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per month. Slows. mintmobile.com. Hello

1:20

and welcome to Health Check from the

1:22

BBC. I'm Claudia Hammond and joining me

1:24

today is Matt Fox, who's professor of

1:26

global health and epidemiology at Boston University

1:28

in the US. How are you doing,

1:30

Matt? Doing very well. Well,

1:33

today we're looking back in time to

1:35

ancient Egypt as a skull appears to

1:37

have the first evidence of

1:39

surgery to treat cancer. And we're looking

1:41

forwards to a time when we might

1:43

be able to get vaccinated against flu

1:45

and COVID with just the one injection.

1:48

And that's something you've got for us,

1:50

Matt. That's right. We'll be looking

1:52

at a new jab for COVID and influenza

1:54

that has advanced in clinical trials. And

1:57

the dance classes for older people to

1:59

prevent falls. Now, on HealthCheck, we

2:01

like to dissect the latest scientific studies to

2:03

try to work out what's going on, and

2:05

there is a perfect candidate for us this

2:08

week. You might have seen headlines

2:10

like this, Internet addiction alters

2:12

brain chemistry in young people.

2:15

Internet addiction may harm the teen

2:17

brain MRI study finds, and even

2:19

internet addiction rewires the brains of

2:22

teens and could lead to other

2:24

addictions. Now, in fact, this

2:26

isn't just one new study. The

2:29

paper that's come out is reviewing 12 different

2:31

studies conducted in Asia, in

2:33

which teenagers with internet addiction

2:35

went into scanners so their

2:37

brain activity could be monitored.

2:40

Now, it's worth noting that the

2:42

international classification of diseases doesn't include

2:45

internet addiction as an official diagnosis,

2:47

though there is something called internet

2:49

gaming disorder. But I wanted

2:52

to know whether this paper was really telling

2:54

us what the headlines said that

2:56

the internet is harming teenagers' brains.

2:58

So I asked Dr Sarah King,

3:01

who's a molecular neuroscientist at the

3:03

University of Sussex in the UK,

3:06

if these 12 studies are even all looking

3:08

at the same thing. They're telling

3:10

us different stories. So all of those

3:12

12 studies are looking at... They

3:14

may have defined addiction in different ways to

3:17

look at their participants, but also they

3:19

might be looking at different parts of

3:21

the brain and asking different questions. And

3:24

what are they telling us in those studies

3:26

is happening to teenagers' brains if

3:29

they have this so-called internet

3:31

addiction? So they're showing us

3:33

that those brains look different to the

3:35

control participants who don't have... who are

3:37

in healthy use of the internet. They

3:40

look different, so different parts of the brains

3:42

are activated at different times during the fMRI.

3:45

Now, in a way, that sounds worrying. Is

3:47

that worrying, though? I don't think so.

3:49

I think that if people have been playing

3:51

on the internet and then they'll come into

3:53

the lab, then their brain might be in

3:55

the short term looking quite different to someone

3:57

who's not been on the internet. know

4:00

whether it's causal, that their brains are different

4:02

and that's what's made them go on the

4:04

internet or the short-term impact of them being

4:06

on the internet having an effect on their

4:08

brain activity. And even if it just changed

4:10

their brains in the longer term, is that

4:12

necessarily a bad thing? Does

4:14

that necessarily mean it's harmful? I mean, doesn't everything

4:17

we do change our brains? Yeah. So you learn

4:19

to use a new phone and that changes it

4:21

from what you did when you used your old

4:23

phone. Yeah, and so things can be reversible so

4:25

it's not necessarily going to be permanent changes to

4:28

the brain either. So how did we get to

4:30

this point where this paper that isn't saying that

4:32

there's loads and loads of harms ends up with

4:34

headlines suggesting there is? I

4:36

think it's that at first the paper

4:38

has a section on limitations at the

4:40

end but also the possibilities and the

4:43

direction that that research might go in and

4:45

then those things might have made it into a

4:47

press release and then the newspapers

4:49

are going to make more of things

4:51

that are exciting and sound

4:53

bad so there'll be a bit of

4:55

scaremongering. So Matt, it sounds as

4:57

though the headlines have been over-edding this one a

5:00

bit. I think that's exactly

5:02

right. I mean, sometimes when these big

5:04

studies come out and get lots of

5:06

attention, the findings

5:08

that seem most scary or counterintuitive are often

5:10

the ones that get picked up but in

5:12

this case it seems a bit overblown. But

5:15

you have a new study for us with data from 168

5:19

countries collected over many years which is telling

5:21

a rather different story. What did they look at in this

5:23

one? Yeah, so this was a

5:26

study that looked at Gallup world poll data

5:28

and as you say this is nationally representative

5:30

data of adults across 168 countries

5:33

and what they did was they asked people

5:35

about whether or not they had access to

5:37

the internet and in particular access to the

5:40

internet on a mobile phone and

5:42

then compared that with data from

5:44

questions that they asked about different

5:46

measures of well-being so life satisfaction,

5:48

negative and positive experiences, social life

5:51

satisfaction and when they put all

5:53

that data together along with some

5:55

really interesting statistical methods they

5:57

found that on average people

8:00

medicine. Dr Edgard Camaros,

8:02

a paleopathologist at the University of

8:04

Santiago de Compostela in Spain, has

8:06

found evidence that the skulls showed

8:09

signs of cancer and one of

8:11

them of treatment for

8:13

that cancer. I asked him

8:15

what was known before this about the

8:17

medical knowledge of cancer in ancient Egypt.

8:19

So we have the Edwin Smith Papyrus,

8:21

which are about 3,600 years old. And

8:23

this is a compilation of

8:27

48 cases. And the

8:30

very interesting case is number

8:32

45, where actually they describe

8:34

breast cancer. So in

8:36

ancient Egyptians, they recognize

8:39

what we nowadays call

8:41

cancer. However, they

8:43

call it something like tumors.

8:45

And the interesting thing is that when they

8:48

say what might have been the potential treatment,

8:50

they say there's no cure. So

8:52

they deal with that. And

8:55

they recognize that there was no treatment.

8:57

And that seems a bit different from what

9:00

you seem to have seen. So you've studied

9:02

two skulls from different time periods. What were

9:04

you looking for? So we are

9:06

very interested in how cancer evolves. So what we've

9:08

been looking at is in different places around the

9:10

world, looking how these

9:13

disease reflects some bones. And

9:16

specifically on that ancient Egyptian schools

9:18

from the Dagworth Collection in Cambridge,

9:20

we saw that two individuals, a

9:22

male and a female, and

9:24

the female suffering from a possible

9:27

osteosarcoma, and the male

9:29

suffering from a metastatic

9:32

cancer that comes from a

9:35

nasopharyngeal carcinoma. And

9:37

the difference and the interesting thing

9:39

that we've discovered is that on

9:41

top of those secondary tumors, metastatic

9:44

tumors, we found some cut

9:46

marks, some incisions that

9:49

is the very clear evidence that

9:51

more than 4,000 years

9:53

ago, ancient Egyptians were

9:55

performing some kind of oncological

9:58

surgery. So let's start. them

14:00

or possibly after they've died to try

14:02

to understand them better. Does

14:04

this change then our understanding

14:06

of how medicine was used in

14:08

ancient cultures and societies? Yes,

14:11

it's actually a milestone in the history of

14:13

medicine because it shows us that more than

14:15

4,000 years ago, maybe 4,500 years ago, these

14:17

people were approaching these diseases from

14:24

a very modern perspective, which is

14:26

trying to develop some

14:28

kind of experimental treatment or

14:31

at least trying to understand it

14:33

from the point of view of human

14:36

biology and from the

14:38

point of view of the biology of this

14:40

disease. But we still have

14:42

to take into account that ancient medicine

14:45

was also guided by magic,

14:47

rituals, etc. Are there

14:49

more skulls from that time that you might be able to examine?

14:52

We are looking at more skulls, but these are actually

14:55

the only ones that we've been able to see the

14:57

scot marks that are revealing this oncological

15:00

surgery. But I'm pretty sure that now

15:02

we know that this was a reality,

15:04

many other examples may appear. So

15:06

that's the interesting thing about it,

15:09

that now we know that at

15:11

the time they were dealing with

15:13

these diseases surgically. Dr. Edgard

15:15

Camaros. Matt, I thought this was so interesting. What

15:17

do you make of it? I

15:19

think it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, I don't think

15:21

it's surprising to find that

15:23

long time ago people were trying to

15:25

deal with health conditions because we know

15:27

that for a long time people have

15:29

sought ways to prevent disease and to

15:32

treat disease. But to find out that

15:34

they were doing something as sophisticated as

15:36

trying to do surgeries for cancer is

15:38

really, really impressive and surprising. Yeah. Now,

15:41

there was news this week that a

15:43

combined vaccine against flu and COVID aimed

15:45

at protecting against both diseases in a

15:48

single shot has passed advanced trials. It's

15:50

made by the company Moderna who developed

15:52

one of the first COVID vaccines. Matt,

15:55

what do we know about this new

15:57

vaccine? Yeah. So this is a

15:59

really exciting thing for those of us

16:01

who hate getting shots, because those are

16:03

two respiratory diseases that are going to

16:05

require probably yearly updates. And so what

16:07

they did was they put these two

16:09

shots together into a single vaccine and

16:12

put it through the phase three clinical

16:14

trial process that we go to to

16:16

approve these things. They had about 8,000

16:18

volunteers and they

16:20

showed that this vaccine produced

16:22

very effective antibody responses to

16:24

both conditions. And what

16:26

would be the benefit of having them both at

16:29

once? Is it just convenience and fewer spikes

16:31

in your arm? That's the

16:33

biggest benefit, right? The idea that people

16:35

often don't get their flu vaccines or

16:37

their updated COVID vaccines. So if you

16:39

can combine them into one, you increase

16:42

the chances of getting more people vaccinated.

16:44

It does become tricky because you have

16:46

to make sure that the vaccines don't

16:48

in any way interfere with each other.

16:50

But in this case, they both look

16:52

to be quite effective. Yeah, because sometimes

16:54

you hear people saying, oh, we shouldn't have all your vaccinations

16:57

at once because that's too much for the body to cope

16:59

with. But is there any evidence for that? There

17:01

really is not a lot of evidence for that.

17:03

But that is something that they look at carefully

17:05

with trials. And obviously, it's something that we care

17:08

deeply about because if they were interference

17:10

between these two vaccines, then you would

17:12

lose the benefit. In this case, we

17:14

just don't see that. Thanks for that, Matt.

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get this dinner party started. Now

18:23

when it comes to injuries, falls are the

18:25

second most common cause of death. And of

18:27

course older people are more at risk as

18:29

their balance and their muscles become weaker with

18:31

age. But there are ways

18:33

to reduce that risk. A

18:36

project in the UK called Dance to

18:38

Health is tackling the problem by inviting

18:40

older people to take part in dance

18:42

classes. And research from Sheffield

18:44

Hallam University has shown that it works.

18:47

Not only reducing falls and saving

18:49

on healthcare costs, but providing a

18:52

way of socialising for those who

18:54

might feel isolated. For HealthCheck our

18:56

reporter Bob Hockenhall has been to a class

18:58

to see how it's done. Good,

19:01

so deep breath in. And

19:05

out. At the Chinese Community

19:07

Centre in Birmingham, the UK's second

19:09

city, a group of 12 elderly

19:12

people are warming up, getting ready

19:14

for their weekly dance class. The

19:16

participants in the class called Dance to

19:19

Health have either had a fall or

19:21

are considered to be in danger of

19:23

having one. Just be careful you

19:25

don't move it too quickly. One

19:27

of the class members is Kei Keqiang,

19:29

who moved to the UK from Hong

19:31

Kong a year ago. Because

19:34

actually I have some

19:36

health problems, hypertension, high

19:39

cholesterol etc. So I

19:42

want to do some exercise regularly.

19:45

So actually this is a

19:47

good way to help me

19:49

to do regular exercise in

19:52

weekly basis. So as

19:54

long as it's got curves in the shape,

19:56

that's great. The exercise is

19:58

not very stressful. But

20:00

it helped me to move

20:02

our joints, the hands, the

20:05

legs and the whole body.

20:08

So I think it helped me

20:10

to keep me more

20:12

balanced, letting

20:15

me have less chance

20:17

to be full, to have accidents

20:19

in the home etc. The

20:22

natural ageing process means older people

20:24

are at greater risk of having

20:26

a fall due to balance problems,

20:29

muscle weakness and poor vision. And

20:31

if it happens, a fall can

20:33

be a serious threat to an

20:36

older person's health, wellbeing and independence,

20:38

causing pain, distress and loss

20:40

of confidence. Roughly half

20:43

of falls in older individuals result in

20:45

an injury such as a broken

20:47

bone or a head injury, but

20:49

they can also be catastrophic. Falls

20:52

are the most common cause of injury

20:54

related deaths in people over 75. The

20:57

key to dance to health is

20:59

prevention. Try and

21:02

find that turn. The instructor

21:04

of the Chinese Community Centre

21:06

class is Jenny Murphy, a

21:08

former ballet dancer now trained

21:10

in postural stability. We

21:12

focus on balance, strength,

21:15

mobility, all those things

21:17

that are really important to help stop falls

21:19

from happening. And then as

21:21

a dance artist I will put my creative

21:23

way into it. And as I'm a ballet

21:26

dancer often I'll have that kind of classical

21:28

ballet side to it. Is it a

21:30

case that you sneak in the

21:32

bits of the exercise that are important, but

21:35

perhaps a bit boring and cover them up

21:37

with more fun dance moves?

21:39

So totally that's exactly what we're doing. We're

21:42

trying to, as you say, smuggle those exercises

21:44

into the classes so that

21:46

almost they don't feel like they're doing the

21:49

exercises because they've got music and they've

21:51

got some creative outlook to kind of

21:53

express at the same time. So yes, underneath

21:56

every kind of activity that we'll do, there

21:59

will be some... some physio-based exercises within

22:01

that that we use. Excellent,

22:04

sweet. Can

22:08

you get the knees a little higher? I

22:12

always try and get a sequence

22:14

where we're traveling around the space. So

22:17

something like just a balance on one leg,

22:19

which you could do while the kettle's boiling if

22:21

you wanted to. But we add it in

22:23

a kind of fun way that we're traveling around

22:25

the space. We're meeting other people, we're making

22:27

shapes, we're joining up. And

22:29

it just adds that kind of social element as

22:31

well. Among

22:40

those at today's class is

22:42

79-year-old Lisa Chen, who has

22:44

had a fall. She

22:46

speaks very little English, so through

22:48

an interpreter she tells me what

22:50

happened. She actually didn't know

22:52

what happened on that day.

22:56

She's going to train the

22:58

bus at the co-station,

23:00

and when she walk through the

23:02

co-station, she fall down. And you

23:05

come to these classes, how do you think that

23:07

helps you? When

23:10

I walk in, I feel more balancing

23:13

and I can walk more

23:15

stable. The classes are

23:17

run by ESOP, a social enterprise

23:20

company and charity which solves problems

23:22

in society through the arts. Kevin

23:25

Fenton is the Chief Executive. Falls Prevention

23:27

has been identified as a major priority

23:30

for the NHS. It is

23:32

a major issue in

23:34

terms of older people's admissions

23:36

into emergency departments. It's

23:38

an issue in terms of long

23:40

stay pressures on the

23:42

NHS. So it's in everybody's interest

23:44

to prevent falls, and estimates

23:47

suggest that we save billions of pounds

23:49

every year if this programme was rolled

23:51

out nationally at its scale. 21

24:02

to 2022 financial year were related

24:04

to falls among patients aged 65

24:06

and over. Dance

24:08

to Health has been shown to be

24:10

effective in falls prevention, so

24:12

it is an amazing intervention

24:15

which brings dance artists together

24:17

with older people in communities

24:19

to help to reduce falls. Research

24:22

by Sheffield Helen University has found

24:24

that Dance to Health participants are

24:28

58% less likely to fall in a given year

24:30

and much less likely to require

24:32

hospitalisation if they do fall, thereby

24:35

saving the health and social care

24:37

system in the UK millions of

24:39

pounds. The findings also show

24:41

96% of

24:44

participants experience improved mental

24:47

wellbeing. Teacher

24:50

Jenny says it's rewarding for her to

24:52

observe the improvements in the class members

24:54

as the weeks go by. Some

25:26

of it is purely kind of confidence as well,

25:28

they can get so stuck

25:31

in that actually they can't do it anymore when

25:33

actually physically if they get up and try it

25:35

and they have the confidence to do it, it

25:38

can happen. But it's not just about the

25:40

physical side, there's the whole kind of mental,

25:44

kind of the social side of

25:46

things, the idea of meeting other people

25:49

in groups, being very social within the

25:51

sessions. At the moment, Dance

25:53

to Health, which is funded by local

25:55

councils and the National Health Service, is

25:57

only operating in certain parts of the UK. UK.

26:01

As the benefits become more apparent, teachers

26:04

hope other areas will take up

26:06

the idea, improving the health of

26:08

the elderly and helping to reduce

26:10

the cost of falls to society.

26:15

Bob Hockenhall reporting, this is Health Check from

26:17

the BBC, I'm Claudia Hammond and Professor Matt

26:20

Fox is still with me. That sounds like

26:22

fun, doesn't it? Oh, it sounds like

26:24

tremendous fun. Now, Matt, we

26:26

were talking at the start of the

26:28

show about what to make of the

26:30

differing findings on internet use. And in

26:32

that case, it was the interpretation perhaps

26:35

which left something to be desired. And

26:37

of course, with any studies, you want

26:39

to know as well that they are

26:41

accurate. And there's this new bug bounty

26:43

programme that's been launched to try to

26:45

improve the accuracy of scientific papers. What

26:48

is a bug bounty? Yeah,

26:50

bug bounty is the idea

26:52

of paying people to go

26:54

and look at published research

26:56

findings, and try to

26:58

identify any errors in them, particularly errors

27:00

around ways in which the coding for

27:02

the data would have gone or the

27:04

statistical analysis to try and identify places

27:07

where the findings may not be as

27:09

robust as we think they are. And

27:11

this comes from an idea that's been used in the tech industry.

27:14

That's right. So tech industry has used

27:16

this to try and find vulnerabilities in

27:18

their systems, in their software. This idea

27:20

would be to try and find vulnerabilities

27:22

in the scientific literature. And

27:24

it's really, I think, a positive development

27:26

because the process of doing a scientific

27:28

study is complex. And when you get

27:30

to the point of doing actual data

27:32

analysis, there are lots of ways that

27:35

things can go wrong. And we've developed

27:37

systems where we do things like code

27:39

checking where two people within a team

27:41

will try and check each other's code.

27:43

But, you know, errors still do get through and we

27:46

want to make sure we find those and correct them.

27:48

And so this is being run by the

27:50

University of Bern in Switzerland. And the people

27:52

who are doing the checking who are kind

27:54

of volunteers, I guess, can actually earn big

27:56

bonuses if they find things. That's right.

27:59

So they're paying them. roughly in the neighborhood of $1,000 for

28:02

each paper that they review, with

28:04

increases for any errors that they

28:06

find, particularly scaled to the magnitude

28:09

of the importance of the

28:11

errors that they find. Given that the

28:13

challenges we often have with these kinds

28:16

of things is nobody is willing to

28:18

pay somebody to do them, and the

28:20

investigators themselves have no incentive to do

28:22

this on their own, I think

28:25

paying people to do this represents a

28:27

real advance in our ability to find

28:29

errors. Well, it'd be interesting

28:31

to see if it works. Thank you very much, Matt

28:33

Fox, from Boston University in

28:35

the US for joining us today. And

28:37

thanks to the producer, Dan Welsh, and

28:40

our studio engineer, Sue Mayo. I'm Claudia

28:42

Hammond, and in the next episode of

28:44

HealthCheck from the BBC, we hear about

28:47

the upcoming ruling on medication that's become

28:49

a flashpoint in the ongoing fight over

28:51

abortion care in the US. Bye for

28:54

now. Never

28:58

catch yourself eating the same flavorless dinner

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three days in a row, dreaming of

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something better? Well, HelloFresh is your guilt-free

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delicious possibilities, and dig in

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kind of daily podcast from HelloSunshine,

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me, Simone Boyce. Every

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