Tobacco control and sustainable development: shared challenges and future opportunities

INTRODUCTION – TOBACCO CONTROL AS A DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY In May 2017, just months before the end of her second term as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan spoke about championing the WHO’s mission to fight tobacco use as one of her proudest achievements in office. What was surprising was the justification that followed. Dr. Chan did not focus on the usual costs associated with smoking – the millions of premature deaths globally, the US$ 1.4 trillion wasted annually in healthcare expenditure and lost productivity, or the human suffering brought by the host of cancers, heart diseases, and respiratory diseases caused by tobacco use. Instead, she declared that ‘tobacco is a deadly threat to global development’, affecting ‘every country on every level and across many sectors – economic growth, health, education, poverty, and the environment’ [1]. The slogan ‘Tobacco – a threat to development’ became the theme of the 2017 World No Tobacco Day. This was not the first time that tobacco has been recognised by the public health community as posing a threat ‘to the cause of social and environmental justice’, rather than just being a matter of individual health [2]. In 2015, the magnitude of the tobacco epidemic was acknowledged in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [3]. The agenda, which encompasses 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), directly addresses the importance of tobacco control in SDG Target 3.a, calling for the strengthening of ‘the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [WHO FCTC] in all countries’. The FCTC, adopted in 2003, was the first legally binding multilateral international public health treaty. It covers the production, sale, distribution, advertisement, and taxation of tobacco, setting an evidence-based framework of minimum requirements for the signatory states in controlling tobacco products [4]. The FCTC – as of May 2019 – was legally binding in 181 ratifying countries. While in most high-income countries (HICs) the implementation of the FCTC has advanced markedly, in some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) the progress has been much slower [5, 6]. This is particularly alarming given that in 2018 four out of five smokers (or 880 million out of 1.1 billion smokers) lived in LMICs [7]. Drawing on evidence and examples from LMICs, in this article we explore key synergies between the SDGs and tobacco control. We demonstrate that strengthening tobacco control is not only relevant for achieving SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), but also for broader social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development encompassed in several other SDGs [8]. We also point to the agenda of the transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) as a fundamental obstacle to achieving the SDGs and, more widely, to continued public health progress. To conclude, we argue that in order to drive progress in sustainable development, especially given the interference of TTCs, international tobacco control networks need to be further strengthened in LMICs. These processes need to be accompanied by greater cross-disciplinary collaboration, especially between the fields of tobacco control and development studies

The comparative value of feline virology research: can findings from the feline lentiviral vaccine be translated to humans?

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a lentivirus of domestic cats that shares several similarities with its human counterpart, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Their analogies include genomic organization, lymphocyte tropism, viral persistence and induction of immunodeficiency. FIV is the only lentivirus for which a commercial vaccine is registered for prevention in either human or veterinary medicine. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate the mechanisms of protection induced by lentivirus vaccines at the population level and might contribute to the development of efficacious HIV vaccines. As well as having comparative value for vaccine studies, FIV research has shed some light on the relationship between lentiviral tropism and pathogenesis. Recent studies in our laboratory demonstrated that the interaction between FIV and its primary receptor changes as disease progresses, reminiscent of the receptor switch observed as disease progresses in HIV infected individuals. Here we summarise findings illustrating that, in addition to its veterinary significance, FIV has comparative value, providing a useful model to explore lentivirus–host interactions and to examine potential immune correlates of protection against HIV infection

Polyphenol content and antioxidant capacity of apple fruit: effect of cultivar and storage conditions

The benefits of fruits and vegetables are often attributed to their high antioxidant content. Research supports a role of secondary plant metabolites particulary polyphenols in the prevention of degenerative diseases e.g. cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Apple fruit are an important source of secondary plant metabolites and one of the major phenol sources being consumed during the whole year. The present investigation was undertaken to determine antioxidant capacity in selected apple cultivars depending on cultivar and different modes of postharvest storage. Additional storage at 20 °C was tested to simulate the conditions at the consumers’ home (shelf life). Antioxidant capacity differed between the cultivars. Cold storage (1 °C) for 4.5 months increased the antioxidative capacity and polyphenol content in most of the cultivars. Shelf life led to a decrease in polyphenol content and in antioxidant capacity. Storage under controlled atmosphere led to low increases of both antioxidant capacity and polyphenol content. In some cultivars polyphenol content remained stable. After the shelf life period lower values for antioxidant capacity were determined, in combination with no changes in phenol content. Correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between total phenols and antioxidant capacity (TEACValue). Lipophilic antioxidants decreased during storage. Storage experiments indicated that a high content of polyphenols and antioxidants can be sustained by optimal storage conditions, these fruit may contribute to an antioxidant rich diet and may impart health benefits

Xenogeneic, extracorporeal liver perfusion in primates improves the ratio of branched-chain amino acids to aromatic amino acids (Fischer's ratio)

In fulminant hepatic failure (FHF), the development of hepatic encephalopathy is associated with grossly abnormal concentrations of plasma amino acids (PAA). Normalization of the ratio of branched-chain amino acids to aromatic amino acids (Fischer's ratio) correlates with clinical improvement. This study evaluated changes in PAA metabolism during 4 h of isolated, normothermic extracorporeal liver perfusion using a newly designed system containing human blood and a rhesus monkey liver. Bile and urea production were within the physiological range. Release of the transaminases AST, ALT and LDH were minimal. The ratio of branched (valine, leucine, isoleucine) to aromatic (tyrosine, phenylalanine) amino acids increased significantly. These results indicate that a xenogeneic extracorporeal liver perfusion system is capable of significantly increasing Fischer's ratio and may play a role in treating and bridging patients in FHF in the future

Chern numbers for two families of noncommutative Hopf fibrations

We consider noncommutative line bundles associated with the Hopf fibrations of SUq(2) over all Podles spheres and with a locally trivial Hopf fibration of S^3_{pq}. These bundles are given as finitely generated projective modules associated via 1-dimensional representations of U(1) with Galois-type extensions encoding the principal fibrations of SUq(2) and S^3_{pq}. We show that the Chern numbers of these modules coincide with the winding numbers of representations defining them.Comment: 6 page