New drug-like molecule extends lifespan, ameliorates pathology in worms and boosts function in mammalian muscle cells

 Having healthy mitochondria, the organelles that produce energy in all our cells, usually portends a long healthy life whether in humans or in C. elegans, a tiny, short-lived nematode worm often used to study the aging process. Researchers at the Buck Institute have identified a new drug-like molecule that keeps mitochondria healthy via mitophagy, a process that removes and recycles damaged mitochondria in multicellular organisms. The compound, dubbed MIC, is a natural compound that extended lifespan in C. elegans, ameliorated pathology in neurodegenerative disease models of C. elegans, and improved mitochondrial function in mouse muscle cells. Results are published in the November 13, 2023, edition of Nature Aging.

The impact of mitochondrial dysfunction in age-related disease

Defective mitophagy is implicated in many age-related diseases. It's tied to neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's; it plays a role in cardiovascular diseases including heart failure; it influences metabolic disorders including obesity and type 2 diabetes; it is implicated in muscle wasting and sarcopenia and has a complex relationship with cancer progression. Even though interventions that restore mitophagy and facilitate the elimination of damaged mitochondria hold great promise for addressing these conditions, not one treatment has been approved for human use despite advances in the field.

What's MIC?

MIC (Mitophagy-Inducing Compound) is a coumarin, which are naturally bioactive compounds that have anticoagulant, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, anticancer, and antihyperglycemic properties (among others) as well as being an antioxidant with neuroprotective effects. Coumarin is found in many plants and is found in high concentrations in certain types of cinnamon, which is one of the most frequent sources for human exposure to the substance.

A new mechanism of action in mitophagy

The project started in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease where researchers in the laboratory of Julie Andersen, PhD, a senior author of the paper, were looking at known enhancers of mitophagy, including rapamycin. "Co-author Shankar Chinta, PhD, started screening natural compounds in neuronal cells and MIC came up as a major hit," she said. "Rather than taking MIC immediately into a mouse model we wanted to understand its impact on overall aging and identify its mechanism of action, so we took the work into the worm where we found that MIC is in a different class of molecules that enhance the expression of a key protein, TFEB."

In an effort spearheaded by Andersen and research scientist Manish Chamoli, PhD, lead author of the study, researchers found that MIC enhanced the activity of transcription factor TFEB, which is a master regulator of genes involved in autophagy and lysosomal functions. Autophagy is the intracellular recycling process whereby cells clean up damaged proteins; it derives its abilities from the lysosome. Researchers found that MIC robustly increased the lifespan of C. elegans while also preventing mitochondrial dysfunction in mammalian cells.

"This paper helps support the overall notion of TFEB being a key autophagy regulator that extends lifespan, "said Buck professor and Chief Scientific Officer Malene Hansen, PhD, who collaborated on the paper. She added, "Mitophagy is a selective and very significant form of autophagy. The field has recognized TFEB as a player when it comes to quality control in mitochondria. This study provides a possible translational route to induce mitophagy in a TFEB-dependent fashion."

A link to the brain/gut connection

Mechanistically MIC works upstream of TFEB by inhibiting ligand-induced activation of the nuclear hormone receptor DAF-12 (in worms)/FXR (in humans), which in turn induces mitophagy and extends lifespan. FXR is best known for its ability to act in the liver and gut to maintain lipid homeostasis, where it acts to regulate levels of TFEB as part of a feed-fast cycle, but recently TFEB was shown to also be present in brain neurons. This provided Andersen with the clue needed to piece together MIC's potential mechanism of action in the latter. "This study provides another piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding the brain/gut connection in terms of health and disease," said Andersen

FXR is regulated by bile salts which are formed in the gut microbiome. "The gut microbiome impacts the body's use of bile acids. Aging impacts our microbiome," said Chamoli. "If levels of bile acids aren't correct it hinders mitophagy. That's how FXR can impact neuronal health. Neurons have a lot of mitochondria which makes mitophagy important in terms of neurodegeneration," he said, noting that experiments are underway to explore neuronal FXR as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease as part of a jointly funded grant shared by the Andersen and Lithgow labs.

MIC as a general geroprotective therapeutic

"There's a bottleneck in efforts to develop potential therapeutics in the field of geroscience, and the bottleneck is that we don't have enough molecules in the pipeline," said Gordon Lithgow, PhD, Buck Professor and Vice President of Academic Affairs and senior co-author. "MIC is a great candidate to bring forward given its therapeutic effect across multiple models and the fact that it is a naturally occurring molecule."

Chamoli highlighted the direct links between mitophagy and aging, suggesting that drugs enhancing this process could offer treatment well beyond neurodegeneration or muscle wasting. He added, "All these possibilities can be explored at the Buck where the research environment supports such endeavors."

Antiviral treatment is largely underused in children with influenza, study findings show

 Despite national medical guidelines supporting the use of antiviral medications in young children diagnosed with influenza, a new study reports an underuse of the treatment.

"Trends in Outpatient Influenza Antiviral Use Among Children and Adolescents in the United States" was published in Pediatrics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Antiviral treatment, when used early, improves health outcomes with influenza," said lead author and principal investigator James Antoon, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of Pediatrics and Hospital Medicine at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.

Antoon and colleagues collaborated with researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago on a large study examining outpatient and emergency department prescription claims for patients younger than 18 from all 50 states over a nine-year period.

Oseltamivir, also known at Tamiflu, is the only oral antiviral medication approved for use in children younger than 5 years old.

"We found that young children, less than 5 years old and especially those 2 years old and younger, are undertreated for influenza," said Antoon. "We noted that about 40% of children were treated with an antiviral, when guidelines recommend all of them be treated. It's important to note that we found low rates of antiviral use in all age groups."

The study also found wide geographic variation in the use of influenza antivirals -- there was a threefold to twentyfold difference in the rate of antiviral use based on geographic region that was not explained by differences in the incidence of flu, said Antoon.

"These findings highlight opportunities for improvement in the prevention and treatment of influenza, especially in the most vulnerable children," he added.

Potential reasons for underprescribing in children include a wide range of perceptions about efficacy, differences in interpretation of testing, a misunderstanding of the national guidelines and concern for adverse drug events associated with oseltamivir in children.

A previous 2023 study, led by Antoon, explored how often children diagnosed with influenza experience serious neuropsychiatric side effects.

In that study, Antoon and his team were able to quantify the number of pediatric neuropsychiatric events, describe which children are more likely to experience the events and showed that these relatively infrequent events occur in both those children treated and not treated with an antiviral.

"Treatment of children in the outpatient setting has been reported to decrease symptom duration, household transmission, antibiotic use and influenza- associated complications like ear infections," said Antoon.

The low rate of antiviral use in young children captured in the study along with recent evidence of low guideline-concordant antiviral treatment in children at high risk for influenza complications highlight the need for improved flu management in the most vulnerable children in the U.S., according to the study.

The study was funded by grants K23AI168496 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, an American Pediatrics Association Young Investigator Award and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Turner Hazinski Research Award. Carlos Grijalva, MD, MPH, professor of Health Policy and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (K24AI148459) and Derek Williams, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Monroe Carell (RO1AI125642) both supported by the NIAID.

Are consumers ready for robots to show up at their doorstep?

 With Amazon aiming to make 10,000 deliveries with drones in Europe this year and Walmart planning to expand its drone delivery services to an additional 60,000 homes this year in the states, companies are investing more research and development funding into drone delivery, But are consumers ready to accept this change as the new normal?

Northwestern University's Mobility and Behavior Lab, led by Amanda Stathopoulos, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, wanted to know if consumers were ready for robots to replace delivery drivers, in the form of automated vehicles, drones and robots. The team found that societally, there's work to do to shift public perceptions of the near-future technology.

"We need to think really carefully about the effect of these new technologies on people and communities, and to tune in to what they think about these changes," Stathopoulos, the study's senior author, said.

The study, titled "Robots at your doorstep: Acceptance of near-future technologies for automated parcel delivery," published last week in the journal Scientific Reports. Researchers noted a "complex and multifaceted" relationship between behavior and acceptance of near-future technologies for automated parcel delivery.

While people were generally more willing to accept an automated vehicle as a substitute for a delivery person -- perhaps because there already is familiarity with self-driving cars -- people disliked drones and robots as options. However, as delivery speed increased and price decreased, likelihood to accept the technology increased.

They also found that tech-savvy consumers were more accepting of the near-future technologies than populations less familiar with the technology.

Stathopoulos is the William Patterson Junior professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, where she studies the human aspects of new systems of mobility. She also is a faculty affiliate of Northwestern's Transportation Center. She said especially after the pandemic, people have come to expect efficient delivery from e-commerce purchases as they increasingly work from home.

Maher Said, a graduate of Stathopoulos's lab, is the study's lead author.

"There's a paradox: We're having a hard time reconciling the convenience and the benefit of getting speedy, efficient delivery with its consequences, like poor labor conditions in warehouses, air pollution and congested streets," Stathopoulos said. "We don't really see that other role that we play as citizens or as users of the city. And one role is directly affecting the other role, and we are both. With automated delivery, we could reduce some of these issues."

The team designed a survey to assess preferences of 692 U.S. respondents, asking questions about different delivery options and variables like delivery speed, package handling and general perceptions.

Stathopoulos said that while new modes of delivery present an exciting opportunity, societally, "we're not there just yet." As companies ramp up drone deliveries due in part to labor shortages and in part because existing systems cannot satisfy the sheer volume of e-commerce deliveries, the researchers caution that these innovations may fail because of a lack of public acceptance.

"On the planning side, we need to make sure that we embrace the fact that the massive amount of deliveries is going to shape our cities," Stathopoulos said. "Collaboration, coordination, and information sharing between companies has been a running challenge -- but it's not going to work if everyone has their own technology. It just destroys the purpose and builds redundant and overlapping systems."

However, by listening to and conducting more frequent assessments of user acceptance of technologies, Stathopoulos argues that policy makers and companies can prepare for the future and work to overcome anxiety and reluctance to accept new technologies.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation Career program.

Shark fear: Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water...

 It's one of the most famous taglines in film history, immortalising sharks as ruthless predators. But beyond the horror generated by Spielberg's Jaws series, a persistent fear of sharks remains, with consequences that extend into reality.

Following human-shark interactions in South Australia, this fear has prompted the Education Department's ban on school-based sea activities for at least the remainder of the term. And while safety is at the core of such decisions, we should be cautious of scaremongering, says UniSA shark expert Dr Brianna Le Busque.

"When we hear about shark "attacks," it definitely puts people on edge, especially when interactions and sightings are sensationalised by the media," Dr Le Busque says.

"As most people do not have personal interactions with sharks, most of what we know about sharks comes from what we see on TV or in movies. Movies such as Jaws, The Meg or The Shallows depict sharks as purposely hunting and attacking humans, which not only creates excessive fear but strengthens any negative views people may already hold.

"This is called the 'The Jaws Effect' -- a known phenomenon where people are excessively and irrationally scared of sharks -- today, nearly 50 years after the first Jaws movie, it still influences people's perceptions of sharks, impacts conservation efforts, and affects policy decisions.

"That's what we've seen with the current bans on sea-based water activities. And the problem is that it could have negative impacts on children's ideas of water and beach safety."

In a new UniSA world first study, Dr Le Busque shows how over-represented sharks are in the realm of 'creature features' -- a subgenre of science fiction, horror, or action films where the creatures are the villain in the plot.

"Sharks are commonplace in 'creature feature' films -- they overrepresented, being the most common animal in this film category. Further, of all films that depict sharks (in various genres) 96% overtly portrayed shark-human interactions as threatening."

In the past 50 years, oceanic sharks have declined by more than 70%, with one in three species now threatened by extinction.

Dr Le Busque says while she believes the bans on school activities are currently unwarranted, she welcomes the early deployment of aerial shark patrols.

"Earlier shark monitoring is a good move to protect beachgoers, but we need a balance between people's safety and access to the ocean," Dr Le Busque says.

"No one wants a shark attack to occur, but these bans are just creating the same fear as generated on the ill-fated Amity Island in Jaws. It's just not the right way to go."

CEO Surf Life Saving SA, Damien Marangon, says the ban on beach-based aquatic programs, without consultation or understanding facts and broader impact, was disappointing.

"Whilst the shark attack is incredibly unfortunate, it's also important to remember that tragically, far more people sadly drown every year in South Australian waters, than there are shark attacks," Marangon says.

"Over the past 20 years, we've averaged just over one instance per year. Despite the incidents over the last month or so, our data shows that we have not seen an increase in shark numbers.

"We were concerned about the impact this would have on the 3,899 students, from 47 schools who were enrolled in that program for the remainder of this term, who would not have had the opportunity to learn vital water safety skills, jeopardising their future safety in and around the water.

"Decisions like this, made in isolation, also unfortunately promote a fear of the ocean, which could have wide ranging and long-lasting impacts on our communities, local traders, family businesses, and the travel industry, by unnecessarily exacerbating a fear of our ocean, and will impact visitors to our beaches and our State.

"We're actively working with the Water Safety Unit within the Department for Education on strategies to continue to ensure that all participants can complete these aquatic education programs at the beach safely, and continue to make informed decisions based on data, research and stakeholder engagement."

Scientists explain how the brain encodes lottery values

 Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. This is the first time the causal role of frontal and parietal cortex has been tested in economic decision-making. The findings provide a foundation for understanding the neurobiology of risky decisions.

"We live in a world where financial decisions have a huge impact, and our economic choices are typically associated with uncertainty. For example, right now the cost of living is rising and savers may be choosing whether or not to invest in the stock market to try to avoid their savings being diminished by high inflation. We wanted to develop a rodent model of economic decision-making that is similar to the kinds of problems humans encounter, so that we can understand how the brain makes choices when faced with uncertainty," said Jeffrey Erlich, Group Leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and corresponding author on the paper.

The researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL and NYU Shanghai presented rats with the choice of a 'surebet' (a small but guaranteed reward), or a lottery with a fixed probability. In each trial, a sound was played to the rats to indicate the magnitude of the potential lottery reward.

"We presented six sounds which each mapped to a different lottery offer. The worst offer was zero, so in that case the rats should never choose to play the lottery. This gave us a baseline, as there's no reward maximising strategy that would ever choose zero. We were therefore able to quantify the offer-independent biases, which helped us get a better estimate of the true risk tolerance of the rats," explained Erlich.

To test the causal role of the frontal and parietal cortex in the rats' decisions of whether to play the lottery, the researchers temporarily silenced two specific brain areas: the frontal orienting field (FOF) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The team used pharmacological and optogenetic silencing to confirm the results.

The researchers found that the animals were less willing to take risks when FOF was silenced (with either pharmacological or optogenetic silencing), whereas there was a smaller, short-lived, effect when PPC was silenced. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model, the team found that FOF was affecting risk tolerance rather than a choice bias, as the rats were still willing to play the lottery when the potential reward was very high, but they became less likely to play when the lottery had an intermediate potential value. As expected, their behaviour was unchanged when the potential lottery value was low.

To understand this behaviour, the researchers developed a dynamical model of FOF silencing. The model suggests that the FOF is coding the value of the lottery and comparing it with the remembered value of the surebet, which did not change from trial to trial. And so, when FOF is silenced, the value of the lottery (which is dynamic as it is encoded on a trial-by-trial basis) shrinks, but the surebet value remains stable. This results in the rats shifting their choices to the surebet.

The researchers found that this shift to the surebet occurred mostly for the choices near the boundary where the expected value of the lottery was only slightly higher than the value of the surebet. This is because the expected value of the lotteries that had much higher potential values than the surebet were still higher even after the negative shift from the FOF silencing.

"Behaviourally we found that the effect of FOF silencing caused a change in risk preference. The way we think this can be explained is that the FOF is tracking the value of the lottery and comparing it to the value of the surebet. Therefore, silencing the FOF diminishes the animal's estimate of the value of the lottery. Our simulation validated this hypothesis and when we recorded from neurons in FOF we found that they encoded the value of the lottery," explained Erlich.

The next steps for the researchers are to explore the inputs and outputs to FOF to understand the complete neural circuit. The team are also developing a new version of the task that allows multistage decision-making through a second cue in addition to the sound. This will allow them delve into how decisions are transformed into actions.

This research was supported by the 111 project (Base B16018), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai and by the funders of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre: Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Wellcome.

For relationship maintenance, accurate perception of partner's behavior is key

 Married couples and long-term romantic partners typically engage in a variety of behaviors that sustain and nourish the relationship. These actions promote higher levels of commitment, which benefits couples' physical and psychological health. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at how such relationship maintenance behaviors interact with satisfaction and commitment.

"Relationship maintenance is a well-established measure of couple behavior. In our study, we measured it with five main categories, which are positivity, openness, assurances, use of social networks, and sharing tasks," said Yifan Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U. of I.

"Relationship maintenance is usually studied on an individual level. But two partners work together to maintain the relationship. Each person contributes, and each person also perceives the efforts their partner is making. We wanted to look at both individual and interactive (or couple-level) relationship processes," she added.

The researchers analyzed data from 192 heterosexual married couples. Each partner completed an online survey separately. Participants reported their own relationship maintenance behaviors over the past two weeks, as well as their perception of the partner's behaviors. The surveys also included questions measuring relationship satisfaction and commitment.

The results contained some unexpected findings, as there were few direct effects of relationship maintenance behaviors on commitment. However, relationship satisfaction appeared as a moderating factor between relationship maintenance and commitment. In other words, higher levels of satisfaction led to a more positive assessment of the partner's behavior, which strengthened commitment.

"Generally, we found people were relatively accurate about their partner's maintenance behaviors. We also found that it is better to have accurate perception when you are highly satisfied. If you are less satisfied, accurately perceiving your partner's efforts may not be positive. And your partner's accuracy in perceiving your behavior may make you feel worse, because they are aware you may not be doing that much for the relationship," Hu said.

"When a stressful event happens, a couple that is less satisfied with each other may be more likely to react negatively than a couple with higher relationship satisfaction," she added.

Another unexpected finding was that similarity in relationship maintenance behaviors was negatively correlated with wives' level of commitment. Studies have shown that similarity in personality traits, values, and attitudes enhance relationship satisfaction. However, for relationship maintenance strategies, complementary approaches may be more beneficial.

"We found that similarity in behaviors might not be helpful for promoting interactive relationship maintenance. A possible explanation could be that if partners are too similar in their approach, they have a smaller repertoire of coping behaviors," Hu explained.

"When partners are dealing with stressors, they need to work in concert, but using different strategies may be helpful. For example, one partner can use positivity and assurances, while the other can use social networks. They can be mindful of trying to have a larger skill set for relationship maintenance behaviors," she suggested.

Brian Ogolsky, professor in HDFS, is co-author on the paper. "Our study aligns with existing literature showing that relationship maintenance enactment and satisfaction are related to commitment," he said. "At the same time, we found that most relationship maintenance processes at the individual level are associated with commitment only when moderated by satisfaction, which underscores the complexity of couple dynamics."

Less is (often) more when it comes to health impact of children on parents later in life, new study says

 Around the globe, it is generally accepted that individuals with larger families have more resources and support to draw on as they age. Less discussed is that having many children can produce economic, social, emotional and biological burdens that impact health -- even at older ages. However, a first-of-its kind-study by researchers at the University of Rhode Island; the SGH Warsaw School of Economics; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and the University of Padua examines the association between number of children and several key health indicators among older adults across multiple global regions.

"Our main motivation for this study is really population aging globally. There are multiple studies that look at the connection between children and an aspect of health or life expectancy. While various aspects of health have been studied, there are few studies that look at this relationship across various nations and we are aware of none that compare multiple dimensions of health across multiple countries -- so this is unique," said Nekehia Quashie, URI assistant professor of health studies and one of the paper's authors.

The study, recently published in The Journals of Gerontology -- Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, draws on cross-national harmonized data from the global family of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) surveys provided by the Gateway to Global Ageing repository. Researchers analyzed data for adults aged 50 and up across five health dimensions -- specifically self-rated health; activities of daily living/limitations (eating, bathing, dressing independently); instrumental activities of daily living/limitations; depression and chronic conditions -- in 24 middle- and high-income countries spanning North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

"What we found," said Quashie, "is that in the majority of countries we analyzed more children are associated with poorer health outcomes later in life -- especially for chronic conditions and depression."

In fact, they found that in half of the 24 countries analyzed, those with more children had a greater probability of depression, and close to half (11 of 24 countries) showed a similar pattern for chronic conditions. However, a universal global or regional pattern could not be identified.

Interestingly, when it came to self-rated health, there were six nations in which adults aged 50 and up with fewer children were more likely to report poor self-rated health: China, Estonia, France, Israel, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. This suggests that having more children may impact overall self-assessment of an individual's health in these nations. The variation in country contexts may reflect differences in the cultural value on children, having a more limited formal infrastructure by which to support older adults, or other localized conditions.

Quashie also identified other interesting findings -- including that in the United States the link between fertility and older adults' health appears very weak, hence, any potential health benefits/disadvantages of higher or lower number of children are likely moderated by other factors, such as sociocultural differences. While in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Czechia, and Mexico she noted those with higher numbers of children (four or more children) appeared to exhibit clear health risks for at least three health measures. In Israel, all substantial associations were related to disadvantages of lower number of children.

According to Quashie, reliance on children for support -- whether it is financial, instrumental or emotional -- differs depending on country context based on the availability of social welfare supports. For instance, in those countries where there is a higher availability of formal supports, people may be more open to relying on those supports or other social networks such as friends as opposed to children.

"Children can be great and having larger numbers of children can increase your potential supply of support for when you may be in need as you age -- and that might be common across the board," said Quashie. "But children do also present strains across the life course as well."

While having larger families does appear to be more connected with health risk, the findings were far from universal and, thus far, cannot be interpreted as causal, said Quashie. Further research is needed, she adds, to delve deeper into the role of individual and contextual mechanisms that can help to provide a clearer picture of the connection between family size and health later in life and the conditions which shape it.

Can golden retrievers live longer?

 Golden retrievers are one of the most popular breeds of dogs. But research shows they have up to a 65% chance of dying from cancer. In a new study, University of California, Davis, researchers set out to find if certain genetic factors could help their survival rate. But instead of searching for genes associated with a cancer diagnosis in the breed, they instead chose to look for genes associated with longer life.

The gene they found is in a family of proteins long known to be important in human cancers. Specific versions or variants of the gene were associated with an increased lifespan of nearly two years. The study was published in the journal GeroScience.

"We assume that the majority of golden retrievers have a genetic predisposition to cancer, but if some of them are living to be 14, 15 or 16, we thought there could be another genetic factor that is helping to mitigate the bad genes, and the gene that popped out for us is HER4," said co-corresponding author Robert Rebhun, Maxine Adler Endowed Chair in oncology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

HER4, also known as ERBB4, is a member of the family of human epidermal growth factor receptors. It is the same family of genes in humans as HER2, a gene well-known for making cancer cells grow quickly. Rebhun said dogs get many of the same kinds of cancers as humans, which could make this discovery important for humans, as well.

"If we find that this variant in HER4 is important either in the formation or progression of cancer in golden retrievers, or if it can actually modify a cancer risk in this cancer predisposed population, that may be something that can be used in future cancer studies in humans," he said.

Hope for golden retrievers

More than 300 golden retrievers were part of the study. Researchers compared the DNA from blood samples of golden retrievers that were alive at 14 years of age to those that died before age 12. They found that dogs with certain variants of the gene survived longer, on average 13.5 years compared to 11.6 years.

advertisement

---

"Almost two years is a significant difference in a dog's life," said co-corresponding author Danika Bannasch, Maxine Adler Endowed Chair in genetics with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "Wouldn't we all want our beloved pets to live another two years? Two years in goldens is about a 15-20% increase in lifespan, the equivalent of 12-14 years in humans."

Bannasch said the finding is still one small piece to the complex puzzle of what could cause a golden retriever to get cancer.

"There are going to be many genes involved, but the fact that the gene associated with longevity is also a gene involved in cancer was really interesting to us."

The study also found the gene variant seemed to be most important to the longevity of female dogs compared to male dogs. HER4 has been shown to interact with hormones such as estrogen and may also play a role in processing environmental toxins. Rebhun said the next step is to enroll a larger population of golden retrievers in a study to see if they can reproduce these results and discover how this genetic variant may impact expression or function of the gene.

Co-authors include Daniel York, Michael Kent, Madison Luker, Flora MD De Graaf, Kevin Batcher, Stephanie Ryan, Paula Yoon, and Jamie Peyton of UC Davis, and Joshua A. Stern of North Carolina State University.

The study was funded in part by the UC Davis Center for Companion Animal Health, Maxine Adler Endowed Chair Funds, and private donor funds specifically designated for longevity studies in golden retrievers.

Not getting enough sleep? Your vascular cells are drowning in oxidants

 Does this sound like you? You wake up at the same time each morning, get the kids out the door, and rush to catch the subway to work. But at night, maybe you stay up until midnight doing laundry or 1 a.m. to catch up on the bills.

Lots of Americans -- about one-third of us -- are in the same situation and habitually get only five to six hours of sleep instead of the recommended seven to eight hours.

But even a mild chronic sleep deficit may heighten the risk of developing heart disease later in life: Surveys of thousands of people have found that people who report mild but chronic sleep deficits have more heart disease later in life than people who get adequate sleep.

A new Columbia study of women now shows what's happening in the body during chronic mild sleep deprivation.

After just six weeks of shortened sleep, the study found, the cells that line our blood vessels are flooded by damaging oxidants. And unlike well-rested cells, sleep-restricted cells fail to activate antioxidant responses to clear the destructive molecules.

The result: cells that are inflamed and dysfunctional, an early step in the development of cardiovascular disease.

"This is some of the first direct evidence to show that mild chronic sleep deficits cause heart disease," says study leader Sanja Jelic, MD, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Columbia and professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"Until now we've only seen associations between sleep and heart health in epidemiological studies, but these studies could be tainted by many confounders that cannot be identified and adjusted for. Only randomized controlled studies can determine if this connection is real and what changes in the body caused by short sleep could increase heart disease."

Previous studies did not examine chronic sleep deficits

Studies of human sleep have examined the physiological effects of a few nights of profound sleep deprivation.

"But that's not how people behave night after night. Most people get up around the same time each day but tend to push back their bedtime one to two hours," Jelic says. "We wanted to mimic that behavior, which is the most common sleep pattern we see in adults."

The researchers screened nearly 1,000 women in Washington Heights for the study, enrolling 35 healthy women who normally sleep seven to eight hours each night who could complete the 12-week study.

For six weeks the women slept according to their usual routine; for the other six weeks they went to bed 1.5 hours later than usual. Each participant's sleep was verified with wrist-worn sleep trackers.

Calorie restriction in humans builds strong muscle and stimulates healthy aging genes

 Reducing overall calorie intake may rejuvenate your muscles and activate biological pathways important for good health, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and their colleagues. Decreasing calories without depriving the body of essential vitamins and minerals, known as calorie restriction, has long been known to delay the progression of age-related diseases in animal models. This new study, published in Aging Cell, suggests the same biological mechanisms may also apply to humans.

Researchers analyzed data from participants in the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE), a study supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) that examined whether moderate calorie restriction conveys the same health benefits seen in animal studies. They found that during a two-year span, the goal for participants was to reduce their daily caloric intake by 25%, but the highest the group was able to reach was a 12% reduction. Even so, this slight reduction in calories was enough to activate most of the biological pathways that are important in healthy aging.

"A 12% reduction in calorie intake is very modest," said corresponding author and NIA Scientific Director Luigi Ferrucci, M.D., Ph.D. "This kind of small reduction in calorie intake is doable and may make a big difference in your health."

The research team next sought to understand the molecular underpinnings of the benefits seen in limited, previous research of calorie restriction in humans. One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force.

For the current study, scientists used thigh muscle biopsies from CALERIE participants that were collected when individuals joined the study and at one-year and two-year follow ups.

To figure out which human genes were impacted during calorie restriction, the scientists isolated messenger RNA (mRNA), a molecule that contains the code for proteins, from muscle samples. The team determined the protein sequence of each mRNA and used the information to identify which genes originated specific mRNAs. Further analysis helped the scientists establish which genes during calorie restriction were upregulated, meaning the cells made more mRNA; and which were downregulated, meaning the cells produced less mRNA. The researchers confirmed calorie restriction affected the same gene pathways in humans as in mice and non-human primates. For example, a lower caloric intake upregulated genes responsible for energy generation and metabolism, and downregulated inflammatory genes leading to lower inflammation.

"Since inflammation and aging are strongly coupled, calorie restriction represents a powerful approach to preventing the pro-inflammatory state that is developed by many older people," said Ferrucci.

Can't stop binging on fries and BBQ?

 People overeat and become overweight for a variety of reasons. The fact that flavorful high-calorie food is often available nearly everywhere at any time doesn't help. Buck researchers have determined for the first time why certain chemicals in cooked or processed foods, called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, increase hunger and test our willpower or ability to make healthy choices when it comes to food.

"This research, done in tiny nematode worms, has immense implications for human dietary choices and the propensity to overeat certain foods," said Buck professor Pankaj Kapahi, PhD, the senior author of the study. "Processed modern diets enriched with AGEs are tempting to eat but we know very little about their long-term consequences on our health." The work is currently published in eLife.

"Humans evolved certain mechanisms that encourage us to eat as much food as possible during times of plenty. We store the excess calories as fat that we use to survive times of fasting," explained Muniesh Muthaiyan Shanmugam, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Kapahi laboratory, and the lead author of the study. "Natural selection favored genes that makes us preferentially consume flavorful food, especially those with higher sugar content. But what is the mechanism that makes it so hard to say 'no' to them?"

AGEs are metabolic by-products that occur when a sugar combines with part of a protein, lipid or nucleic acid. They occur naturally when we metabolize sugars in a cell, but AGEs are also created during baking, frying and grilling, and are in many processed foods. "The brown color that occurs during cooking, which makes food look and smell delicious is a result of AGEs," said Shanmugam. "Basically, we are finding that AGEs make food more appetizing and harder to resist."

The "browning" reaction that occurs when sugar and protein interact with heat, beloved among chefs, is called the Maillard reaction. It results in the formation of hundreds to thousands of enticing AGEs.

But while the Maillard reaction's claim to fame is its ability to make foods taste delicious, the resulting chemicals wreak all kinds of havoc in the body. They cause inflammation and oxidative damage, contributing to the development of blood vessel stiffening, hypertension, kidney disease, cancer, and neurological problems. The accumulation of these metabolic by-products in several organs is probably one of the major drivers of aging of various organs and the organism as a whole, said Kapahi, whose lab focuses on how nutrients influence health and disease.

"Once advanced glycation products are formed, they cannot be detoxified," Shanmugam said. Just as toasted white bread becomes brown, the process can't be reversed to make the bread white again. "Similarly, there is no way to reverse the AGEs," adding that the body's ability to clear AGEs declines with age, providing another link to age-related disease.

Even the tiny worms in the Kapahi lab could not escape the allure and damages caused by AGEs. Researchers observed that these chemicals, in addition to causing disease and decreasing longevity, also increased the worms' appetite for more of the same. The researchers wanted to know the mechanism by which AGEs spur preferential overeating.

To uncover the biochemical signaling pathway responsible for overeating in normal healthy worms, the researchers purified some well-studied AGEs and found two of them that increased eating. They further explored one of the compounds to find out the signaling mechanism. They showed that a particular mutation (called glod-4) increased food intake, mediated by a particular AGE (called MG-H1). Further analysis revealed a tyramine-dependent pathway was responsible.

Their work is the first to identify the signaling pathway mediated by specific AGEs molecules to enhance feeding and neurodegeneration. They also found that mutant worms that have no way to process even naturally occurring AGEs have approximately 25-30 percent shorter lifespans. The work is being extended into mice where researchers will look at the connection between AGEs and fat metabolism.

"Understanding this signaling pathway may help us to understand overeating due to modern AGEs-rich diets," said Kapahi. "Our study emphasizes that AGEs accumulation is involved in diseases, including obesity and neurodegeneration. We think that overall, limiting AGEs accumulation is relevant to the global increase in obesity and other age-associated diseases."

The message that Shanmugam takes from his work is profound. "We are not controlling our food intake, instead it is the food that is attempting to control us," he said.

As a result of this and previous research from the lab, Shanmugam and Kapahi have changed the way they view their own diets. They both practice intermittent fasting, which gives the body a chance to use fat instead of sugars. There are simple things that anyone can do to reduce the burden of AGEs in their bodies, said Kapahi, including eating whole grains (the fiber helps maintain stable glucose levels), cooking with wet heat rather than dry (i.e., steaming vs. frying or grilling), and adding acid when cooking foods which slows the reaction that leads to the formation of AGEs.

"We are naturally attracted to delicious food, but we could be more mindful that we do have the ability to make healthy choices when we eat," said Shanmugam.

Virtual driving assessment predicts risk of crashing for newly licensed teen drivers

New research published today by the journal Pediatrics found that driving skills measured at the time of licensure on a virtual driving assessment (VDA), which exposes drivers to common serious crash scenarios, helps predict crash risk in newly licensed young drivers.

This study, conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, brings the research community one step closer to identifying which skill deficits put young new drivers at higher risk for crashes. With this cutting-edge information, more personalized interventions can be developed to improve the driving skills that prevent crashes.

While drivers between the ages of 15 and 20 only make up about 5% of all drivers on the road, they are involved in approximately 12% of all vehicle crashes and 8.5% of fatal crashes. The time of greatest crash risk is in the months right after these young drivers receive their license, largely due to deficits in driving skills.

However, many of these newly licensed drivers do avoid crashes. The challenge for policymakers, clinicians, and families has been identifying which drivers are at increased risk of crashing during the learning phase before they drive on their own. Early identification of at-risk drivers offers the opportunity to intervene with training and other resources known to help prevent crashes, making the roads safer for everyone.

Over the past two decades, CIRP researchers have systematically determined the primary reason for novice driver crashes -- inadequate driving skills, such as speed management -- and conducted studies that informed the development and validation of a self-guided VDA that measures performance of these driving skills in common serious crash scenarios that cannot be evaluated with on-road testing. The VDA utilizes the Ready-Assess™ platform developed by Diagnostic Driving, Inc., an AI-driven virtual driving assessment that provides the driver with the insights and tools to improve.

In this study, researchers examined the ability of the VDA, delivered at the time of the licensing road test, to predict crash risk in the first year after obtaining licensure in the state of Ohio. Using a unique study design, the results of the VDA were linked to police-reported crash records for the first year after obtaining a license.

"Our previous research showed that performance on the VDA predicted actual on-road driving performance, as measured by failure on the licensing road test. This new study went further to determine whether VDA performance could identify unsafe driving performance predictive of future crash risk," said lead study author Elizabeth Walshe, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist and clinical researcher who directs the Neuroscience of Driving team at CIRP. "We found that drivers categorized by their performance as having major issues with dangerous behavior were at higher risk of crashing than average new drivers."

The researchers analyzed a unique integrated dataset of individual results of VDA performance, collected in the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles before the licensing road test, linked to licensing and police-reported crash records in 16,914 first-time newly licensed drivers under the age of 25. Data were collected from applicants who completed the VDA between July 2017 and December 2019 on the day they passed the on-road licensing examination in Ohio. Researchers examined crash records up to mid-March 2020.

advertisement

---

With the outcome of time-to-first crash after licensure, a Cox proportional hazard model was used to estimate the risk of crash as a function of VDA performance. The study found that the best performing novice drivers, described as having "No Issues" based on their pattern of driving performance on the VDA, had a 10% lower than average crash risk. However, users of the VDA who had "Major Issues with Dangerous Behavior" had an 11% higher than average crash risk. These results held when adjusting for a variety of variables such as age, sex, and socio-economic status.

"These findings are incredibly important because they provide us with quantitative evidence that we can approach young driver safety in a new way -- by predicting crash risk and aiming resources to those who need them most," said Flaura Winston, MD, PhD, co-scientific director of CIRP at CHOP and co-author of the study. "By providing this information before licensure, we can direct resources to those most at risk, and potentially prevent crashes from occurring when these teens first drive on their own."

"Our mission is to enable teens to safely assume the roles and responsibilities that come with transitioning to adulthood, and learning to drive is a major step in that direction," said study co-author Dan Romer, PhD, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and a partner with Winston and Walshe at CHOP to develop and test the VDA for teens. "Having an assessment that furthers this goal is an important achievement that we hope will lead to fewer injuries for teens as they first hit the road."

Michael Elliott, PhD, professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at U-M and study co-author, said the VDA is designed to take drivers through a variety of low to high risk, uniquely realistic virtual driving scenarios that can determine where skills are weakest. The driving behaviors are tracked in real time using several dozen measures.

"We know young novice drivers are at higher risk of crashing than more experienced drivers," Elliott said. "The novel VDA tool uses information about their behaviors, such as virtual braking, accelerating, steering, and crashing. That risk profile has now been shown to be predictive of their crash behavior during their first couple of years on the road. What's crucial to note is that most of these behaviors are amenable with additional driving training."

Dr. Winston is an inventor of a VDA. CHOP has licensed this VDA technology to Diagnostic Driving, for use on its Ready-Assess™ platform. Dr. Winston also has an ownership interest in Diagnostic Driving.

This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant number 1R21HD099635-01; the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through the Ohio Traffic Safety Office (NHTSA); the State of Ohio's Department of Administrative Services, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Additional support was provided by a gift from NJM Insurance Group. Data collection was financed by NHTSA and Ohio. Data management and analyses were supported by NICHD, Ohio, and NHTSA. 

Software can detect hidden and complex emotions in parents

 Researchers have conducted trials using a software capable of detecting intricate details of emotions that remain hidden to the human eye.

The software, which uses an 'artificial net' to map key features of the face, can evaluate the intensities of multiple different facial expressions simultaneously.

The University of Bristol and Manchester Metropolitan Universityteam worked with Bristol's Children of the 90s study participants to see how well computational methods could capture authentic human emotions amidst everyday family life. This included the use of videos taken at home, captured by headcams worn by babies during interactions with their parents.

The findings, published in Frontiers, show that scientists can use machine learning techniques to accurately predict human judgements of parent facial expressions based on the computers' decisions.

Lead author Romana Burgess, PhD student on the EPSRC Digital Health and Care CDT in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol, explained: "Humans experience complicated emotions -- the algorithms tell us that someone can be 5% sad or 10% happy, for example.

"Using computational methods to detect facial expressions from video data can be very accurate, when the videos are of high quality and represent optimal conditions -- for instance, when videos are recorded in rooms with good lighting, when participants are sat face-on with the camera, and when glasses or long hair are kept from blocking the face.

"We were intrigued by their performance in the chaotic, real-world settings of family homes.

"The software detected a face in around 25% of the videos taken in real world conditions, reflecting the difficulty in evaluating faces in these kind of dynamic interactions."

The team used data from the Children of the 90s health study -- also known as Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Parents were invited to attend a clinic at the University of Bristol when their babies were 6 months old.

At the clinic, as a part of the ERC MHINT Headcam Study, parents were provided with two wearable headcams to take home and use during interactions with their babies. Parents and infants both wore the headcams during feeding and play interactions.

They then used an 'automated facial coding' software to computationally analyse parents' facial expressions in the videos and had human coders analyse the facial expressions in the same videos.

The team quantified how frequently the software was able to detect the face in the video, and evaluated how often the humans and the software agreed on facial expressions.

Finally, they used machine learning to predict human judgements based on the computers decisions.

Soccer goalies process the world differently, muti-sensory integration tests show

In the game of soccer (association football), goalkeepers have a unique role. To do the job well, they must be ready to make split-second decisions based on incomplete information to stop their opponents from scoring a goal. Now researchers reporting in Current Biology on October 9 have some of the first solid scientific evidence that goalkeepers show fundamental differences in the way they perceive the world and process multi-sensory information.

"Unlike other football players, goalkeepers are required to make thousands of very fast decisions based on limited or incomplete sensory information," says Michael Quinn, the study's first author at Dublin City University who is also a retired professional goalkeeper and son of former Irish international Niall Quinn. "This led us to predict that goalkeepers would possess an enhanced capacity to combine information from the different senses, and this hypothesis was confirmed by our results."

"While many football players and fans worldwide will be familiar with the idea that goalkeepers are just 'different' from the rest of us, this study may actually be the first time that we have proven scientific evidence to back up this claim," says David McGovern, the study's lead investigator also from Dublin City University.

Based on his own history as a professional goalkeeper, Quinn already had a feeling that goalkeepers experience the world in a distinctive way. In his final year working on a psychology degree, he wanted to put this notion to the test.

To do it, the researchers enlisted 60 volunteers, including professional goalkeepers, professional outfield players, and age-matched controls who don't play soccer. They decided to look for differences among the three groups in what's known as temporal binding windows -- that is the time window within which signals from the different senses are likely to be perceptually fused or integrated.

In each trial, participants were presented with one or two images (visual stimuli) on a screen. Those images could be presented along with one, two, or no beeps (auditory stimuli). Those stimuli were presented with different amounts of time in between.

In these tests, trials with one flash and two beeps generally led to the mistaken perception of two flashes, providing evidence that the auditory and visual stimuli have been integrated. This mistaken perception declines as the amount of time between stimuli increases, allowing researchers to measure the width of a person's temporal binding window, with a narrower temporal binding window indicating more efficient multisensory processing.

Overall, their tests showed that goalkeepers had marked differences in their multisensory processing ability. More specifically, goalkeepers had a narrower temporal binding window relative to outfielders and non-soccer players, indicating a more precise and speedy estimation of the timing of audiovisual cues.

The test results revealed another difference too. Goalkeepers didn't show as much interaction between the visual and auditory information. The finding suggests that the goalies had a greater tendency to separate sensory signals. In other words, they integrated the flashes and beeps to a lesser degree.

"We propose that these differences stem from the idiosyncratic nature of the goalkeeping position that puts a premium on the ability of goalkeepers to make quick decisions, often based on partial or incomplete sensory information," the researchers write.

They speculate that the tendency to segregate sensory information stems from goalies need to make quick decisions based on visual and auditory information coming in at different times. For example, goalkeepers watch how a ball is moving in the air and also make use of the sound of the ball being kicked. But the relationship between those cues in time will depend on where the outfielder making the shot is on the field. After repeated exposure to those scenarios, goalkeepers may start to process sensory cues separately rather than combining them.

Young children who are close to their parents are more likely to grow up kind, helpful and 'prosocial'

 A loving bond between parents and their children early in life significantly increases the child's tendency to be 'prosocial', and act with kindness and empathy towards others, research indicates.

The University of Cambridge study used data from more than 10,000 people born between 2000 and 2002 to understand the long-term interplay between our early relationships with our parents, prosociality and mental health. It is one of the first studies to look at how these characteristics interact over a long period spanning childhood and adolescence.

The researchers found that people who experienced warm and loving relationships with their parents at age three not only tended to have fewer mental health problems during early childhood and adolescence, but also displayed heightened 'prosocial' tendencies. This refers to socially-desirable behaviours intended to benefit others, such as kindness, empathy, helpfulness, generosity and volunteering.

Although the correlation between parent-child relationships and later prosociality needs to be verified through further research, the study points to a sizeable association. On average, it found that for every standard unit above 'normal' levels that a child's closeness with their parents was higher at age three, their prosociality increased by 0.24 of a standard unit by adolescence.

Conversely, children whose early parental relationships were emotionally strained or abusive were less likely to develop prosocial habits over time. The researchers suggest this strengthens the case for developing targeted policies and support for young families within which establishing close parent-child relationships may not always be straightforward; for example, if parents are struggling with financial and work pressures and do not have much time.

The study also explored how far mental health and prosocial behaviour are fixed 'traits' in young people, and how far they fluctuate according to circumstances like changes at school or in personal relationships. It measured both mental health and prosociality at ages five, seven, 11, 14 and 17 in order to develop a comprehensive picture of the dynamics shaping these characteristics and how they interact.

The research was undertaken by Ioannis Katsantonis and Dr Ros McLellan, both from the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Katsantonis, the lead author and a doctoral researcher specialising in psychology and education, said: "Our analysis showed that after a certain age, we tend to be mentally well, or mentally unwell, and have a reasonably fixed level of resilience. Prosociality varies more and for longer, depending on our environment. A big influence appears to be our early relationship with our parents. As children, we internalise those aspects of our relationships with parents that are characterised by emotion, care and warmth. This affects our future disposition to be kind and helpful towards others."

The study used data from 10,700 participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, which has monitored the development of a large group of people born in the UK between 2000 and 2002. It includes survey-based information about their prosociality, 'internalising' mental health symptoms (such as depression and anxiety) and 'externalising' symptoms (such as aggression).

Further survey data provided information about how far the participants' relationships with their parents at age three were characterised by 'maltreatment' (physical and verbal abuse); emotional conflict; and 'closeness' (warmth, security and care). Other potentially confounding factors, like ethnic background and socio-economic status, were also taken into account.

The Cambridge team then used a complex form of statistical analysis called latent state-trait-occasion modelling to understand how far the participants' mental health symptoms and prosocial inclinations seemed to be expressing fixed personality 'traits' at each stage of their development. This enabled them, for example, to determine how far a child who behaved anxiously when surveyed was responding to a particular experience or set of circumstances, and how far they were just a naturally anxious child.

The study found some evidence of a link between mental health problems and prosociality. Notably, children who displayed higher than average externalising mental health symptoms at a younger age showed less prosociality than usual later. For example, for each standard unit increase above normal that a child displayed externalising mental health problems at age seven, their prosociality typically fell by 0.11 of a unit at age 11.

There was no clear evidence that the reverse applied, however. While children with greater than average prosociality generally had better mental health at any single given point in time, this did not mean their mental health improved as they got older. On the basis of this finding, the study suggests that schools' efforts to foster prosocial behaviours may be more impactful if they are integrated into the curriculum in a sustained way, rather than being implemented in the form of one-off interventions, like anti-bullying weeks.

As well as being more prosocial, children who had closer relationships with their parents at age three also tended to have fewer symptoms of poor mental health in later childhood and adolescence.

Katsantonis said that the findings underlined the importance of cultivating strong early relationships between parents and children, which is already widely seen as critical to supporting children's healthy development in other areas.

"So much of this comes back to parents," Katsantonis said. "How much they can spend time with their children and respond to their needs and emotions early in life matters enormously."

"Some may need help learning how to do that, but we should not underestimate the importance of simply giving them time. Closeness only develops with time, and for parents who are living or working in stressful and constrained circumstances, there often isn't enough. Policies which address that, at any level, will have many benefits, including enhancing children's mental resilience and their capacity to act positively towards others later in life."

Warm summers and wet winters yield better wine vintages

Wine quality is notorious for varying from year to year, but what makes for a "good year"? In a paper publishing October 11 in the journal iScience, researchers show that weather plays an important role in determining wine quality. By analyzing 50 years' worth of wine critic scores from the Bordeaux wine region in relation to that year's weather, the researchers showed that higher quality wine is made in years with warmer temperatures, higher winter rainfall, and earlier, shorter growing seasons -- conditions that climate change is predicted to make more frequent.

"Weather drives wine quality and wine taste," says first author Andrew Wood of the University of Oxford. "We found evidence that temperature and precipitation effects occur throughout the year -- from bud break, while the grapes are growing and maturing, during harvesting, and even overwinter when the plant is dormant."

The same vineyard can produce different vintage qualities in different years, despite those wines coming from grapes grown on the same vines, on the same land, and being produced by the same methods. How yearly fluctuations in weather influences wine quality has been a longstanding question. A newer, related, question is how climate change might impact wine quality. Weather and climate -- the latter describing the weather over a long period of time -- are expected to impact crops, but the link between climate change and agricultural produce quality has not been widely explored.

To investigate how weather and climate impact wine quality, the researchers paired high-resolution climate data with annual wine critic scores from the Bordeaux wine region in southwest France from 1950 to 2020. They analyzed wine quality both at the regional scale (i.e., how did Bordeaux wine quality in general vary from year to year?) and on a more local scale, focusing on yearly variation in wine quality for individual "appellations d'origine contrôlée," or AOCs, within Bordeaux -- defined geographical regions with defined methods of grape cultivation and wine production. Then, they used models to test whether wine quality was impacted by weather factors such as season length and ranges and shifts in temperature and precipitation.

Unlike previous studies that focused only on weather during the growing season, this study also investigated the impact of weather during the non-growing winter season, when grape vines are usually dormant. "Perennial crops like grapes are there all the time, and so things that happen outside of the growing season can also impact the wine," says Wood.

The researchers chose to focus on Bordeaux because it's a wine region that relies exclusively on rainfall for irrigation and because Bordeaux has long-term records of wine scores -- they were able to leverage merchant wine scores from 1950 to 2020 for the overall region and wine critic scores from 2014 to 2020 for the individual AOCs. Wine judging is subjective and unblinded, meaning that wine critics know the origins of the wines they're tasting. However, because most critics agree on what is a "good" vs a "bad" wine, the authors say that quality is "a non-subjective property of perennial crops" that could be used to monitor how crops are changing long-term.

Overall, the researchers found that Bordeaux wine quality scores tended to improve between 1950 and 2020. Though this could be because Bordeaux's climate warmed over that period, it could also be because of the increasing use of technology in wine making over this period or because wine makers are increasingly matching their techniques to consumer preferences.

"The trend, whether that's driven by the preferences of wine critics or the general population, is that people generally prefer stronger wines which age for longer and give you richer, more intense flavors, higher sweetness, and lower acidity," says Wood. "And with climate change -- generally, we are seeing a trend across the world that with greater warming, wines are getting stronger."

The team found that weather impacted wine quality throughout the year, not just during the growing season. In general, high-quality wines were associated with cooler, wetter winters; warmer, wetter springs; hot, dry summers; and cool, dry autumns.

Given that climate change is resulting in these types of weather patterns in Bordeaux, the researchers say that wine in this region is likely to continue to increase in quality as climate change progresses. "With the predicted climates of the future, given that we are more likely to see these patterns of warmer weather and less rainfall during the summer and more rainfall during the winter, the wines are likely to continue to get better into the future," says Wood.

However, this is true only up until the point at which water becomes limited. "The problem in scenarios where it gets really hot is water: if plants don't have enough, they eventually fail, and when they fail, you lose everything," says Wood. "But the general idea or consensus is that the wines will continue to get better up to the point where they fail."

Though the study focused on Bordeaux wines, the researchers suspect that their results also apply to other wine regions. Testing this is the next step. They say that their methods could also be extended to examine the impact of yearly weather variation and climate change on other perennial crops, such as cocoa and coffee, if long-term quality records are available.