become more complex—often requiring rereading—humans’ processing differs from that of AI, which is entirely built on next-word prediction and therefore cannot account for how we navigate these types of passages.

“Language models develop their remarkable language understanding capabilities by being trained to predict the next word in a sentence, which led us to ask whether the same predictive processes that drive these AI systems could also explain how humans comprehend sentences,” explains William Timkey, a linguistics doctoral student at NYU and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“We found that LLMs can explain how long it takes people to recognize words when their eyes move smoothly forward through a text, but they fail to capture the cases where people have difficulty integrating a word into the larger context of a sentence, which is often accompanied by rereading.”

The authors note that despite the remaining uncertainty on how humans read—notably the rereading of passages—the findings nonetheless offer a potential roadmap for both improving language learning and addressing reading-related afflictions.

“We now know a little bit better how humans and models are different,” says Brian Dillon, a professor of linguistics at the UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author.

“That is the first step in understanding how we can close that gap, which we want to do because that could have enormous advantages down the road.”

“Our work shows that AI can be very valuable for cognitive science, but it is not enough,” adds Tal Linzen, an associate professor of linguistics and data science at NYU and one of the paper’s authors.

“The human mind does not always work like standard AI systems—for instance, 20% of our eye movements when reading are backward, and AI models cannot explain when we decide to do that. We now have our work cut out for us to create computational models that more closely match the human mind and that can help us understand in detail how it operates.”

When we see words on a page, we go through mental processes of taking the visual information of the letters, accessing the meaning of the word, and then integrating that with the rest of a sentence. While much of reading is driven by word prediction, less clear are its limits—a question the researchers explored in the PNAS study.

To do so, they deployed LLMs because their predictive-text feature aligns with some theories of how the brain works: the prediction process drives our ability to comprehend sentences.

“LLMs seem to capture some of the properties of language as we understand it—they can generate text fluently and they appear to react in a way that suggests they have some understanding of what’s going on,” explains Dillon, who directs the Computational Sentence Processing Lab in the linguistics department at UMass Amherst.

“We build a mental representation of what we think a sentence means based on the words on the page, then use that representation to make predictions about the next words, and then update our mental representation when those predictions are wrong,” adds Timkey.

In the study, the researchers used eye-tracking technology to analyze 368 adult readers, focusing on how long participants spent reading—and rereading—each word of carefully designed sentences. These included a diverse set of syntactically challenging sentences, known as garden- path sentences—grammatically correct sentences that start in such a way that a reader’s initial interpretation will likely be incorrect. For instance, take the sentence “The old man the boat.” Readers may initially think the sentence is about an old man, but instead, the sentence means that old people are manning a boat. Such sentences, the authors note, are good candidates for understanding how we process complex passages.

The researchers then compared those eye movements with predictions generated by more than 400 AI language models.

The results showed that AI models’ next word predictions can explain the first step of processing each word of a sentence: identifying the word from a sequence of letters. However, they can’t explain the next step of integrating that word into the larger meaning of the sentence—a process that is particularly difficult for humans in garden-path sentences, and one which still remains poorly understood.

“The predictability of a word really doesn’t even come close to explaining just how much time we spend on difficult words and garden-path sentences,” says Timkey. “LLMs were drastically underpredicting the type of difficulty that we experience when reading.”

“It’s in that second stage of processing—recognizing a word and then integrating it with other words in passages—where we find big gaps between what word predictability can explain and what we need cognitive models to explain,” adds Linzen.

The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.

Source: New York University

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A short sprint could have a bigger impact than 90 mins of running

Three minutes of sprinting can do something that 90 minutes of moderate exercise apparently cannot: dramatically reshape the molecular contents of the bloodstream.

Rockefeller University researchers comparing different intensities of exercise found that six sets of 30-second, all-out sprints altered nearly a quarter of the proteins measured immediately afterward.

Moderate, continuous cycling for 90 minutes altered fewer than one-quarter of one percent. And while moderate running on a treadmill changed more proteins than cycling, it still altered far fewer than a quick sprint.

Sprinting triggered changes in more than 200 metabolites. It also caused an immediate surge of proteins involved in blood-vessel growth, tissue remodeling, and hormonal signaling. Some of these proteins appear to enter the bloodstream through an expedited cell signaling process known as ectodomain shedding—rather than being newly made and secreted, portions of proteins already sitting on the cell surface were cleaved off and rapidly released into circulation.

The researchers also found that human fat cells exposed to blood collected after sprinting underwent extensive changes in gene activity, shifting how the cells process fuel, respond to hormones, and sense nutrient availability.

Not so with moderate exercise which produced a more modest response. It was not until three hours after completing that exercise that a meaningful wave of the fatty acids and liver-derived proteins that typically appear in response to the demands of endurance exercise were found in the bloodstream. Human fat cells exposed to blood collected after moderate cycling had only minor changes in gene activity.

When the researchers compared the exercise-responsive proteins with health data from more than 53,000 people in the UK Biobank, they found that many of these proteins were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. The connection was particularly striking for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic disorders: of 33 proteins associated with lower risk, 32 were altered by sprinting, compared with just three by moderate exercise. More than a quarter of these proteins were also associated with slower biological aging.

“What’s exciting here is that just a few minutes of intense exercise can trigger a significant molecular response,” says Paul Cohen, head of the Weslie R. and William H. Janeway Laboratory of Molecular Metabolism at Rockefeller.

“And we still see it after eight weeks of training, which tells us this response isn’t simply a product of the body struggling to keep up with unfamiliar stress. It may be that the responses we observed are intrinsic to intense exercise.”

“It’s well appreciated that different intensities of exercise stimulate distinct body-wide adaptations,” notes Luke Olsen, the postdoctoral fellow who conducted the studies.

“However, the molecular mechanisms linking these intensity-dependent adaptations have remained largely elusive. Our work suggests that exerkines–proteins and metabolites released into the bloodstream following exercise–are highly sensitive to exercise intensity and may be the key mediators of the health-promoting effects of short bursts of vigorous exercise.”

The research appears in Cell Reports Medicine.

Source: Rockefeller University

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This mushroom is behind ‘tiny people’ hallucinations

Scientists have identified the mushroom behind “tiny people” hallucinations.

People in communities thousands of miles apart have described the same strange experience after eating a mysterious mushroom: vivid visions of tiny humans moving through and interacting with the physical world around them. Known as Lilliputian hallucinations—a reference to the 6-inch-tall inhabitants of Gulliver’s Travels—the phenomenon has long been thought to stem from cultural influences rather than biology.

A new study suggests otherwise.

Using DNA sequencing, University of Utah (U) researchers confirmed that a single mushroom species, Lanmaoa asiatica, is responsible for these hallucinations in Southwest China and the northern Philippines. They also discovered that the mushroom contains none of the psychoactive compounds known to science, including psilocybin.

Instead, the findings point to an entirely new hallucinogenic compound that could offer new insights into neurological disease and how the brain shapes perception and consciousness.

Colin Domnauer, a doctoral student at the U, and Bryn Dentinger, a mycologist at the U and the Natural History Museum of Utah, coauthored the study that appears in the journal Mycologia.

Here, Domnauer speaks about the Lilliputian mushroom, the decades-long mystery behind it, and the implications of a new hallucinogenic compound:

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How 1 sunburn can be ‘life-changing’

A severe sunburn can be painful and more serious than many people realize. But can one sunburn really be “life-changing”?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

What is a life-changing sunburn?

A “life-changing sunburn” is a phrase used to describe a severe sunburn, particularly one that causes blistering, because the damage it causes can have lifelong effects.

A sunburn occurs when ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun damages the DNA inside skin cells.

“When the body repairs that damage, mistakes can sometimes occur,” explains Adrienne Victor, oncologist at University of Rochester Medicine Wilmot Cancer Institute.

“Over time, these mutations can accumulate and contribute to the development of skin cancer.”

Research shows that blistering sunburns increase the risk of developing skin cancer later in life. For some types of skin cancer, even a single, severe, blistering sunburn can raise a person’s lifetime risk.

Children and teens may be particularly vulnerable to the long-term effects of severe sunburns.

“Children are more susceptible due to multiple risk factors, including the biology of their pigment-producing skin cells, the higher likelihood of sun exposure, and inconsistent use of sun protection,” says Jinia El-Feghaly, chief of pediatric dermatology at University of Rochester Medicine Golisano Children’s.

“Additionally, studies show that a higher frequency of sunburns during childhood is associated with a higher risk of skin cancer, even if sunburns become less frequent in adulthood.”

How to treat a severe sunburn

A mild sunburn may improve within a few days, while more severe burns can take a week or longer to heal. Cool compresses, plenty of fluids and appropriate moisturizers can help relieve discomfort.

Sunburn peeling is also common as damaged skin cells are shed. However, peeling does not mean the skin has fully recovered from the underlying damage.

Blistering is a sign of a more severe sunburn. Avoid popping blisters, which can increase the risk of infection. A health care provider should evaluate severe sunburn, especially when there is extensive blistering, severe pain, fever, or other concerning symptoms.

How to prevent sunburn and reduce skin cancer risk

The best way to prevent a life-changing sunburn is to protect skin from UV damage before it happens.

Protecting your skin doesn’t rely on one strategy alone. Experts recommend using several forms of sun protection whenever you’re outdoors, including:

• Broad-spectrum sunscreen
• Protective clothing
• Hats
• Shade
• Limiting time in direct sunlight, especially when UV levels are highest

Sunscreen is an important tool for reducing UV exposure. “Some people avoid sunscreen because of myths that its ingredients can cause skin cancer,” explains Victor. “However, the strongest evidence points to UV exposure as the primary cause of most skin cancers.”

The Fitzpatrick skin-type scale classifies skin based on how it typically responds to sun exposure, including how easily it burns or tans.

Although people with lower Fitzpatrick skin types are more likely to burn, skin cancer can affect people of every skin type. Everyone should take steps to protect their skin from UV exposure.

Source: University of Rochester

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The right message may get people to clean up the environment

People might be more inclined to keep their community clean if they believe it benefits them personally, according to new research.

The study found that focusing on how volunteering can benefit participants, such as by providing a new way to meet people or stay active, may encourage people to grab a trash bag and get to work.

“When we think about messaging, sometimes we think we’re going to get attention if we tell people they’ll lose something, right? But the messages we generate might have a broader impact if they’re positive,” says Jennifer Gay, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Georgia College of Public Health.

“When messages and themes related to future environmental behaviors are positively framed, people see benefits about the environment but also their own health.”

The study’s findings could be especially relevant in coastal regions that need to curb littering before it becomes marine debris and pollutes the ocean, the researchers say.

Researchers conducted two surveys with more than 1,000 US adults living in coastal regions ranging from Georgia to California.

Individuals were first asked to consider both personal barriers to volunteering to help clean up the environment and possible positive outcomes with participating. They were asked to finish the sentence: “If I pick up trash while being active outdoors, I am likely to…” to gauge those feelings. People answered these questions with responses like: “I am likely to meet new people” or “I am likely to feel more fit afterwards.”

The second survey asked the same coastal residents about present and future pro-environmental actions and beliefs, as well as their physical activity levels. For example, participants were asked how likely they would be to pick up litter in response to messages about protecting marine life or cleaning up beaches, as well as gaining physical and mental health benefits (like heart health and lower stress).

Across both surveys, connecting coastal cleanup to something positive like improved physical fitness resonated with the participants.

People said they would be more eager to help clean up their coastal community if the message language was less focused on problems associated with marine debris and its negative impacts on the environment and more focused on human reward: social, mental, and physical well-being benefits. When those benefits were spelled out, people said they would be more likely to pick up litter in the future.

“There is potential to engage new audiences in litter prevention through campaign messages focused on these positive benefits,” says Katy Smith, coauthor of the study and a public service associate with UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant.

“We can use this to help promote environmental stewardship by showing the personal satisfaction gained in protecting the outdoor spaces we care about.”

The framing was particularly effective on those who said they were already physically active. People who believed combining cleanup efforts with exercise would lead to a better workout or even help them lose weight were more likely to add picking up litter when outdoors over the next few months.

Respondents who said they regularly participate in moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise especially considered bending over, lifting, and any other action involved in cleanup as a win-win for both themselves and the environment.

“Picking up litter can have immediate physical health benefits because you’re walking, bending, reaching, and using fine motor control. It’s a form of functional fitness,” Gay says.

“Whether you’re out and you see a water bottle to pick up, or you’re going out for an hour or two and picking up trash, considering that physical activity component can prioritize those behaviors in the thinking process.”

Those who identified as less active found different benefits involved with cleanup appealing.

They were still enticed by positive outcomes but were more likely to commit to cleanup efforts if they saw perks in aspects of community or efficiency, not just physical activity. These participants viewed picking up litter as an opportunity to meet new people.

People who reported being less physically active saw feelings of belonging and pride as positive effects of litter cleanup. Knowing their efforts helped make their town more beautiful instilled a feeling of accomplishment.

“Being in nature or natural spaces without trash makes people feel less stressed and more connected to nature,” Gay says. “The absence of litter in your environment can build social cohesion and make people feel like they’re more part of a community.”

The study suggests that messaging development can make a key difference in the health of the environment. The more people contribute to clean up, the less likely it is that garbage will make its way into our oceans.

“Litter cleanups have direct positive impacts in our communities and the ocean,” Smith says. “They not only improve the aesthetics of our neighborhoods and outdoor spaces, but they also prevent litter from becoming marine debris. Marine debris prevention begins on land, and everyone can play a part with small daily actions, like participating in litter cleanups in the outdoor spaces they enjoy.”

The study appears in Environment and Behavior.

Additional coauthors are from UGA and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Source: University of Georgia

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