Science Friday - Syphilis Cases Up 80% Since 2018 | The Largest Deep-Sea Coral Reef In The World

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

There has been a boom of syphilis cases, including a 180% increase in congenital syphilis cases, despite other STI levels staying stable. Also, the world's largest deep-sea reef stretches for hundreds of miles in near-freezing waters and total darkness, but it’s bustling with life.Syphilis Cases Are Up 80% Since 2018Syphilis is rearing its ugly head again in the United States. A new report on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a shocking statistic: Cases of syphilis are up by nearly 80% among adults since 2018. Congenital syphilis cases, which occur when an infection is passed from parent to child during pregnancy, are up by more than 180%.Strangely, cases of other STIs have stayed about the same or decreased in the same timeframe. Rachel Feltman, host of “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins Ira to talk about this and other science stories from the week, including the first cases of transmitted Alzheimer’s disease, and why closing the toilet seat doesn’t keep aerosolized viruses from contaminating other bathroom surfaces.Revealing The Largest Deep-Sea Coral Reef In The WorldScientists recently discovered the largest known deep-sea coral reef in the world. It’s called Million Mounds, and it stretches from Miami, Florida, to Charleston, South Carolina, covering around 6.4 million acres of the seafloor.Unlike the colorful reefs found in sunlit tropical waters, this one is mostly made up of a stony coral that’s usually found from about 650 to 3,300 feet underwater—depths where it’s very cold and pitch black.Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Erik Cordes, marine biologist and professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who collaborated on the study. They discuss what makes deep-sea corals different from those found in shallower waters, why it’s important to map them, and what it’s like to visit one in a submarine.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Did you know that corals can live deep underwater where it's pitch black and freezing cold? The truth is that there are actually more species of corals in deep water than there are in shallow water. It's Friday, February 2nd, and happy thanks Friday, y'all. I'm SciFri producer Rasha Iridi. I had no idea that corals could live thousands of feet underwater. I always imagine them in shallow, warm waters with the sunlight shining down on them. But deep sea coral reefs are huge. In fact, scientists just revealed the largest one in the world. Later, we'll learn how scientists mapped it and what makes deep sea corals so special.

But first, let's check in on this week's biggest science stories. Here's Iroflis. Cephalis is on the rise in the U.S. A new federal report on sexually transmitted infections in Americans revealed syphilis cases rose 80% between 2018 and 2020. with total cases being more than 200,000. That's the highest count in the U.S. since, what, 1950? But while the syphilis epidemic is growing, other STI rates are down. Joining me to help explain this and other science news of the week is Rachel Feldman, host of the podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. Welcome back, Rachel.

Thanks for having me, Ira. All right, this case of sexually transmitted infections and symptoms, and syphilis, what's going on here? Yeah, so as you said, we've seen an 80% rise since 2018. And these are the 22 numbers, which just got released. And the CDC was very clear that they suspect 2023 was worse. Obviously, this is troubling, but it's not surprising. You know, for the past few years, every time these reports have come out, the CDC has

been sounding the alarm on syphilis. They think this is due to a decrease in condom use, but also largely due to issues in access to good health care, you know, social and economic conditions, stigma. So a lot of this has more to do with deep systemic issues than with anything actually related to sexual behavior. What do you mean by deep systemic issues? Something about differences in people or why? Yeah. So, you know, we're seeing people having a real lack of access to reliable, consistent, affordable health care. And, you know, with syphilis, we do see the worst searches are in the group known as men who have sex with men, which is, you know, largely probably tied to a decrease in condom use. But we also see rising rates

in people of color, in women of color, especially. So that public health researchers think really comes down to not just social stigma, but just a question of whether people have a regular access to checkups and, you know, the kind of relationships with their doctors where they're having conversations about screening for syphilis and other STIs. Well, there are, speaking of other STIs, how are they comparing to the syphilis cases? Yeah, so the good news is that chlamydia has finally leveled out and gonorrhea has actually gone down for the first time in a decade. And a few years ago, you know, gonorrhea was really what the CDC was concerned about.

They were very worried that we were going to see, you know, a surge in antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea that we were going to run out of antibiotics that worked for it. So it's great news that those cases are going down. But those are, community and gonorrhea, you know, those are very likely to cause immediate and noticeable symptoms that don't go away until you go get treatment for them. Cephalis often is pretty easy to ignore. the initial symptoms tend to go away, and it causes issues later, particularly with congenital syphilis, which is when children are born infected with syphilis. And that has surged by more than 900 percent. Wow. Yeah. And that's very concerning and also totally avoidable, because all that has to happen is that people get screened and they get treated with antibiotics. So again, that's

a real indicator that this is an issue with disparities in health care. as opposed to a few years ago, every time the CDC report came out, people would be like, is Tinder the problem? So I'm glad we're getting away from that talking point, but this is definitely a concerning thing. Well, speaking of concerning, scientists have documented the first ever case of Alzheimer's disease being transmitted. What's happening here? Yeah. So the important thing to note about this before we get into it is that there's absolutely no way that people will catch Alzheimer's disease from other people who have it. You know, no one has to be concerned about providing care or sharing space with someone who has Alzheimer's disease. But this is a very weird, specific

medical phenomenon that could actually help us learn more about how Alzheimer's works. Basically, it turns out that some people who were treated with human growth hormone taken from the brains of human cadavers, which is a procedure that was banned 40 years ago. And in retrospect, seems like obviously a bad idea, but we've learned a lot about neurological disease since 40 years ago. It turns out some people who received this treatment may have been sort of seated with the beta amylode proteins that lead to Alzheimer's, and that led to them developing very unusual cases of Alzheimer's, some as young as in their 30s. But the fact that this happened, you know, through the transmission of brain material from another human could actually help us better understand

the mechanisms that cause Alzheimer's in all patients. Oh, that's cool. We'll learn something from this. Yes, hopefully. Yeah. Let's go on to your next story. And for this one, we need to head into the Wayback Machine to go back in time to when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals live side by side.

Now, we knew that that happens, right? but there's more information about just how long this period lasted. Yeah, new evidence from this cave in what's now central Germany shows that humans, homo sapiens, rather, were in northern Europe 45,000 years ago, which is several thousand years earlier than we had evidence of our ancestors being there before. And we know that Neanderthals were there during that time. So this basically pushes back the date of when we were. we know that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were hanging out in the same space by a few thousand

years. And it's just continuing to chip away at this, at this point pretty defunct idea that like humans hit the scene and Neanderthals were toast like immediately. You know, we know, of course, that actually there was a lot of interbreeding that, you know, Neanderthals exist in our own genome to this day. But this shows like actually there were probably several thousand years where these two species existed in the same region. What was the detective work here? How did scientists figure this out? So they were able to examine some bone fragments and look at the mitochondrial DNA,

so the maternal line of these ancient humans. And they were able to show definitively that these were homo sapiens in this cave. And in fact, there were no signs of Neanderthals in this particular cave at all. And what's cool about that is that there were some particular spear tip fragments that were found there. that scientists have long assumed were created solely by Neanderthals during this time. But this is an indication that Homo sapiens were also making them. So that could actually help them find more caves to maybe examine DNA a bit more closely because maybe there were homo sapiens there instead of or in addition to Neanderthals.

All right. Let's move on to this next story. It's really interesting. most of us are used to typing just about every day. But it turns out now there's evidence that the old-fashioned way writing by hand may be better at improving learning and memory. Yeah, it could be. There's still a lot to learn, but basically they slapped some electrodes onto some student's heads and had them write words by hand and also type them. And they were looking at, you know, what parts of the brain got activated during those two activities. And handwriting

activated, like almost the whole brain and different parts of the brain we're talking to each other, like the visual and sensory and motor cortices. But typing was like a very sort of like flat, simple activity in terms of, you know, what parts of the brain were lighting up. And the researchers think this is because when you think about it, writing involves making lots of different movements. There's a lot of coordination involved. There's fine motor. You have to recall how different letters are shaped and how to make them and how to make them, you know, one against the other in different sequences. So it's actually very complicated. And typing is like a pretty repetitive motion. So it's not clear yet. We don't actually have evidence that this activity

translates to better memory, better learning. But there are some other studies that have tried to show that. So it's building a body of evidence that, you know, writing does lead to better recall. There are a couple caveats. The study did use cursive and the researchers were quick to point out they don't actually have evidence that cursive is better for your brain than other forms of writing. They just decided to use cursive because they like cursive as someone who struggled with cursive as a child and really can't write it. I appreciate it that they made that clarification. And they also pointed out, you know, they are not arguing that typing is bad. I think one of the researchers said, obviously if you're writing a whole essay,

you should type it. Don't write that by hand. That's unless you really want to. But maybe in terms of writing notes or journal entries or things that you really want to recall later, maybe it's worth trying to write them my hand and see if that makes a difference for you. They're not saying to kids, hey, step away from the computers and iPads totally. Exactly. Yeah. Right, right, right. I'm figuring that our next door is going to give me a new use for that pack of disinfectant wipes left over from COVID

because a study found that closing the toilet seat before flushing doesn't really reduce cross-contamination on bathroom services? Didn't we think that did? Wasn't there a study years ago that said, yes, you should do that? Yeah. So, you know, as somebody who's like written about a lot of, you know, poop-related science research over the years, whatever a study like this comes out, people freak out. And I always remind people, you know, there are poop particles everywhere.

It's not just the stuff that comes into a toilet. So I know that disturbs some people, but microbes are, we can't get away from them. However, that doesn't mean you can't do what you can to limit, you know, your toilet spewing as many microbes as possible. So, yeah, these researchers, they basically seated a toilet with this microorganism that's really easy to track and identify and then flushed and were like examined the whole room to see where things went. And yeah, unfortunately, it seems like.

like the gaps in a closed toilet seat are plenty for microbes and micro droplets to get out. There's a lot of airflow that happens when a toilet flushes. So there's a lot of force. But the good news for people who are freaked out about this is that they did find that rigorously cleaning a toilet bowl with a brush and, you know, an antimicrobial cleaning agent like Lysol did reduce the contamination quite a lot. So if you don't want this to happen in your bathroom, you should use disinfectant in the toilet bowl and the toilet tank. And especially if, you know, you are sharing space with someone who, you know, has neurovirus or is otherwise sick with a gastrointestinal ailment.

So, yeah, you know, disinfectant does help disinfect. That's a great takeaway from this study. Yeah, well, I moved my towels away from the toilet years ago when we first heard about this. Yeah, that's fair enough. This is great news, Rachel. You always bring us great stuff. Thanks for taking time to be with us today. Thanks so much for having me, Ira. Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast, the weirdest thing I learned this week. Scientists recently discovered the largest known deep-sea coral reef in the world. It's called Million Mounds, and it stretches all the way from Miami to Charleston, South Carolina. It's mostly made up of a stony coral that's usually found deep, deep down, from about 650 feet to 3,300 feet deep.

And when you're that far underwater, it is very cold and very dark, and very unlike the colorful tropical coral reefs we're used to seeing shining in sunlit waters. So how different are deep sea corals? Why map them? What can we learn from them? Let's find out. Rick Cordes is a marine biologist and professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. I'm glad to be here. You know, I've been around corals my whole life as a scuba diver. Don't they need sunlight for the photosynthetic zoal anhylae that live in their tissues and sort of feed them? Yeah, most people think of those when you're talking about corals.

But the truth is that there are actually more species of corals in deep water without those photosynthetic symbionts than there are in shallow water. Really? Yeah, that's true. And based on some of this recent work, we're now learning that the coral reefs that exist in the deep ocean are actually more widespread and more common than shallow water coral reefs. That's amazing. I had no idea. Okay, so how do you get down there and describe for me what you see when you get down there? Well, there's a few different ways to get down there. My favorite way, of course, is in a crude submersible where you would get inside and take a ride down to these depths. We got to survey a few of these sites that were discussed in this paper for the first time using the Alvin submersible from the Woods Hole Oceanographic.

It's probably the most famous submersible in the world. It was the one that dove on the Titanic, the one that discovered the hydrothermal vents for the first time. time. And you got to ride on it. Wow. Yeah, I've been lucky enough to ride in a few times. And actually visiting this site was one of my favorite and most memorable dives of all time. What does it look like? So we started about 750 meters and we climbed up almost 100 meters. That's 300 feet or about the height of the Statue of Liberty during this dive. And we were on a coral mound the entire time. So these corals form this sort of loose framework. They lay down their skeleton just like the shallow water corals do.

It's calcium carbonate. And it builds up over thousands, tens of thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands of years, to this massive mound that is just topped with this beautiful, thriving, white coral. The different coral species that live down there can be red or red or purple or all sorts of different colors. The one that creates this habitat, the main builder of these reefs, is called Lophilia, and it's naturally white. That is cool. What's the job of these deep sea corals in this ecosystem? They are relying on the food that rains down from the surface. It's actually snowing down is more accurate. We call it marine snow, because it looks like.

this gently falling snow when you're down there. And that's bringing all the food from the surface down to feed the base of the food web in these systems. So they're feeding on this material and the little crustaceans that are feeding on that little shrimp and these things called amphipods that are swimming around. And then that goes up to small fish and then even larger fish. And we have this whole big food web down there. They're taking. this food that's snowing down from the surface and they're processing it, they're sequestering a lot of the carbon that comes from surface waters down in the deep sea to build these massive reefs and they're recycling a lot of nutrients that go back into the water and this is right below

the Gulf Stream. So those nutrients go up into the Gulf Stream and are carried away and fuel surface productivity downstream and produce the nutrients. that we need to feed the fish in shallow waters that we go out and catch. What kinds of animals do you see around there? What kinds of fish? Well, there's lots of little, you know, crabs and worms and everything that are kind of hiding in the coral framework, just like you would see when you're scuba diving on a shallow reef. But every once in a while, you get one of these larger fish coming through. During my dive and Alvin, the sub was actually attacked by a swordfish.

Really? What do you mean? The swordfish tried to attack this up? Yeah, that happens from time to time. With all this light and noise that you're creating in the submarine, it kind of startles them. And they are defending their turf. And they can actually hurt themselves attacking the submarine. So the pilot, my friend Bruce Strickrott, was actually quick enough to give the swordfish a little tap on the tail with the manipulator to scare him off. And he went swimming away very, very rapidly after that. I'll bet.

He didn't expect it to hear a big point. thing like you there. Yeah. But your work was involved mostly in revealing just how large million mounds is. And was it surprising to see just how big it was. Oh, it was totally amazing to see how big this site is. We've known that there were corals in this area that we refer to as the Blake Plateau between Florida and South Carolina.

We've known that there were coral sites there for a few decades, going back even about a hundred years. But we had no idea until we got to use some of the modern mapping tools that we now have, that we were able to see just how extensive it was. And we thought of these as sort of individual separate coral sites and this sort of patchwork. And now we understand that they're all completely connected and it's just this one continuous coral habitat for like 100 miles. You know, I can picture how you map the land. How do you map a coral reef? Yeah, so you can map the land from satellite and you can map the surface of the moon or Mars from satellites. Those maps are actually higher resolution than our map of the ocean floor. Really? Yeah, so the only way to get a good high resolution map of the ocean floor is to

actually take a ship out there and run it back and forth like you're mowing the lawn and collect sonar information. So now we have what's called a multi-beam echo sounder. So instead of just one burst of sound that you're sending to the seafloor, we can send dozens of them at the same time and then tell how long it takes for that sound to get from the ship down to the seafloor and bounce back. And then we can tell the distance, and that can give you a good three-dimensional view of the seafloor.

Why is the reef called Million Mounds? Are there a million mounds? Not quite a million, but there are over 10,000 mounds. One of the cool things that was done in this study was Derek Sowers is the lead author. As part of the mapping effort, he compiled all of those data into one big map, and then he wrote an algorithm that could count those peaks, because you could imagine counting 10,000 peaks by hand would take quite a while. So this algorithm that he put together can tell the difference between a mound and a mound,

longer ridge feature and the slopes of a mound versus the peak. And we went out with the submersibles to try and test some of those ideas. Is this part of a bigger effort to map the seafloor? I mean, we really don't know very much about what's really down there deep, do we? No, that's true. This is a part of a much bigger effort to map the seafloor. It's called Seabed 2030. And it's an international effort to get a complete map of the ocean floor by 2030. It's a massive undertaking. You're trying to map the entire planet. And we're at about 25% of the oceans mapped right now. Just 25%. Just 25%. Yeah, that's right. But that's pretty good because only a few years ago, we only knew what about 5% of it looked like. So these maps are getting better and better. And we're actually on

pace to achieve this mapping effort of the entire globe by 2030. Now, the coral reefs near the surface where we live are being affected by climate change. Is that true of these deep sea corals? They are definitely vulnerable to climate change. We've watched the temperature rise in the deep ocean, and it's actually absorbed a lot of the heat from the shallow ocean and sort of done us a favor by building a big reservoir of that heat and keeping it out of the atmosphere. But we're starting to document what are referred to now as marine heat waves that are going by. And we saw some of these heat waves come by where the temperature would go from 40 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit over a couple of hours. And that doesn't sound too extreme to us, but these corals live in such a constant environment in the deep ocean that that,

that kind of a temperature change is a big shock to them. And they might be able to deal with one or two of those heat waves, but as they increase in frequency and start affecting them more often, then they get more and more stressed out. You know, for most people, these corals are out of sight and maybe out of mind because we don't see them. Tell us why we should care so much about these reefs. People really are not aware that they're deep-sea corals.

I mean, that's something even when I was in college that I didn't know. I learned about that much later. And it is really amazing how widespread they are. They do a lot of the same things that shallow water coral reefs do for us. And, you know, they host this really high biodiversity. And there are all sorts of natural products that come out of the marine environment that we're looking at for anti-cancer drugs and antibiotics. and all sorts of other pharmaceutical purposes.

But they're also regenerating all of the nutrients that fuel the entire Gulfstream ecosystem. A lot of the nitrates and phosphates, the things that are in fertilizer, that's what these coral reefs are giving off. And we measured higher concentrations of those nutrients over the reef than we've measured anywhere else in the North Atlantic. Interesting.

They are really fueling that system. And because we now are starting, to understand that these deep water coral reefs are even more widespread than shallow water coral reefs. It just shows you how important they really are to the global ecosystem in these global cycles that we're really just beginning to learn about. Well, Dr. Cordes, you have certainly taught us a lot. I've been scuba diving for years and had no idea about these deep water corals. So thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Dr. Eric Cordes is a marine biologist and professor at Temple University that's in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

That's it for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen, including John Dancosky. Kathleen Davis. Dee Petersmith. Robin Casmer. Join us on Monday to learn about CRISPR's potential to cure genetic diseases. Have a great weekend. I'm Russia Aureti.