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One in three Australian adults has high blood pressure (hypertension). Excess salt (sodium) increases the risk of high blood pressure so everyone with hypertension is advised to reduce salt in their diet.

But despite decades of strong recommendations we have failed to get Australians to cut their intake. It’s hard for people to change the way they cook, season their food differently, pick low-salt foods off the supermarket shelves and accept a less salty taste.

Now there is a simple and effective solution: potassium-enriched salt. It can be used just like regular salt and most people don’t notice any important difference in taste.

Switching to potassium-enriched salt is feasible in a way that cutting salt intake is not. Our new research concludes clinical guidelines for hypertension should give patients clear recommendations to switch.

What is potassium-enriched salt?

Potassium-enriched salts replace some of the sodium chloride that makes up regular salt with potassium chloride. They’re also called low-sodium salt, potassium salt, heart salt, mineral salt, or sodium-reduced salt.

Potassium chloride looks the same as sodium chloride and tastes very similar.

Potassium-enriched salt works to lower blood pressure not only because it reduces sodium intake but also because it increases potassium intake. Insufficient potassium, which mostly comes from fruit and vegetables, is another big cause of high blood pressure.

What is the evidence?

We have strong evidence from a randomized trial of 20,995 people that switching to potassium-enriched salt lowers blood pressure and reduces the risks of stroke, heart attacks and early death. The participants had a history of stroke or were 60 years of age or older and had high blood pressure.

An overview of 21 other studies suggests much of the world’s population could benefit from potassium-enriched salt.

The World Health Organization’s 2023 global report on hypertension highlighted potassium-enriched salt as an “affordable strategy” to reduce blood pressure and prevent cardiovascular events such as strokes.

What should clinical guidelines say?

We teamed up with researchers from the United States, Australia, Japan, South Africa and India to review 32 clinical guidelines for managing high blood pressure across the world. Our findings are published today in the American Heart Association’s journal, Hypertension.

We found current guidelines don’t give clear and consistent advice on using potassium-enriched salt.

While many guidelines recommend increasing dietary potassium intake, and all refer to reducing sodium intake, only two guidelines – the Chinese and European – recommend using potassium-enriched salt.

To help guidelines reflect the latest evidence, we suggested specific wording which could be adopted in Australia and around the world:

Why do so few people use it?

Most people are unaware of how much salt they eat or the health issues it can cause. Few people know a simple switch to potassium-enriched salt can help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of a stroke and heart disease.

Limited availability is another challenge. Several Australian retailers stock potassium-enriched salt but there is usually only one brand available, and it is often on the bottom shelf or in a special food aisle.

Potassium-enriched salts also cost more than regular salt, though it’s still low cost compared to most other foods, and not as expensive as many fancy salts now available.

A 2021 review found potassium-enriched salts were marketed in only 47 countries and those were mostly high-income countries. Prices ranged from the same as regular salt to almost 15 times greater.

Even though generally more expensive, potassium-enriched salt has the potential to be highly cost effective for disease prevention.

Preventing harm

A frequently raised concern about using potassium-enriched salt is the risk of high blood potassium levels (hyperkalemia) in the approximately 2% of the population with serious kidney disease.

People with serious kidney disease are already advised to avoid regular salt and to avoid foods high in potassium.

No harm from potassium-enriched salt has been recorded in any trial done to date, but all studies were done in a clinical setting with specific guidance for people with kidney disease.

Our current priority is to get people being managed for hypertension to use potassium-enriched salt because health-care providers can advise against its use in people at risk of hyperkalemia.

In some countries, potassium-enriched salt is recommended to the entire community because the potential benefits are so large. A modelling study showed almost half a million strokes and heart attacks would be averted every year in China if the population switched to potassium-enriched salt.

What will happen next?

In 2022, the health minister launched the National Hypertension Taskforce, which aims to improve blood pressure control rates from 32% to 70% by 2030 in Australia.

Potassium-enriched salt can play a key role in achieving this. We are working with the taskforce to update Australian hypertension management guidelines, and to promote the new guidelines to health professionals.

In parallel, we need potassium-enriched salt to be more accessible. We are engaging stakeholders to increase the availability of these products nationwide.

The world has already changed its salt supply once: from regular salt to iodized salt. Iodization efforts began in the 1920s and took the best part of 100 years to achieve traction. Salt iodization is a key public health achievement of the last century preventing goitre (a condition where your thyroid gland grows larger) and enhancing educational outcomes for millions of the poorest children in the world, as iodine is essential for normal growth and brain development.

The next switch to iodized and potassium-enriched salt offers at least the same potential for global health gains. But we need to make it happen in a fraction of the time.

Xiaoyue Xu (Luna), Scientia Lecturer, UNSW Sydney; Alta Schutte, SHARP Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, UNSW Sydney, and Bruce Neal, Executive Director, George Institute Australia, George Institute for Global Health

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Like the crooked finger of a fairy-tale witch, a fragmented ivory artifact recovered from an Ice Age dig site in southwest Germany several years ago almost wills to be pointed with sorcerous intent.

Similar items have been discovered across the continent over the past century, all inviting speculation over the objects’ purposes. Whittled into points, perforated with holes, thoughts have turned to wands and scepters. Or perhaps of flutes, or symbols of occult power. Instruments of ritual and magic.

Nicholas Conard, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen in Germany, and fellow archeologist Veerle Rots from the University of Liège in Belgium, are far more down-to-Earth in their thinking, suggesting on the baton’s discovery that they were used to weave something other than spells.

Now the two researchers have presented a proof-of-concept demonstration supporting their hypothesis.

In 2015, Conard, Rots, and a team of fellow researchers uncovered 13 pieces of worked mammoth ivory from Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley – a 40,000-year-old site of occupation already famed for the discovery of what is regarded as the oldest representation of a human figure.

The ivory pieces fit together perfectly to form an object 20.4 centimeters (about 8 inches) in length, with four holes just wide enough to slip a pencil through. The worked ivory baton has no apparent purpose, at least not at first glance.

Yet thanks to its exquisite state of preserved grooves, coupled with plant fibers sifted from the surrounding soil, Conard and Rots were confident it was a tool for making one of the Stone Age’s most precious resources – rope.

“This tool answers the question of how rope was made in the Paleolithic, a question that has puzzled scientists for decades,” Rots said in 2016.

While items of stone, antler, and ivory can persist across the millennia, less durable materials like plant fiber are lost to time.

Yet rope, string, and thread would have been vital products in the Paleolithic, used to bind and secure everything from packaging to weapons to food to clothing. It’s unthinkable that some kind of technology for making such material with ease wouldn’t have existed.

To further demonstrate the artifact, along with a second less well-preserved ‘perforated baton’ (or Lochstab in German) found downstream from the site at Geißenklösterle Cave, were intended to make cordage, Conard and Rots reproduced a Lochstab of their own and put it to the test.

It was clear from the start the baton wouldn’t be practical or necessary for making thinner ropes and threads. Yet using the holes as a guide, thicker cords consisting of two to four strands could be twisted quickly and efficiently.

The researchers tested various materials, including sinew from deer, hemp, flax, and nettles, finding cattail, linden, and willow fibers produced the best results.

With four to five participants holding the Lochstab replica and feeding the strands, the researchers were able to weave 5 meters of quality cattail rope that was both robust and flexible in just 10 minutes.

As with any replication, the experiment cannot prove beyond doubt that the artifacts served the same purpose, or were used in necessarily the same way. Just because an ancient artifact can be imaginatively used in a fashion doesn’t mean it was, after all.

Similar objects may also have subtly different uses, perhaps for holding shafts while projectile points are secured, or straightening lengths of wood.

Coupled with microscopic analysis of the Hohle Fels Lochstab’s grooves and plant fibers at the site, the puzzle of how high-quality ropes were produced thousands of years ago just might have its solution.

This research was published in Science Advances.

The immune system is meant to protect us from alien invaders like bacteria and parasites, and zombie-like takeovers by viruses and cancerous mutations.

As grateful as we are for this protective system, for some it can get a little overzealous, becoming so hypervigilant it attacks its own body’s tissues. With conditions like type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis in its ranks, autoimmune disease is third most prevalent disease category, outstripped only by cancer and heart disease.

Such immune system disorders also disproportionately affect women. In the US, four in every five autoimmune patients are women.

New research has found this can be traced to an interaction between the two X chromosomes in people who’ve got a pair, predominantly cisgender women.

When there’s two X chromosomes available, a cell can only use the information from one, or things get a bit messy.

To avoid double-ups on X-linked gene expression, one X chromosome is randomly ‘silenced’. Long strands of RNA called Xist and their helper proteins wrap around the muted chromosome, preventing it from attempting any backseat driving. Because cells with XY chromosomes don’t have that extra genetic material, they don’t produce Xist at all.

The new study, led by Stanford researchers, reveals that several of the proteins Xist recruits to help with chromosome silencing are autoantigenic. In autoimmune diseases, autoantigens are what trip the immune system’s alarm, triggering it to attack the body it’s meant to defend.

The researchers showed this molecular complex is a major driver of autoimmunity, which may explain why women are more prone to developing these kinds of diseases.

“As a practicing physician, I see a lot of lupus and scleroderma patients, because those autoimmune disorders manifest in skin,” says Stanford geneticist and dermatology expert Howard Chang. “The great majority of these patients are women.”

Although this research was prompted by the concerning statistics for women, the findings may be relevant to anyone with two X chromosomes, including trans people and those with certain intersex conditions like Klinefelter syndrome, whose chromosomes are XXY.

The researchers tested what happens when the Xist gene is inserted into two different strains of male mice – one strain that is susceptible to autoimmune symptoms similar to lupus, and the other strain resistant to it.

This allowed them to examine how the immune system responds to Xist when there’s only one X chromosome, while eliminating other factors that might be responsible for the high rates of autoimmunity among cis women, like female hormones or accidental protein production from a second X chromosome that was meant to be silenced.

Usually, males from the susceptible strain of mice develop lupus-like autoimmunity at a much lower rate than their female counterparts. But when the inserted Xist gene was activated they began to develop the condition at a similar rate to susceptible females, and at a far higher rate than males who hadn’t been engineered to produce the protein complex.

Among the autoimmune resistant male mice, activating Xist wasn’t enough for them to develop an autoimmune disease. In this strain, even females are far less prone.

This suggests that while double X chromosomes place people at higher risk of developing autoimmunity, this is probably only the case if they have another existing genetic predisposition.

While many people may be predisposed to an autoimmune disease, this experiment shows Xist proteins seem to increase the risk of the condition being ‘turned on’.

Chang notes these constraints on autoimmunity are fortunate, because otherwise all people with two X chromosomes might be more susceptible than those with just one.

“For several decades, we’ve used a male cell line as the standard of reference,” Chang says.

“That male cell line produced no Xist and no Xist/protein/DNA complexes, nor have other cells used since for the test. So, all of a female patient’s anti-Xist-complex antibodies – a huge source of women’s autoimmune susceptibility – go unseen.”

This research has been published in Cell.

Gas giant exoplanet WASP-69b has captured the attention of astronomers, this time because of the trail of gas it’s leaving behind – a tail that’s some seven times longer than the planet’s radius.

This tail is being created as the atmosphere of WASP-69b gets stripped away, making it a fascinating celestial object to study. Around the size of Jupiter, the planet is 160 light-years away from Earth, and sits unusually close to its star.

That close proximity is the main reason for the elongated tail, according to the team behind the discovery, led by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): the stellar wind radiation is blasting away the atmosphere of WASP-69b, and shaping the trail of gas behind it.

“Work by previous groups showed that this planet was losing some of its atmosphere and suggested a subtle tail or perhaps none at all,” says astrophysicist Dakotah Tyler from UCLA.

“However, we have now definitively detected this tail and shown it to be at least seven times longer than the planet itself.”

The new insight was made possible through observations from a 10-meter telescope at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and readings from its high-resolution spectrograph – capable of precisely mapping changes in light wavelength and frequency.

Through these fresh readings, the team was able to determine that WASP-69b was losing large amounts of hydrogen and helium, and could also study their interactions with the stellar wind in a high level of detail.

Data gathered about WASP-69b will give astronomers invaluable information about how planets and stars interact – and we’ve caught this phenomenon at a crucial, early stage.

“For most known exoplanets, we suspect that the period of atmospheric loss concluded long ago,” says astrophysicist Erik Petigura from UCLA.

“The WASP-69b system is a gem because we have a rare opportunity to study atmospheric mass-loss in real time and understand the critical physics that shape thousands of other planets.”

We’ve known about WASP-69b for over a decade, but as this latest study shows, there’s still lots to discover. It’s known as a hot Jupiter planet, one precariously close to its star, and it completes an orbit in less than four Earth days.

There’s no risk of the exoplanet running out of steam just yet though, even with its massive tail. It’s such a giant planet that its star will be gone long before all of its atmosphere disappears into space.

“At around 90 times the mass of Earth, WASP-69b has such a large reservoir of material that even losing this enormous amount of mass won’t affect it much over the course of its life,” says Tyler.

“It’s in no danger of losing its entire atmosphere within the star’s lifetime.”

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

On December 5th, 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission successfully returned samples it had collected from the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) 162173 Ryugu home.

Since asteroids are basically leftover material from the formation of the Solar System, analysis of these samples will provide insight into what conditions were like back then.

In particular, scientists are interested in determining how organic molecules were delivered throughout the Solar System shortly after its formation (ca. 4.6 billion years ago), possibly offering clues as to how (and where) life emerged.

The samples have already provided a wealth of information, including more than 20 amino acids, vitamin B3 (niacine), and interstellar dust.

According to a recent study by a team of Earth scientists from Tohoku University, the Ryugu samples also showed evidence of micrometeoroid impacts that left patches of melted glass and minerals.

According to their findings, these micrometeoroids likely came from other comets and contained carbonaceous materials similar to primitive organic matter typically found in ancient cometary dust.

The team was led by Megumi Matsumoto, an assistant professor from the Earth Science Department at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Science. He was joined by researchers from the Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Kyoto University, the CAS Center for Excellence in Deep Earth Science, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

The details of their findings were presented in a paper that recently appeared in the journal Science Advances.

Like the Moon and other airless bodies, Ryugu has no protective atmosphere and does not experience weathering or erosion.

This ensures that craters caused by past impacts on its surface (which is directly exposed to space) are carefully preserved despite the passage of eons.

These impacts generate intense heat that leaves behind melted patches of glass (aka. “melt splashes”), which quickly solidify in the vacuum of space. These impacts cause changes to the composition of the asteroid’s surface materials, revealing information about the history of impacts.

After analyzing the Ryugu samples, Matsumoto and her colleagues found melt splashes ranging in size from 5 to 20 micrometers.

Their composition suggests they came from cometary sources that impacted Ryugu while it was in a near-Earth orbit.

“Our 3D CT imaging and chemical analyses showed that the melt splashes consist mainly of silicate glasses with voids and small inclusions of spherical iron sulfides,” said Matsumoto in a recent Tohoku University news release.

“The chemical compositions of the melt splashes suggest that Ryugu’s hydrous silicates mixed with cometary dust.”

Their analysis revealed small carbonaceous materials with a spongy texture indicative of nano-pores, small voids caused by the release of water vapor from hydrous silicates.

This vapor was subsequently captured in the melt splashes, which also contained silicate glasses rich in magnesium and iron (Mg-Fe) and iron-nickel sulfides.

The carbonaceous materials are similar in texture to primitive organic matter observed in cometary dust but differ in composition – lacking nitrogen and oxygen.

Said Matsumoto:

“We propose that the carbonaceous materials formed from cometary organic matter via the evaporation of volatiles, such as nitrogen and oxygen, during the impact-induced heating. This suggests that cometary matter was transported to the near-Earth region from the outer solar system. This organic matter might be the small seeds of life once delivered from space to Earth.”

Looking ahead, the team hopes to examine more Ryugu samples that will provide further insights into how primitive organic materials were delivered to Earth billions of years ago.

Similarly, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center recently completed the careful process of removing the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from their sample container.

Analysis of these samples will reveal the composition and history of asteroid Bennu, another NEA that will provide vital information on how our Solar System evolved.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

The rare condition posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) involves strange, troubling issues with vision and spatial awareness – including difficulty judging distances, seeing movement, and recognizing objects – and a new study highlights its close relationship to Alzheimer’s disease in more detail than ever before.

PCA and Alzheimer’s have long been linked with each other, because they share a lot of the same pathological changes in the brain. However, the rarity of PCA has made it hard for researchers to fully assess it in relation to Alzheimer’s.

To address that, an international team of researchers analyzed data on 1,092 individuals with PCA, finding that it was a very strong predictor for Alzheimer’s: in 94 percent of cases, tell-tale Alzheimer’s brain changes were observed, and were most likely contributing to PCA.

“We need more awareness of PCA so that it can be flagged by clinicians,” says neuropsychologist Marianne Chapleau from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

“Most patients see their optometrist when they start experiencing visual symptoms and may be referred to an ophthalmologist who may also fail to recognize PCA. We need better tools in clinical settings to identify these patients early on and get them treatment.”

One positive effect this study could have is getting people with PCA symptoms checked out as early as possible. The average onset age for the disorder is 59 – several years younger than it is for Alzheimer’s – and the average time between symptom onset and the first diagnostic visit is 3.8 years.

The study noted plenty of similarities between PCA and Alzheimer’s in terms of the levels of amyloid and tau in the brain, with build-ups of these proteins long associated with the onset of dementia.

However, there were also some differences, which could give researchers clues as to the best courses of treatment.

“Patients with PCA have more tau pathology in the posterior parts of the brain, involved in the processing of visuospatial information, compared to those with other presentations of Alzheimer’s,” says neuropsychologist Renaud La Joie from UCSF. “This might make them better suited to anti-tau therapies.”

The researchers behind the new study are hopeful that their work can lead to a greater understanding of how Alzheimer’s can manifest itself, and how both Alzheimer’s and PCA start to get a grip on the brain.

With this research covering people in 16 different countries, it’s the most comprehensive review of PCA yet – and because of its close links to Alzheimer’s, it gives us a different perspective on dementia than we otherwise get.

“From a scientific point of view, we really need to understand why Alzheimer’s is specifically targeting visual rather than memory areas of the brain,” says neurologist Gil Rabinovici from UCSF.

“Our study found that 60 percent of patients with PCA were women – better understanding of why they appear to be more susceptible is one important area of future research.”

The research has been published in Lancet Neurology.

The study of ancient gravesites is a fascinating (if morbid) way of peering into the past, though some searches can raise more questions than answers. Take for instance these Early Neolithic skeletons found in a Swedish tomb, which are all missing their skulls.

The stone burial chamber (or “dolmen”) involved was found in Tiarp, near Falköping, and excavated by researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Kiel University in Germany. They’ve managed to catalog body parts from the remains of at least 12 people, but not everything is there.

For the time being at least, the experts are at a loss to explain where all the heads have gone or why they were taken – if indeed they were entombed in the first place. It could be theft, a ritual, a series of beheadings, or something else, though there are no signs on the remains to indicate they experienced violence while alive.

“It’s an early grave which dates to the Early Neolithic period, about 3500 BCE,” says archaeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren, from the University of Gothenburg.

“Skulls and large bones are missing and may have been removed from the grave. We don’t know whether that has to do with burial rituals or what’s behind it.”

Of course there will have been plenty of decay over the last few millennia, but that doesn’t necessarily explain why so many of the smaller bones at the site are still intact, while skulls and some other larger bones are missing.

It’s not something that archaeologists often come across, though the creepy occurrence has been reported before: an even older site in Slovakia was found to be missing its skulls, with decapitation, disease, and death cults all floated as possible explanations.

“This differs from what we usually see in megalith graves, i.e. stone burial chambers from the Neolithic period,” says Sjögren. “Usually, the bones that are missing are smaller bones from feet and hands.”

Besides the remains of humans, the team has also been able to identify bones from rodents, frogs, pigs, and sheep or goats – though not all of these bones may date from the same time period.

While Falköping is an area well known for its passage graves – particular styles of tombs, with passages included – this one is more unusual. It’s 150-200 years older than most of the others, and has some distinctive construction features.

The team is now working hard to learn more about the excavated skeleton parts, which most likely belonged to a community of farmers. Being able to assess whether or not the adults and youngsters in the grave were related, for example, should make it easier to understand what exactly happened here.

“The preliminary DNA results show that the DNA in the bones is well preserved,” says Sjögren. “This means we will be able to reconstruct the family relationships between the people in the grave and we are working on that now.”

The research has been published in the Journal of Neolithic Archaeology.

A clutch of tiny black eggs, discovered by a remotely operated vehicle in the abyss of the Pacific Ocean, is the first concrete evidence that deep-sea flatworms exist more than 6,000 meters (3.7 miles) deep.

At first, when the undersea vehicle shone its light on the mysterious black spheres, researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan didn’t even know what they were looking at.

Marine researcher Yasunori Kano, who was operating the ROV that day, was intrigued, and he decided to retrieve the capsules from their resting place around 6,200 meters (20,341 feet or 3.85 miles) deep in a trench of the northwest Pacific.

Once out of the water, Kano noticed that most of the black spheres were attached to rock, and were torn and empty. He sent four intact ones to Hokkaido University invertebrate biologists, Keiichi Kakui and Aoi Tsuyuki.

Upon examination, the duo found each leathery casing, or ‘cocoon’, was roughly 3 millimeters wide and contained three to seven developing flatworms.

“When we opened the egg capsules, a milky liquid … that might have been yolk was observed along with the flatworms,” write Kakui and Tsuyuki in their paper.

Sampling the DNA of the worm embryos, the duo found they belonged to an undescribed and unnamed species of platyhelminth, most closely related to two suborders that exist in shallower waters.

Kakui told Rachel Funnell of IFLScience that when he received the eggs from Kano, he didn’t realize how rare they were.

The embryos looked “indistinguishable” from shallow-water flatworms.

All flatworms are hermaphrodites, meaning they can produce both male and female gametes. Shallow water species reproduce sexually by laying eggs in leathery cocoons, which are usually attached to a substrate.

Today, scientists know next to nothing about deep-sea, free-living flatworms, let alone how they reproduce. Prior to this discovery, the deepest evidence of a ‘potential platyhelminth’ was found on a piece of sunken wood just over 5,200 meters deep.

Not only was this creature not confirmed as a flatworm, it was unclear if the wood sank with a shallow-water species, or if a deep-sea flatworm found the wood after it sank.

The deepest ocean flatworm that was confirmed prior to this discovery was found at a depth of 3,232 meters.

“This study provides the deepest record for free-living flatworms and the first information on their early life stages in the abyssal zone, which were very similar to those in shallow-water forms,” conclude Kakui and Tsuyuki.

The eggs appear to have been laid by at least two adults of the same species. Given that the embryos were at different stages of development when retrieved from the deep seabed, the cocoons were probably laid over time, not all at once.

This indicates that shallow-water flatworms may have colonized deeper and deeper habitats over time.

Why they did so and how they did so remains a mystery.

The study was published in Biology Letters.

Small dogs with long noses, such as whippets and miniature dachshunds, live for years longer than large flat-faced breeds such as English bulldogs, new research said on Thursday.

The study, which is based on data from more than half a million dogs across the UK, aims to help people planning to get a dog ensure they choose a breed that will have a long and healthy life.

Lead author Kirsten McMillan, data manager at UK charity Dogs Trust, said it was the first study to look at how life expectancy varies across such a broad range of factors, including breed, size, face shape and gender.

“A medium-sized, flat-face male like an English bulldog is nearly three times more likely to live a shorter life than a small-sized, long-faced female, like a miniature dachshund or an Italian greyhound,” she told AFP.

Out of more than 150 breeds and crossbreeds across the UK, the median life expectancy for all dogs was 12.5 years.

But for French bulldogs – ranked the most popular breed in the United States last year by the American Kennel Club – the number was just 9.8 years.

Previous research has suggested that the short noses of flat-faced – also called brachycephalic – dogs allow them to more closely resemble human babies, rendering them particularly cute to their owners.

But those short noses also cause significant breathing problems.

Dan O’Neill, chair of the campaign organisation Brachycephalic Working Group, said the study further highlighted the “health and welfare crisis” suffered by these hugely popular breeds.

“It is crucial that the public prioritises health over what they might think looks ‘cute’ and we urge anyone considering getting a flat-faced breed to stop and think,” he said.

– Designer breeds? –

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the dogs with the longest life expectancy are Lancashire heelers with a median of 15.4 years, followed by Tibetan spaniels (15.2 years) and miniature dachshunds (14 years).

Labradors, the most popular breed in the UK, scored 13.1 years.

Female dogs tended to live a little longer than males, with a life expectancy of 12.7 years compared to 12.4.

The study also found that pure breeds lived a little longer than crossbreeds –- the opposite finding of previous research.

This was probably due to the dawning of the “era of the designer breed”, with deliberate crossbreeds such as labradoodles, cockapoos and pomskies becoming increasingly fashionable, McMillan said.

“We’re no longer just talking about mutts or unknown mixes versus purebred dogs,” she said.

For those considering buying or adopting a dog, it is important to be aware that some breeds will need more trips to the vet, McMillan emphasised.

But vet bills aside, a bigger consideration is the love and affection potential owners will invest in their hairy companions.

“These animals are members of our family,” McMillan said.

“We want to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to provide them with a long, happy and healthy life.”

© Agence France-Presse

The number of new cancer cases will rise to more than 35 million in 2050 – 77 percent higher than the figure in 2022, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency warned Thursday.

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited tobacco, alcohol, obesity and air pollution as key factors in the estimated rise.

“Over 35 million new cancer cases are predicted in 2050”, a statement said, a 77-percent increase from the some 20 million cases diagnosed in 2022.

“The rapidly-growing global cancer burden reflects both population ageing and growth, as well as changes to people’s exposure to risk factors, several of which are associated with socioeconomic development.

“Tobacco, alcohol and obesity are key factors behind the increasing incidence of cancer, with air pollution still a key driver of environmental risk factors.”

The most-developed countries are expected to record the greatest increases in case numbers, with an additional 4.8 million new cases predicted in 2050 compared with 2022 estimates, the WHO said.

But in terms of percentages, countries on the low end of the Human Development Index (HDI) used by the UN will see the greatest proportional increase – up 142 percent.

And countries in the medium range are due to record a 99-percent increase, it said.

“Likewise, cancer mortality in these countries is projected to almost double in 2050,” the WHO said.

Freddie Bray, head of the cancer surveillance branch at IARC, said: “The impact of this increase will not be felt evenly across countries of different HDI levels.

“Those who have the fewest resources to manage their cancer burdens will bear the brunt of the global cancer burden.”

© Agence France-Presse