Science Friday - Omicron And Kids, Ivermectin Origins, Icefish Nests. Jan 14, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

A Replacement Heart, From A Pig This week, doctors reported that they had successfully transplanted a heart taken from a pig into a human being, a type of procedure known as xenotransplantation. The pig had been genetically modified to lack a certain protein thought to be responsible for organ rejection in previous transplant attempts. The patient, a 57 year-old man, will be monitored for any sign of rejection or infection with a porcine virus—but doctors are hopeful that the work will lead to further transplants and a new source of replacement organs for people. Science journalist Roxxane Kamsi joins Ira to talk about that and other stories from the week in science, including research into how antivirals work in people infected with HIV, the role of clothes dryers on microplastics pollution, a push to make the U.S. electric grid greener, and more.   Omicron Sparks Surge In Pediatric Hospitalizations Omicron’s rapid spread has many parents and caregivers of young children on edge. The most recent CDC data shows 5.3 cases per 100,000 children under four are hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, the highest number since the pandemic started. And kids under five still aren’t eligible to be vaccinated. When word went out that we were going to answer questions about COVID and kids, we were flooded with questions from our listeners. To help answer some of those questions, and better understand how to keep our kids safe, Ira spoke with Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, pediatrician, and professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, and Dr. Rick Malley, infectious diseases specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.   Ivermectin’s False Reputation Exemplifies How Misinformation Spread Not a single scientific or health authority in the U.S. recommends the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. Still, some Americans see the unproven drug as a way out of the pandemic. Ivermectin is mostly used in large animals and is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating human conditions, including head lice and stomach worms. But across the country, demand for the drug has surged in recent months — leading to a spike in hospitalizations for human exposures to ivermectin. The drug is among the latest politically divisive public health issues unfolding across the country. The situation has fast-tracked conversations about the risks and benefits of publicizing research findings that have not yet been vetted by the scientific community. That’s because much of the misinformation on ivermectin draws on insufficient data — some coming from low-quality studies, including ones that were retracted after further examination revealed problems and even potential fraud. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com. A Massive New Find Of Icefish Found Near Antarctic The frigid waters near Antarctica are home to an unusual family of fishes collectively known as the icefish. They have translucent blood, white hearts, and have adapted to live without red blood cells or hemoglobin, relying instead on copper compounds that function better at low temperatures. Now, researchers mapping the floor of the Weddell Sea report in the journal Current Biology that they have spotted a massive colony of the unusual sea creatures—containing over 60 million icefish nests. “A few dozen nests have been observed elsewhere in the Antarctic, but this find is orders of magnitude larger,” said Autun Purser, of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. Purser and his colleagues were mapping the seafloor of the Filchner ice shelf region, in an area of thermal upwelling, where there are slightly warmer temperatures. They found masses of icefish nests clumped close together as far as the eye can see, somewhat like a land-based colony of nesting penguins. Purser joins Ira to talk about the discovery, and what’s known about the ultra-cold ecosystems of Antarctic seas.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Coming up later this hour, a look at what we know about the Omicron variant and children. But first, in this week's top stories, Harvard Med School reports that multiple sclerosis is likely caused by infection by Epstein-Barr virus. It suggests, says Alberto Ascario, senior author of research published in science, that most MS cases could be prevented by stopping EBV infection and that targeting EBV could lead to the discovery of a cure for MS. We'll be following up this story in weeks to come. Here with other science and medical news, including news of transplanting a gene-modified pig heart into a human for the first time is Roxanne Comsi, science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec.

Welcome back, Roxanne. Thank you, Ira. It's great to be here. You know, a few weeks ago, we reported about another 10. team that tested a pig kidney in a person for a few days, but this is something different. Tell us about this field of getting organs from animals, what, xenotransplantation, right? Yes, xeno, meaning, you know, from other. This is something that happened in Baltimore where a patient who was 57 years old, who had a failing heart, was given an entire organ inside his body from a pig. And as you alluded to, the heart was from a pig that had been

genetically engineered in a certain way to make the organ more acceptable for the human body. So what do you mean genetically engineered to be more acceptable? So what they did is they changed 10 genes in the pig. They took away four of the genes that make these molecules in pigs that would make the organ more likely to be rejected by somebody. And then they added six human genes to the pig so that it would kind of be almost disguised as something that a human body could accept. Sort of a MacGyver, the pig heart.

Exactly, exactly. And what are they looking for in this case to tell if they have been successful? Well, I think that the main thing with organ transplantation, especially when it's from a whole other species, is you want to make sure that the immune system from the person who is receiving the organ doesn't start attacking that organ. What we say is rejecting that organ. So they'll be watching and monitoring this person who,

received the heart last Friday to see if his body is okay to accept this organ. And likely, you know, he's on immunosuppressant drugs that will tame the immune system to prevent that from happening. And of course, pigs have other kinds of viruses that they carry with them. We want to make sure that they don't affect the human. Yes. So this includes porcine retrovirus, which is a pig virus, but the chances of this scientists, they are low. That being said, they're still monitoring to make sure that it doesn't happen. Now, there's really interesting history about xenotransplantation, isn't there? Yeah, so this is not, as we were talking about, like the first time that an organ has been transplanted into a human being from an animal. In the 1960s, scientists tried, or I should

say doctors tried transplanting chimpanzee kidneys into some human patients. And, you know, there was a little bit of success for some months in at least one recipient, but in general, it didn't work out. And maybe more known to people is that in 1984, there was a baby named Baby Faye to the literature. She received a baboon heart from an infant baboon. And she lived 20 days, but unfortunately, her body started to reject the organ. So this is something that's been tried before. And of course, there's all sorts of questions with ethics as well about whether the animals consent to this or, I mean, clearly they don't. So it's a complicated field, but it gives a lot of hope because so many people are on organ transplant waiting lists. I think it's 100,000 in the U.S., mostly for kidney

transplants. So it's a much needed scientific advance. Let's talk about other health news that you have been looking at. You have a story about HIV that could be very promising. Tell us. I love this story, and I should make it clear. I didn't write it. It was John Cohen writing about a paper in the journal Cell. He wrote it for Science Magazine. And it's a fantastic story because I think it's so hopeful. Scientists, they looked at what happened when people had been on antivirals against HIV for years and years and years, like decades. And what seems to be happening is that that long treatment of antiviral drug therapy almost pushes HIV into parts of our genome that are less active. And what it suggests is that maybe this is a way

that HIV is being kept in check. Also, I think another thing that's fascinating about this is that same pattern of sequestration of HIV is seen in people who are known as elite controllers, who are kind of naturally good at keeping HIV at bay. I should also mention that HIV is one of rare viruses that actually integrates into our genome. So HIV doesn't just hang around in our body. It becomes part of our DNA when we're infected. And that's why they were able to do this study to see where it goes in the genome. You know, that's an interesting point you make, because I don't know if many people think about the virus incorporating itself right into the human genome. Yes, and not a lot of viruses do this. Viruses that are with us for life are more likely to do it. Do we know why?

the virus gets shoved into these corners of the DNA and not just omitted? So this is something that I was actually curious about. And I went back and I read the paper. And what the scientists suggest is that the cells where HIV goes into more active regions are kind of more easily detected by the immune system. So they're killed or, you know, swept away. And the cells in which the virus goes into these less active regions are less likely for antivirals and the immune system to go after. So the idea is it's almost kind of like a selective pressure, if you will, of the cells where it happened to integrate into the quieter regions of the genome.

Very interesting. In other news, you have a story about plastic pollution and my dryer. Yes. My spin dryer. It hits home because I was just drying laundry last night. So it's definitely a story, I think, that anyone who does laundry with a dryer, and I know that I lived in England for a while, and there weren't as many dryers. There were here in North America.

A lot of people have dryers. And what happens is if you have fabric that contains something like plastic, like polyester, as that fabric is rubbing up against itself and other things you're washing and drying, it's releasing tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bits of plastic that aren't captured by your dryer filter. What happens is these small little microplastics end up in things we don't want to see them in like the placenta. of unborn babies or as far away as the Arctic and in the Earth's troposphere. So it's kind of, they're so small that they can go to these many places and it doesn't seem great to me. Well, how much could my tumble dryer be, you know, affecting the release of these particles?

Is it a big source? So the scientists in Hong Kong found that based on their calculations and their simulations, each dryer would be releasing about 120 million microplastic fibers each year into the air. So it's kind of a lot, if you ask me. And the lint filter is not going to catch this stuff, right? It's not. And what the scientists did is they started designing a 3D version of a filter that they hope would be more effective at capturing the microfibers, which I think is great because a lot of us do wear microfibers. I'm sitting here in fleece in Canada. So, I mean, I hope that this is going to be something that we can really make progress on.

Yeah, yeah, that absolutely. I will think twice about when I look into my lid filter, what it's missing, especially those microfibers. Let's talk about other emissions news. Movement to a cleaner electric grid. That's something we'd like to have. Definitely. This is progress happening. As you might know, there was recently a big infrastructure bill that was passed in the U.S.

And that allocated $65 billion for improvement of the electric grid. And that's been earmarked for all these really important things. like $2.5 billion is earmarked for making better transmission lines. And then there's also a portion of money that's going to go towards making the electrical grid smarter, like a smart grid that can allocate energy better so that people don't have as many blackouts, which are happening more often. This is a piece of good news, and hopefully some of these changes will have a real effect. I'm hoping that they find a way to bury a lot of these transmission lines.

So we don't have these giant power. Spoken of someone who might have had one knocked out in a snowstorm perhaps. Well, you just see them, you know, they need big right of ways and, you know, they have to carve out big areas to put these giant, you know, structures in there. Right. So, you know, and then if you're in an urban area, or actually if you're in a rural area, when the snows come and wind comes and knocks down the power lines, your power lines go down. Don't I know it?

It's true. We've been thinking a lot about health testing lately, of course. course, but I understand that you have news about an approval for a new cancer risk test. Tell us about that. Yeah, so this comes from the company 23 and Me, which is one of the biggest genetic testing companies, direct to consumer. So you spit in a tube, you send it off, and they look at your DNA, and they tell you all sorts of things about, you know, even the kinds of foods that you might like or not like. So 23 and Me has been gradually adding some health tests over the years. A few years ago they got approval from the FDA to include a breast cancer risk test. It looks only for a few

variants, but tells people they have an elevated risk of breast cancer. So they added to that something for colorectal cancer in the year since. And now there's one for prostate cancer that they hope will tell people you might have an elevated risk. It only looks for a few variations. And the statistic I saw was it was maybe one in 70 people of European ancestry would have this in their potential list of variations that they have. But importantly, the company doesn't just tell you this. You have to opt in to find out. So it's, you know, you could do the genetic testing without knowing about your disease risk, which not everyone wants to know necessarily. Yeah. And you would hope that these are accurate predictions and not something that just makes

you worry or not worry. Yeah. And also, you know, since they're only looking at some variants, it won't tell you for sure if you don't have the risk. It's complicated. Finally, word about an onion that doesn't make you cry. Is that true? It's true. And I was thinking about the story and I was like, you know, after the last two years, something that doesn't make me cry is a really good thing.

And, you know, these onions have been gradually bred over decades. So it wasn't genetically engineered. This is really a product of breeding. And in the U.S., it's kind of known as the sunyan. The sunyan. Supposedly a little sweeter, although I think the Washington Post, when it reviewed it a few years ago, said it was tasteless or maybe lacking in flavor. But this has been available for a couple years in the U.S. and then in Spain, and now people in the U.K. now they have the chance to buy it because it's now gone on sale there.

One would think that the very chemical combinations, you have to, you know, you have to cut the onion to make that stuff get together to make you cry would be the same things that give it its good taste. taste that you like. You know, I think you might not be too far off. Who knows? There's many layers to the story just like there are an onion. Oh, oh. Oh, ending with a dad joke. Thank you very much, Roxanne. Always. Roxanne Comsi, science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec. We're going to take a break on when we come back answering your worrisome questions about kids and COVID. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Omicron's rapid spread has many parents and caregivers of young children on edge. The most recent CDC data shows 5.3 cases per 100,000 children

under four are hospitalized with COVID in the U.S. That's the highest number since the pandemic started, and kids under five still aren't eligible to be vaccinated. You know, when word went out that we were going to answer questions about COVID and kids, we were flooded with questions from you, our listeners. It was a tsunami. So to help us better understand, exactly what's going on and how to keep our kids safe are my guests. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, pediatrician and professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Rick Malley, Infectious Diseases Specialist at Boston Children's Hospital,

professor of pediatrics at Harvard Med School. Welcome to Science Friday. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Ira. pleasure. Thanks. You're welcome. Dr. Marley, let me begin with you. In the CDC data, echoing with Dr. Fauci has said some of the kids who've tested positive for COVID in hospitals were in for something else, right? And then they tested positive. So the numbers aren't necessarily as high as we might think. I mean, as far as we know, the percentage of children that are hospitalized right now in whom we've detected the presence of the virus is a significant portion. of the kids that we are calling admitted with COVID.

And what that means, of course, is that when you look at numbers skyrocketing of kids hospitalized with COVID, in fact, a large proportion of those are undoubtedly children who were admitted for another reason. It could be a broken bone. It could be appendicitis or something unrelated. But in fact, as a part of the hospitalization procedure,

we test all these children and we found that some of them were infected with SARS-CoV-2. probably asymptomatically. So far, despite early reports that made many of us worry, it doesn't seem that Omicron is any worse or better in children than other forms of other variants of the virus. As I think your listeners probably heard early on when the numbers of hospitalizations of children with COVID seem to be going so high, both in South Africa and then in the U.S., people were worried that Omicron might be, for some reason, milder in adults, but more severe in children. And I think as we've sort of learned through a little bit of this surge, that turns out not to

be the case. And in fact, Omicron does not seem to be any more severe in children than previous variants. So let me just make a comment here, because that's not exactly the experience that we're finding from colleagues around the country. And I have town halls through the American Academy of Pediatrics. And what we're finding is that the proportion of kids who are coming in with versus for COVID is definitely there. But we're clearly seeing more children who are coming in with symptoms and coming in because of symptoms,

not just because it's an incidental finding. So it does happen, but it is not the majority of kids. Both are true. In other words, there's so much virus circulating that even if a virus, is not particularly more dangerous than previous variants in children. Because of the sheer number of infections, you are, in fact, going to see more children hospitalized because of COVID. But I think the key point here is not so much whether we're seeing some kids in the hospital

who are hospitalized because of COVID, but whether this variant is more dangerous than previous variants. And in that case, the simple answer is no. However, there are so many cases of SARS-CoV-2 in the community that some of these, of course, end up causing illness in children, and those, of course, some of them end up being hospitalized in greater numbers than what we saw with Delta or prior variants. So, Dr. Maldonado, how do you know when to bring your child into the hospital? if your kid is asymptomatic with COVID, even if they test positive.

How do you know if and when to bring that child to the hospital? Well, first of all, if your child has been exposed to somebody and isn't symptomatic, at that point, you will get guidance from your county, from your local health department, and you can also check in with your pediatrician to find out what you need to do. but there is most likely not always going to be a need to bring a child in at that point. If, however, your child develops a fever, cough, especially if they have chest pain or shortness of breath, obviously those would be reasons to bring your child in either to your regular provider or to the emergency department.

Why are more kids under four being hospitalized with Omicron, but not kids aged 5 to 11? If you look at the data from the beginning of the pandemic, children under five have always been the highest proportion of children hospitalized. But as you heard before, because this virus is more infectious, there's just a larger number of kids. We don't really know why children under four are more likely to be hospitalized, but that's just, that's been the pattern all along. Now, some parents already feel it's inevitable that their kid will get COVID. And I remember back in the day when parents would have. chicken pox parties to expose their kids. There's this rumor going around that people are already thinking about this. Why not bring kids together and, quote, get it over with? Well, you know,

we've been asked that question, I think, since the beginning of the pandemic. And I do think that it's very important to emphasize that that is not a good strategy. The so-called let it rip strategy that we're reading about, and you might see on Twitter, on Facebook, or other forms of social media really is taking an attitude that I think is not scientific and in fact quite dangerous. One way perhaps to say it is that all of us have been or will be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 to the causative agent of COVID-19. Some of us might be symptomatic. Some of us may not be. But the idea that we should all try to get it all at once now in an already overstressed medical system where providers are exhausted, where resources are limited, where emergency rooms are packed

with patients with COVID or for other reasons, really is a, would be a public health threat. It's just not a serious approach. Dr. Maldonado from Twitter a question. How likely is it that parents will bring Omicron home to their toddlers? And what should we do to protect against that? We need to vaccinate as many people as possible who are five and older and who are eligible. And that is the vast majority of the U.S. population. There are more and more studies that are demonstrating indirect evidence that vaccinated people are going to be less likely to transmit the virus. That would be a very easy strategy is make sure that everybody around the child is vaccinated. Absolutely, parents can bring the virus home to their children.

and make sure that you are preventing yourself from getting infected at work or social areas. The other approach to preventing infection in kids is making sure that they're not in social events with large numbers of people or people who aren't in their normal social circles, because community transmission is really going to be the major way that this virus is going to continue to spread. Now, if parents test positive and bring the virus home to their children who are negative and don't have it, I mean, who's to take care of the children? What can you recommend? You can't expose someone from outside to come in to your home and take care of your kids, can you? Well, that's the issue that I think has been so difficult. And that really, you know, this whole economic support for parents and giving them more operational. to hire caregivers is really coming to play here because you're talking about one infected parent, hopefully only one, maybe both, who would now need to mask and distance.

So the parents are going to need to struggle to find somebody else. And there may be those situations that are hardest to do that will be people who are economically constrained. So it is a difficult time right now with the funds running out to support. COVID relief, but if there are other family members that can help with the children, the parents should probably stay away. And we know as well that the current guidelines, because Omicron does seem to spike earlier in terms of infectiousness earlier and taper off faster. There are some data to suggest that that's true. The parents can actually, especially if they're not symptomatic,

can mask and distance as much as possible and still be in the household if they need to be. challenge to that. Let me ask you this question, Dr. Maldonado. I know you're overseeing the Pfizer vaccine trial for kids under five at Stanford. Currently, you're working on a three-dose trial for young kids versus the two-dose adults. Why might that work better? Now, the way the trials were done, the vaccine was given at a particular dose in adults, and that happened to be for the Pfizer vaccine 30 micrograms. And for the 5 to 11 year olds, the 10 microgram dose or a third of the adult dose seemed to give just as good of an antibody and protective response as the higher dose that adults received. Now, in the younger children, the children under five,

the 10 microgram dose, which was the dose for the 5 to 11 year olds, produced higher fevers in that age group. So you're talking about. a lower dose of the vaccine, and it's actually a tenth of the adult dose and a third of the five to 11-year-old dose. So it is going to be a smaller amount of a vaccine that's given, and that may be one of the reasons why the antibody response in the younger children was not as as potent. But we also know that for many other vaccines of childhood, you have to give more than one dose. So most of them require two, three, and sometimes even five doses. Got it. Let me see how fast I can get through some questions we have from our listeners.

This one, how effective our antibodies pass through breast milk? It's an interesting question. It's a difficult one to study. But in general, the possibility that maternally transferred antibodies from breast milk to a child could actually confer some either local protection in the mucosa or systemic protection. against disease is something that is very intriguing and possible, so much so that I think it's very reasonable and very important for women in pregnancy to consider, of course, very strongly getting the vaccine not just for that reason, but maybe even more importantly because pregnancy, as we know, is a condition where COVID-19, unfortunately, can be much more severe. And this is even true for several

months after the birth of the child. So for all those reasons, including the theoretical possibility that breast milk with antibodies to COVID-19 could be protective to the child, I think reinforces the need to vaccinate women in pregnancy. Well, is the converse true? If a pregnant mother has COVID, can the baby in utero also get COVID? You know, that's an interesting question. I'm not sure I have seen that that's been the case. In fact, actually, I'm thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic. There was an early study of about 30 pregnant women who did get COVID and none of the babies actually were in.

I think maybe one of the babies had evidence of antibodies, but none of them were infected or otherwise were infected and none of them had symptoms. So we have, however, in our hospital, seeing young babies, newborns whose mothers were infected and then the babies became infected later. So that is a possibility. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Here's a question on Facebook from Tammy who says, can you speculate about the long-term effects of Omicron for vaccinated kids? And I'm thinking about studies like the one that said that kids who had COVID or more likely to get type 1 diabetes. My son tested positive today and feels fine, but he's petrified that this infection will have long-term effects.

on his health? Well, Ira, I'm part of something called NICHD Council. It's the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. And we just had our two-day meeting this week. And we were talking about this issue and that there are networks that are being set up now to really try to enroll children and understand whether there will be long COVID. We do know that this virus, not necessarily Omicron as much as, say, the previous variants, do seem to have an affinity for more than just the lungs.

They can affect other organs. And there's some thought that this is the reason why some of these children are developing diabetes. But the other issue to remember is that there's some studies now looking in human brains as well as in animals. And it looks like the virus does seem to affect through an inflammatory response does seem to affect some of the way the brain cells. work. Those data are really primarily from Delta. We don't really know what's going to happen with Omicron. So this is, again, another important reason why people who are eligible should be vaccinated because we think you can prevent this type of inflammatory response, which seems to have been so important in the Delta surge, and hopefully not as important with Omicron. But we'll still

need to follow these studies and find out what's going on with these kids as, as a result. And time moves on. Here's a question I got from a lot of people, and it says this time of the year, a lot of kids are getting upper respiratory infections. As RSV rates are on the rise, how can we parents differentiate between Omicron and RSV as they are both respiratory? Are the symptoms different? Tell us what we can do. It's a conundrum that parents have, that primary care providers have, emergency room physicians and nurses have, it's very difficult because very often the symptoms of RSV or other winter viruses and the symptoms of COVID-19 and children really overlap very well. I think the good news, if we can try to find good news in these situations,

is that by and large the same measures that are effective at reducing the likelihood of catching SARS-CoV-2 and getting COVID are the same measures that we would be using to reduce the risk of catching RSV, influenza, or other respiratory viruses. So for parents who are worried that their child has symptoms and trying to figure out whether it's COVID or something else, of course the answer is to contact their health care provider and, if need be, get tested because testing will of course differentiate across all these different viruses. But at the same time, all the measures that we've been following for the last two years should be reinforced in an era where we have RSV, and flu, and Omicron, because essentially those measures will work regardless of which

virus you're talking about. That's about all the time we have so many questions. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, pediatrician and professor of global health and infectious diseases, Stanford University, and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Rick Malley, infectious disease specialist at Boston Children's Hospital, Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, a story about what happens when shoddy scientific experiments turn into misinformation about ivermectin. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. This next story is a follow-up to a story. have thought had come and gone. Ivermectin, a so-called treatment for COVID-19 that made the news last

summer. Just to recap, Ivermectin is an antiparacetic drug used by humans and animals for treatments of lice and stomach worms. But last year, particularly in anti-vaccine circles, it became hailed as an alternative treatment for COVID-19. Now, it's important to note that no health authority here in the U.S. recommends the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID. Even so, last August, the CDC said there was a 24-fold increase in human use of Ivermectin compared to pre-pandemic times. The history of why Ivermectin gained notoriety is an international tale of what happens when scientific experiments go unvetted and when some medical practices seek to profit off people's worst fears. Here to take the story further is a journalist who has been digging into this story. Farah Usheri, reporter for

side effects public media based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. So happy to be here. Nice to have you. Farah, as I said before, Ivermectin was in the news so much in the latter half of last year to the point where I think some people may think the story has come and gone. So why did you get interested in the story behind the story, the faulty science behind many ivermectin studies. Yeah, well, I'm a nerd. That's one thing. But really what caught my attention was the FDA tweeting,

you are not a horse in an attempt to warn people not to take the ivermectin version meant for animals. And so I was like, what, why are people even doing that? You know, there must be some sort of reasoning or something. At the same time, I speak Arabic. And around winter of 2020, I noticed a research team giving Arabic interviews in local Egyptian media, saying that they had put out a very successful study.

It was the largest clinical trial that could potentially, quote, unquote, end the pandemic. And they were referring to ivermectin. They were calling it a national victory. And, you know, any time big sweeping claims like that are made, I get a bit dubious, you know. Yeah. So is ivermectin still as popular as a so-called treatment as it was months ago? Yeah. So I asked physicians who are collecting data from poison centers.

And they said, as recently as August, like you mentioned earlier, the rates of ivermectin prescriptions had continued to spike. But they say as of December the numbers are not increasing, but they're still a lot higher than before the pandemic. And in my reporting, in December, I set out to find clinics that prescribe ivermectin. And honestly, at the beginning, I was expecting this to be some sort of underground,

hard-to-find kind of market, but it was not like that at all. There are hundreds of clinics nationwide that continue to prescribe the drug and they're listed online. accessible to anyone and the process is fairly simple but costly so for most clinics you know you go on their website you pay an upfront fee of around a hundred to three hundred dollars for a telemedicine appointment and you almost certainly would get an ivermectin prescription then you pay a few hundred

dollars more to get the prescription filled from certain pharmacies these clinics deal with but the thing that was most stunning to me is that most of these clinics who i spoke with said that they can prescribe you ivermectin, even if you're not currently sick with COVID. So sort of as a preventative measure. One physician in rural Indiana I spoke with even told me that the clinic was extremely busy. They have to schedule group telemedicine appointments. So with more than one patient on the same call to fulfill demand. And again, the science does not back any of this up. That is really sad to hear. I know you dove into a group of studies on ivermectin from a variety of countries that were ultimately retracted. The studies were retracted or discredited. What were the concerns about these

studies? Yeah, so it's important to note that there is an influx of studies about different COVID-related issues coming from all over the world, as you surely know. And that's the case with Ivermectin, too. So there are dozens of studies out there. And one thing to mention is that the jury is still out when it comes to Ivermectin, meaning that maybe in a few months or so, there could be enough reliable data to say it works, but maybe not, you know. So as of now, Ivermectin remains an unproven COVID treatment. The National Institutes of Health listed a number of often cited Ivermectin studies and pointed out the limitations of each. For instance, the sample size of most of the trials was very small. In some studies, various doses of Ivermectin were used for different patients.

Some studies even had patients receiving other medications along with Ivermectin, which naturally makes it hard to assess the efficacy or safety of Ivermectin. For my story, the reason I focused on the Egyptian study was that it was the largest randomized controlled trial at the time, and as it turns out, it had big problems. Have a listen to Jack Lawrence, he's a biomedicine master's student in London whom I spoke with. He was looking at this study as part of his master's classes. The first thing I found was the plagiarism, and then again, pretty concerningly, I found some serious ethical issues. The biggest perhaps is that they had reported the study as starting

on the 8th of June and they included a number of patients who had died before that date. No kidding. So the Egyptian study is not the only one riddled with problems. There were others coming from Argentina, for example, that were reported to have major inconsistencies and potential fraud as well. That's not to say that there is no honest research on Avivirmectin, but until now, this research has limitations, as I mentioned earlier, and is not enough for health authorities to recommend ivermectin for COVID. So why do you think that many people are seeking out ivermectin to treat COVID? Is it just distrust of the health care system? Like people say they don't want to get a shot for COVID? The same thing happens. I'm not going to listen to what the government

tells me about ivermectin. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what's most perplexing to me during a global pandemic, you know. I mean, I understand with the amount of death the virus has caused, it's just mind-blowing. And when a family is losing a loved one, I can see why they may be so desperate to try any and everything in their power, you know, to save them. But I also think that the pandemic, like you said, has become so politicized. And that's a big reason. People are flocking to an unproven treatment while turning down vaccines that the FDA and health authorities in Europe and even the World Health Organization say are safe and effective. Yeah. Speaking of misinformation, and the Egyptian trial, do you have any sense that the study was done with the intention

to misinformed people about the efficacy of ivermectin? Yeah, so I haven't been able to reach the lead author of the study. I've emailed, called on the phone with no success. So I cannot speak to the intention of the researchers, but my guess is that it was not exactly meant to misinform people. Certainly, the study, which comes out of a rural town in Egypt, was not meant to misinformed. people in the U.S. I don't think the researchers ever imagine that their work may be one contributing factor to what's happening here in the U.S. Again, the study out of Egypt is not the only one with

problems. There's an influx of studies coming from across the globe. In the academic world, there is this publish or perish kind of culture in which, you know, your worth and career advancement is reliant on how often you publish and how widely your research is cited. So the pandemic, being a global thing, makes it a golden chance for many scientists. across the world. In the process, honest mistakes may happen, cutting corners may happen, and even fraud. And I'm pretty sure that COVID is not the only area of research that this happens in, but all eyes are on COVID research right now. And the general public and even politicians are more involved than ever with scientific research on COVID. And so when shaky science is posted

online, the implications are much bigger than ever before. Yeah, we have seen this happen before. Okay, let's talk about takeaways. Are there lessons the scientific community should take away from this Ivermecting saga moving forward? Yeah, I mean, you know, during a global pandemic, it makes sense that scientists want to share research as quickly as possible. And so that's why many have resorted to pre-print platforms, which are basically websites. You can share non-peer reviewed initial research. And it can take just a few days and your studies out in the world. And that was crucial during the early days of the pandemic, you know, when scientists learned the genetic code of the virus and how it's transmitted.

But that also means that some of this research makes it to social media platforms and is misinterpreted by non-scientists, whether out of ignorance or for some sort of personal gain or ulterior motive. And so it's hard to contain the spread of misinformation and the dangerous impact that it could have on society. So, yeah, the landscape of science communication has changed dramatically over the past couple of years. There are good things coming out of it in terms of collaborations and more funding, but there's also this political and social aspect

facing scientists, and they need to think of that. Thank you, Farah. We have run out of time. Farah Usheri, reporter for Side Effects Public Media based in Indianapolis. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. For the rest of the hour, a trip to the

seas around Antarctica and the ice fish. So you say, what are ice fish? Sounds obvious, right, fish that live in the cold waters of Antarctica. But what is not so obvious is that their blood, instead of red, is clear. There's no hemoglobin. And again, not so obvious is that researchers surveying the Weddell Sea counted around 60 million, 60 million nesting sites. Joining me now is Otten Purser. He's a postdoc deep sea biologist and ecologist working for the Alfred Vegner Helmholt Center for Marine and Polar Research in Germany.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show, and thank you for your interest in these bizarre deep sea fish. Tell us how bizarre they are. Well, like you say, they're an unusual fish, and as much as they do not use hemoglobin in their blood. They use a copper-based blood instead,

and that's because at zero degrees, which is the temperature these fish live, this is better for transporting oxygen. On top of that, they've taken to living under the permanent ice of the Redal Sea. Now, this area is constantly ice-carriage, covered. It's sea ice, so it's about a meter thick, and that means that it's still possible for photosynthesis to occur underneath this ice, but it's still a constantly ice-covered

environment, which is quite an unusual place to see so many fish across the seafloor. Why are there so many fish? Were you surprised to see so many? Extremely surprised. We knew that these fish lived in the area, and we knew that they nested occasionally in groups of four, five, or six, but we did not expect to see nest after nest after nest. And tell me how you found them. Right. So on our ship, the RV Polar Stern, there's 50 scientists on this expedition. And this expedition was focused on investigating how carbon transports from the surface waters to the seafloor and interacts with the various ecosystems in the water column. And my job was to photograph the seafloor and the benthic community that benefits from this carbon in the end when it reaches

the seafloor. One of the tasks we had on the cruise was to rotate these mooring lines, which are fixed with sensors that measure how flow changes over time when there's no one in the area. So we have to change the batteries on these devices every couple of years and download the data. So we'd change some of these batteries. We'd got the old ropes onto the deck and we were just reconfiguring the equipment. And I had the chance to put my camera in at the nighttime while they read it these devices to put back in. So I didn't really have much choice of where to dive. So we put the camera in an area which you might consider quite boring by looking at the seafloor topography.

It was on the sort of edge of a trough feature on the seafloor, but it wasn't near where the trough intersects with the continental shelf or anywhere where you might expect some meeting of ecosystems and perhaps a concentration of fish. So we put the camera down, and from the first glimpses of the seafloor, we saw these nesting fish. And we thought, wow, that's pretty lucky. We saw a colony of nesting fish.

And then they carried on for hour after hour, for the entire four hours of the dive, where we managed to film about six kilometres of seafloor, and there was nothing but fish. Wow. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. When I think of nests, I'm thinking of bird nests, but that's not what you saw, I imagine. No, but it's somehow a little bit similar to the bird's nest, or the penguins that are from the local area, where penguins gather together in these colonies. There's not a few penguins straggling around at the edges. The penguins are in one big, dense clump. There's either no penguins or all the penguins, and it was the same with these fish nests.

when you've reached the colony from filming the seafloor around the area, there's no nests, there's no indications of any nests, and then there's solid seafloor coverage of nests at about one nest per four square meters at that density across what we estimate to be 240 square kilometers of seafloor. Now, do you have any idea of why they would bunch up like this? Yes, so there's several reasons why I think they're bunching up like this. The bunch happened to correspond spatially with a, tongue of warm water that's pushed up from the deeper area in the Vidal Sea. Now, the way that the circulation patterns work in this area is that cold water is subducting down into the

bottom of the ocean and pushing this warm water up. It's the start of the global circulation pattern in the oceans. We found that this tongue of warm water matched exactly where the fish nests were. So you were in the zero degrees at Antarctic water and then at two degrees, as soon as you went into this tongue of water, the fish nest started and it was like a knife in the sand. It was exactly the same location. That is cool. Yes, amazing. And I do not think, however, that this two degrees warmer means it's so much more attractive for the fish.

I think that these fish are navigating to this location to find each other. I think there's such a huge amount of fish here. They're coming from other areas of the Vidal Sea and potentially the larger Antarctic. And they're meeting up here, reproducing here, laying their eggs here. And there's another supporting piece of information for that. I said we were an interdisciplinary cruise, and we had an exorption. experts on the water column two. And they found in the surface waters above this colony area, small zooplankton, small animals that are living on the photosynthetic algae just underneath the ice.

And we know from some work our American colleagues did actually that these fish like to come to the surface after they hatch and the juveniles are often found at the ice water interface. So we hypothesize that these fish are meeting here, reproducing. And when they hatch, the young are going back up to the ice interface and they're living off the zoo plankton that lives off the algae that manages to photosynthesize through this ice. Amazing. So if they're living off the algae, what's living off them? What are eating those fish? Yeah, so basically these tiny little zoo plankton, these tiny little swimming animals are living off the algae. And then these fish are living off that. But then, of course, these fish,

as they get bigger, become attractive prey in themselves. And we now believe that the Weddle seal, this handsome seal that lives in the area is actually eating these fish. Now the reason we think this is because ourselves in Germany and our colleagues in America, South Africa and England have been tagging Weddle seals for the last decade. And what these tags do is they tell you

where the seals are diving and how long they're spending at different depths. And every time a seal comes back up onto the ice after it's been diving, it sends that information to a satellite. And what we managed to determine is that the great majority of Weddle seals are actually operating in this area where the fishes are nesting and have been doing for much of the last decade. So that's really interesting.

Wow, that's tremendous. You know, it just reminds me how little we know, right, about what's going on in the deep seas. Absolutely. I think that's really true. I think that we've probably filmed only 1% of the Redal Sea, sea, floor, anything like this detail and even less in some other areas of the world ocean. We're also entering a new period of ocean exploration where robotic submarines can go off and film areas and where, like in this case, towed vehicles can take high-resolution imagery from above while moving quite quickly, so we really can explore more than we have been able to until maybe 20 years ago. So I think we are making discoveries,

and I would be very surprised if there's not sizable finds like this elsewhere in the world ocean, just waiting to be discovered. Well, Dr. Purser, we wish you great luck. This has been fascinating as someone who's visited Antarctica many years ago and watched Weddell Seals. Just amazing. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you for having me on the show. It's been brilliant. Thanks.

Dr. Orton Purser, he's a postdoc, deep-sea biologist and ecologist, working for the Veginar Hemholt Center in Marine and Polar Research in Germany. And that's about all the time we have for this hour. Here's Diana Montana, with some of the folks who worked on this week's program. Thanks, Ira. Christy Taylor, Kathleen Davis, and Shoshana Buxbaum are our radio producers. Andy Nero is our individual giving manager, and I'm Diane. Diana Montana, Outreach Manager. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Diana. B.J. Leaderman composed our theme music, and of course, you can subscribe

to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great weekend. I'm Irafledo.