Top honour for researcher who exposed vaping harm

One of Australia’s top researchers has been recognised for her work exposing the health impacts of e-cigarettes, after being awarded the AMA Gold Medal.

Professor Emily Banks received the award – the AMA’s highest accolade – for exceptional contributions to medicine and public health over her career.

It followed three decades of work in the UK and Australia, most recently as Professor of Epidemiology at the Australian National University.

Presenting the award at the AMA annual meeting in Sydney, then-AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said she was one of Australia’s greatest researchers and her work was only becoming more important.

“Her recent research has been extremely important and timely, as the tobacco lobby sought to hook younger generations through vaping; and has been conducted in the face of tobacco company opposition and political pressure,” he said.

“Time and again, Professor Banks has provided evidence to support action to safeguard health, and vaping is no exception.”

“As the industry has unscrupulously marketed to children, teenagers and young people, Professor Banks and her research team at the ANU have provided high-quality data the community, doctors and policymakers need to make truly informed decisions.”

The Cambridge-born epidemiologist and public health physician currently leads a project team of more than 20 researchers who have published multiple studies and papers assessing the global evidence on the risks of e-cigarettes.

This had established significant harms and highlighted the limitations of the devices as a smoking cessation strategy, Dr Khorshid said.

“Professor Banks’ work has contributed to Australia’s world-unique prescription-only model for e-cigarettes and clearly demonstrates the need to keep these highly addictive products out of our schools.”

Her previous recognition included Medical Journal of Australia/MDA National Prize for Excellence in Medical Research in 2015, the TSANZ president’s award in 2020 and Member of the Order of Australia last year.

COPD remains a major public health problem

COPD accounted for over 212 million cases, 3 million deaths, and 74 million years lost to ill health or disability in 2019, latest data from the Global Burden of Disease Study shows.

The findings show that while age-adjusted rates of COPD have declined over the past three decades, absolute counts are on the rise, with smoking and air pollution contributing to most of the health burden, especially among men.

“Despite the decreasing burden of COPD, this disease remains a major public health problem, especially in countries with a low sociodemographic index. Preventive programmes should focus on smoking cessation, improving air quality, and reducing occupational exposures to further reduce the burden of COPD,” the authors conclude in their paper published in The BMJ. 

Long COVID symptoms for 1 in 8 patients

One in eight adults infected with SARS-CoV-2 go on to develop long COVID a large Dutch study suggests. 

Researchers from The Netherlands asked 76,422 participants to regularly fill out digital questionnaires on 23 symptoms commonly associated with long COVID. Of these, 4231 (5·5%) participants had COVID-19 and were matched to 8462 controls. 

Overall,  21.4% (381/1,782) of COVID-19-positive participants, compared to 8.7% (361/4,130) of the control group, experienced at least one increased core symptom at moderate severity 3 months or more after SARs-CoV-2 infection. 

“This implies that in 12.7% of COVID-19 patients their new or severely increased symptoms three months post-COVID can be attributed to SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in The Lancet.

Core symptoms included chest pain, difficulties and pain while breathing, painful muscles, loss of taste and/or smell, tingling hands/feet, a lump in throat, alternately feeling hot and cold, heavy arms and/or legs and general tiredness. 

Commenting on the study, Professor Christopher Brightling and Dr Rachael Evans of the Institute for Lung Health, University of Leicester said the findings were a major advance on previous long COVID prevalence estimates as it included a matched uninfected group and accounted for symptoms before COVID-19 infection. 

“Current evidence supports the view that long COVID is common and can persist for at least 2 years, although severe debilitating disease is present in a minority. The long COVID case definition needs to be further improved, potentially to describe different types of long COVID, for which better mechanistic understanding is critical,” they said.