Hackers linked to Chinese government stole millions in Covid benefits: Secret Service

 Hackers linked to the Chinese government stole at least $20 million in U.S. Covid relief benefits, including Small Business Administration loans and unemployment insurance funds in over a dozen states, according to the Secret Service.

The theft of taxpayer funds by the Chengdu-based hacking group known as APT41 is the first instance of pandemic fraud tied to foreign, state-sponsored cybercriminals that the U.S. government has acknowledged publicly, but may just be the tip of the iceberg, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts.

The officials and experts, most speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, say other federal investigations of pandemic fraud also seem to point back to foreign state-affiliated hackers.

“It would be crazy to think this group didn’t target all 50 states,” said Roy Dotson, national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator for the Secret Service, who also acts as a liaison to other federal agencies probing Covid fraud.

The Secret Service declined to confirm the scope of other investigations, saying there are more than 1,000 ongoing investigations involving transnational and domestic criminal actors defrauding public benefits programs, and APT41 is “a notable player.”

And whether the Chinese government directed APT41 to loot U.S. taxpayer funds or simply looked the other way, multiple current and former U.S. officials say, the theft itself is a troubling development that raises the stakes. One senior Justice Department official called it “dangerous” and said it had serious national security implications.

“I’ve never seen them target government money before,” said John Hultquist, the head of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. “That would be an escalation.” 

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

‘The horse is out of the barn’

As soon as state governments began disbursing Covid unemployment funds in 2020, cybercriminals began to siphon off a significant percentage.

The Labor Department Office of Inspector General has reported an improper payment rate of roughly 20% for the $872.5 billion in federal pandemic unemployment funds, though the true cost of the fraud is likely higher, administration officials from multiple agencies say.

In-depth analysis of four states showed 42.4% of pandemic benefits were paid improperly in the first six months, the department’s watchdog reported to Congress last week.

A Heritage Foundation analysis of Labor Department data estimated excess unemployment benefits payments of more than $350 billion from April 2020 to May 2021.

“Whether it’s 350, 400 or 500 billion, at this point, the horse is out of the barn,” said Linda Miller, the former deputy executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, the federal government’s Covid relief fraud watchdog.

By the time Covid relief funds appeared as a target of opportunity in 2020, APT41, which emerged more than a decade ago, had already become the “workhorse” of cyberespionage operations that benefit the Chinese government, according to cyber experts and current and former officials from multiple agencies. The Secret Service said in a statement that it considers APT41 a “Chinese state-sponsored, cyberthreat group that is highly adept at conducting espionage missions and financial crimes for personal gain.”

Ambassador Nathaniel Fick, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, said cyberespionage is a long-time Chinese national priority aimed at strengthening its geopolitical position.

“The United States is target No. 1, because we are competitor No. 1,” Fick told NBC News. “It’s a really comprehensive, multi-decade, well-considered, well-resourced, well-planned, well-executed strategy.”

American officials have blamed Chinese hackers for the Office of Personnel Management, the Anthem Health and the Equifax breaches, among others.

The experts and officials describe the Chinese model of “state-sponsored” hackers as a network of semi-independent groups conducting contract work in service of government espionage. The Chinese government may direct a hacking group to attack a certain target. APT41, also known to cybersecurity firms as Winnti, Barium and Wicked Panda, fits the model and is considered a particularly prolific Chinese intelligence asset, known to commit financial crimes on the side.

Demian Ahn, a former assistant U.S. attorney who indicted five APT41 hackers in 2019 and 2020, said the evidence showed the group had tremendous reach and resources. The defendants, who were accused of infiltrating governments and companies around the world while conducting ransomware attacks and mining cryptocurrency, talked “about having tens of thousands of machines at one time, as part of their efforts to obtain information about others, and also to generate criminal profits.” None of the five Chinese nationals indicted have been extradited, and the cases remain open.

APT41’s intrusion methods have included hacking legitimate software and weaponizing it against innocent users, including businesses and governments. Another tactic involves tracking public disclosures about security flaws in legitimate software. APT41 uses that information to target customers who don’t immediately update their software, according to a former Justice Department official familiar with the group.

The primary purpose of APT41’s state-directed activity, the experts and officials say, is believed to be collecting personally identifying information and data about American citizens, institutions and businesses that can be used by China for espionage purposes.

“They have the patience, the sophistication and the resources to carry out hacking that has a direct impact on national security,” said a former Justice Department official familiar with the group.

Law enforcement officials and counterintelligence experts have testified to Congress that by now, every adult American has had all or most of their personal data stolen by the Chinese government. 

‘Wild West’

Beijing has increasingly turned its focus to breaching U.S. critical infrastructure in recent years, say current and former officials and China and cybersecurity experts, with worldwide campaigns driven by APT41.

China’s targets include state governments, which can have inadequate cybersecurity defenses. “The state governments don’t allocate a lot of cyber protection money to their state IT infrastructure,” said William Evanina, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “So it’s really an unprotected Wild West.”

The Covid fraud scheme that the Secret Service has publicly linked to APT41 began in mid-2020 and spanned 2,000 accounts associated with more than 40,000 financial transactions.

“Where their sophistication comes in is the ability to work heavily and quickly,” the agency's Dotson said.

The agency said it has been able to recover about half of the stolen $20 million in the APT41 case.

Overall, the Secret Service said that as of August it had seized more than $1.4 billion in fraudulently obtained Covid relief funds and helped return about $2.3 billion to state unemployment insurance programs.

But while Evanina and other officials and experts consider APT41’s breach of state systems a national security issue, they aren’t convinced that stealing Covid funds was a goal of the Chinese government. Such thefts increase the risk of criminal prosecution and make it harder for China to obscure the state’s role. They believe that the Chinese government may have simply tolerated the hackers making a profit off their labors.

Many believe the hackers are still inside state information technology systems.

Mandiant, which contracts with more than 75 state and local government organizations and agencies, issued a report in March that the APT41 had infiltrated six — and likely more — state governments using back doors in popular software and was exfiltrating data on citizens.

Hultquist said in an interview that Mandiant analysts discovered at least two occasions involving interactions with servers associated with state benefits after May 2021.

Current officials would not comment about whether APT41 still had access to state government networks after being discovered last year. 

The Labor Department, the Small Business Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the White House all declined to comment and referred NBC News to the Justice Department. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

“Once you are in these systems with intent to promulgate theft" of personally identifying information, Evanina said, "you’re in forever,” noting that at the state and local levels, many disparate systems share an interconnected domain. “Unless,” he said, “you tear down the systems and replace everything.”

State agencies across the country continue to struggle against invisible online attackers, many lacking the proper funding and expertise to secure their online benefits systems. 

“If we can come together and really have open and honest conversations about what works well and what went very wrong, we would just be in a much better place to stop this,” said Maryland Labor Secretary Tiffany Robinson, who said her state’s system is still bogged down by thousands of fraudulent applications and phone calls each week. “Because this is not over.”

Federal officials acknowledge they are nowhere close to fully accounting for what really happened to benefits programs in the pandemic. 

“A lot of these criminals, we’ll never be able to indict and locate,” said a federal law enforcement official with direct knowledge of fraud investigations involving China-based hackers. “With the internet and the dark web, it’s borderless.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/chinese-hackers-covid-fraud-millions-rcna59636

Classified Docs Were At Biden House While Hunter Took Millions For "Representing F**king Spy Chief Of China"

 by Michael Shellenberger via Public,

For the last week and a half, defenders of President Joe Biden have said that the way he allegedly mishandled classified documents was not as dangerous, illegal, or inappropriate as the way former President Donald Trump allegedly mishandled classified documents.

But we now know that Hunter Biden was taking millions of dollars from businessmen tied to Chinese military intelligence while living at the home of his father, President Joe Biden, where classified documents, including ones relating to foreign nations, were recently found.

We additionally know that Hunter Biden was in the grip of a debilitating addiction to cocaine and alcohol and that he experienced frequent blackouts and loss of memory.

There is no evidence that Hunter Biden, willingly or unwillingly, sober or intoxicated, took classified documents from his father’s residence in Delaware and gave them to his client, a Chinese businessman named Patrick Ho.

“There’s no evidence that Hunter Biden accessed the documents, but — God-forbid — the opportunity existed for him to do so,” said investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer, who has tracked the Biden family’s business ties to the Chinese government, including military intelligence, over the last five years.

During the time that Hunter lived in his father’s residence, between 2017 and 2018, Hunter and the entities he and his uncle, James Biden, President Biden’s brother, controlled received at least $4.8 million from a Chinese energy conglomerate called CEFC, which is tied to the Chinese military. Hunter Biden received an additional $1 million from Patrick Ho, a CEFC official.

“After Ho is arrested in late 2017, the first phone call he makes is to James Biden, the president’s brother, because he’s looking for Hunter,” said Schweitzer.

Why is that? What was going on between the Bidens and the Chinese government, exactly? And what does it all mean?

...

Hunter’s former client Patrick Ho is a criminal convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. Ho was sentenced for his role in a multimillion-dollar effort to bribe leaders from Chad and Uganda. That appears to be what Ho was attempting to do with Hunter: bribe him in order to buy protection from his powerful father. A CEFC intermediary reached out to Hunter Biden in December 2015 to set up a meeting between Hunter and Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of CEFC, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive. Hunter Biden at one point said he was working for Ye. Hunter, in a voicemail found on his laptop, tells a colleague,  “I’m representing the f**king spy chief of China.”

...

What does it all mean? The evidence strongly suggests that the Chinese government was seeking to bribe the Biden family to gain advantages both in terms of energy and also to protect its sources.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/classified-docs-were-biden-house-while-hunter-took-millions-representing-fking-spy-chief

China Outpacing US In AI Research Production

 In 2012, the United States dominated China in the field of AI research.

Of the 25,000 or so papers published that year, the US led with 629 of the most-cited (top 10%) of citations by other papers. China was in second place at 425.

In 2021, China produced approximately 43,000 of the 135,000 research papers on AI  - roughly twice as many as the United states. The same year, China accounted for 7,401 of the most-cited papers, beating the American tally by around 70%, according to a study by Japan's Nikkei in conjunction with Dutch scientific publisher Elsevier.

The study, which used AI-associated keywords to scan for academic and conference papers focusing on AI, found that Chinese companies Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei Technologies are among the top 10 companies producing AI research. Baidu, China's leading search engine, came in 11th in both the quantity and quality of AI research.

What's more, China will likely keep up the momentum, as a 2017 government plan set a goal to become the world's primary AI innovation center by 2030.

The government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s top scientific institution, possesses vast research capabilities. Tsinghua University, a public research university in Beijing, is also an AI hot spot.

The need to accelerate research, development and application of cutting-edge technologies, including AI, was stressed in 2023 economic priorities outlined at this December’s closely watched Central Economic Work Conference, where President Xi Jinping spoke.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said last Wednesday that growing AI and other emerging industries is a key priority for 2023. -Nikkei

US tech giants have traditionally dominated the field of AI - with Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and IBM constituting the largest three producers over the 10-year period the study noted. In 2021, six US companies were in the top-10 for most-cited research, while the remaining four were Chinese firms, Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei and State Grid Corp.

Interestingly - government-owned operator State Grid is considered one of the best AI research institutions among Chinese corporations, because "the big data collected from hundreds of millions of smart meters." The company is attempting to create the ability to predict power demand and identify problems throughout the electrical grid.

Japan, meanwhile, has fallen behind in AI research - dropping from 6th place in 2019 to 18th in 2021.

That said, META is building the world's largest AI supercomputer in conjunction with NVIDIA, which could train models with more than a trillion parameters. For comparison, AI research tool ChatGPT has 175 billion parameters.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/china-outpacing-us-producing-ai-research

Using fungi to convert ocean plastic into ingredients for drug industry

 Research on fungi underway at the University of Kansas has helped transform tough-to-recycle plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean into key components for making pharmaceuticals.

The chemical-biological approach for converting polyethylene uses an everyday soil fungus called Aspergillus nidulans that has been genetically altered. The results were reported recently in the paper "Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites" published in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society.

"What we've done in this paper is to first digest polyethylenes using oxygen and some metal catalysts -- things that are not particularly harmful or expensive -- and this breaks the plastics into diacids," said co-author Berl Oakley, Irving S. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology at KU.

Next, long chains of carbon atoms resulting from the decomposed plastics were fed to genetically modified Aspergillus fungi. The fungi, as designed, metabolized them into an array of pharmacologically active compounds, including commercially viable yields of asperbenzaldehyde, citreoviridin and mutilin.

Unlike previous approaches, Oakley said the fungi digested the plastic products quickly, like "fast food."

"The thing that's different about this approach is it's two things -- it's chemical, and it's fungal," he said. "But it's also relatively fast. With a lot of these attempts, the fungus can digest the material, but it takes months because the plastics are so hard to break down. But this breaks the plastics down fast. Within a week you can have the final product."

The KU researcher added the new approach was "bizarrely" efficient.

"Of the mass of diacids that goes into the culture, 42% comes back as the final compound," he said. "If our technique was a car, it would be doing 200 miles per hour, getting 60 miles per gallon, and would run on reclaimed cooking oil."

Previously, Oakley has worked with corresponding author Clay Wang of the University of Southern California to produce about a hundred secondary metabolites of fungi for a variety of purposes.

"It turns out that fungi make a lot of chemical compounds, and they are useful to the fungus in that they inhibit the growth of other organisms -- penicillin is the canonical example," Oakley said. "These compounds aren't required for the growth of the organism, but they help either protect it from, or compete with, other organisms."

For a time, scientists thought they'd fully exploited the potential of fungi to produce these compounds. But Oakley said the age of genome sequencing has unlocked new possibilities for using secondary metabolites to benefit humanity and the environment.

"There was a realization there were lots and lots of clusters of genes that made secondary metabolites that nobody had discovered -- and there are millions of species of fungi," Oakley said. "A lot of companies have done good work over the years, but it was very much incomplete, because they were just growing things in the incubator and examining them for production of new compounds -- but 95 percent of the gene clusters were just silent since they are not 'turned on' until needed. They weren't doing anything. So, there are lots more things to discover."

Oakley's lab at KU has honed gene-targeting procedures to change the expression of genes in Aspergillus nidulans and other fungi, producing new compounds.

"We've sequenced the genomes of a bunch of fungi now, and we can recognize the signatures of groups of genes that make chemical compounds," he said. "We can change the expression of genes; we can remove them from the genome; we can do all kinds of things to them. We could see there were lots of these secondary metabolite gene clusters there and our gene-targeting procedures allowed us, at least in principle, to turn some of those clusters on."

Oakley and Wang's co-authors were Chris Rabot, Yuhao Chen, Swati Bijlani, Yi-Ming Chiang and Travis Williams of USC, and Elizabeth Oakley of KU.

The researchers focused on developing secondary metabolites to digest polyethylene plastics because those plastics are so hard to recycle. For this project, they harvested polyethylenes from the Pacific Ocean that had collected in Catalina Harbor on Santa Catalina Island, California.

"There've been a lot of attempts to recycle plastic, and some of it is recycled," Oakley said. "A lot of it is basically melted and spun into fabric and goes into various other plastic things. Polyethylenes are not recycled so much, even though they're a major plastic."

The KU investigator said the long-term goal of the research is to develop procedures to break down all plastics into products that can be used as food by fungi, eliminating the need to sort them during recycling. He added the work is emblematic of KU's Earth, Energy + Environment research theme, geared toward "increasing understanding to help sustain the life of our planet and its inhabitants."

"I think everybody knows that plastics are a problem," Oakley said. "They're accumulating in our environment. There's a big area in the North Pacific where they tend to accumulate. But also you see plastic bags blowing around -- they're in the rivers and stuck in the trees. The squirrels around my house have even learned to line their nest with plastic bags. One thing that's needed is to somehow get rid of the plastic economically, and if one can make something useful from it at a reasonable price, then that makes it more economically viable."

Journal Reference:

1. Chris Rabot, Yuhao Chen, Swati Bijlani, Yi‐Ming Chiang, C. Elizabeth Oakley, Berl R. Oakley, Travis J. Williams, Clay C. C. Wang. Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2022; 62 (4) DOI: 10.1002/anie.202214609

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230117192946.htm

Reducing total calories may be more effective for weight loss than intermittent fasting

 The frequency and size of meals was a stronger determinant of weight loss or gain than the time between first and last meal, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

According to the senior study author Wendy L. Bennett, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, although 'time-restricted eating patterns' -- known as intermittent fasting -- are popular, rigorously designed studies have not yet determined whether limiting the total eating window during the day helps to control weight.

This study evaluated the association between time from the first meal to last meal with weight change. Nearly 550 adults (18 years old or older) from three health systems in Maryland and Pennsylvania with electronic health records were enrolled in the study. Participants had at least one weight and height measurement registered in the two years prior to the study's enrollment period (Feb.-July 2019).

Overall, most participants (80%) reported they were white adults; 12% self-reported as Black adults; and about 3% self-identified as Asian adults. Most participants reported having a college education or higher; the average age was 51 years; and the average body mass index was 30.8, which is considered obese. The average follow-up time for weight recorded in the electronic health record was 6.3 years.

Participants with a higher body mass index at enrollment were more likely to be Black adults, older, have Type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, have a lower education level, exercise less, eat fewer fruits and vegetables, have a longer duration from last mealtime to sleep and a shorter duration from first to last meal, compared to the adults who had a lower body mass index.

The research team created a mobile application, Daily24, for participants to catalog sleeping, eating and wake up time for each 24-hour window in real time. Emails, text messages and in-app notifications encouraged participants to use the app as much as possible during the first month and again during "power weeks" -- one week per month for the six-month intervention portion of the study.

Based on the timing of sleeping and eating each day recorded in the mobile app, researchers were able to measure:

• the time from the first meal to the last meal each day;
• the time lapse from waking to first meal; and
• the interval from the last meal to sleep.

They calculated an average for all data from completed days for each participant.

The data analysis found:

• Meal timing was not associated with weight change during the six-year follow-up period. This includes the interval from first to last meal, from waking up to eating a first meal, from eating the last meal to going to sleep and total sleep duration.
• Total daily number of large meals (estimated at more than 1,000 calories) and medium meals (estimated at 500-1,000 calories) were each associated with increased weight over the six-year follow up, while fewer small meals (estimated at less than 500 calories) was associated with decreasing weight.
• The average time from first to last meal was 11.5 hours; average time from wake up to first meal measured 1.6 hours; average time from last meal to sleep was 4 hours; and average sleep duration was calculated at 7.5 hours.
• The study did not detect an association meal timing and weight change in a population with a wide range of body weight.

As reported by Bennett, even though prior studies have suggested intermittent fasting may improve the body's rhythms and regulate metabolism, this study in a large group with a wide range of body weights did not detect this link. Large-scale, rigorous clinical trials of intermittent fasting on long-term weight change are extremely difficult to conduct; however, even short-term intervention studies may be valuable to help guide future recommendations.

Although the study found that meal frequency and total calorie intake were stronger risk factors for weight change than meal timing, the findings could not prove direct cause and effect, according to lead study author Di Zhao, Ph.D., an associate scientist in the division of cardiovascular and clinical epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Researchers note there are limitations to the study since they did not evaluate the complex interactions of timing and frequency of eating. Additionally, since the study is observational in nature, the authors were unable to conclude cause and effect. Future studies should work toward including a more diverse population, since the majority of the study's participants were well-educated white women in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., the authors noted author.

Researchers also were not able to determine the intentionality of weight loss among study participants prior to their enrollment and could not rule out the additional variable of any preexisting health conditions.

According to the American Heart Association's 2022 statistics, 40% of adults in the U.S. are obese; and the Association's current diet and lifestyle recommendations to reduce cardiovascular disease risk include limiting overall calorie intake, eating healthy foods and increasing physical activity.

The 2017 American Heart Association scientific statement: Meal Timing and Frequency: Implications for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention did not offer clear preference for frequent small meals or intermittent fasting. It noted that irregular patterns of total caloric intake appear to be less favorable for the maintenance of body weight and optimal cardiovascular health. And, altering meal frequency may not be useful for decreasing body weight or improving traditional cardiometabolic risk factors.

Journal Reference:

1. Di Zhao, Eliseo Guallar, Thomas B. Woolf, Lindsay Martin, Harold Lehmann, Janelle Coughlin, Katherine Holzhauer, Attia A. Goheer, Kathleen M. McTigue, Michelle R. Lent, Marquis Hawkins, Jeanne M. Clark, Wendy L. Bennett. Association of Eating and Sleeping Intervals With Weight Change Over Time: The Daily24 Cohort. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2023; DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.122.026484

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230118092030.htm

Body Dissatisfaction Can Lead to Eating Disorders at Any Age

Eating disorders are stereotypically associated with adolescents and young adults. Growing evidence, however, suggests that these conditions can occur at any time during a woman’s lifespan, including at midlife. A new study finds that body dissatisfaction is a primary cause of eating disorders, especially during perimenopause. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions characterized by disturbances in eating behavior and body image that occur in approximately 13.1% of women across the lifespan. The prevalence of any eating disorder specifically for women aged older than 40 years is roughly 3.5%, with specific symptoms such as dissatisfaction with eating patterns being documented as high as 29.3%.

Serious complications such as high mortality and morbidity are associated with eating disorders. These adverse health events are likely to be magnified when present at older ages. However, few studies on eating disorders have included participants at midlife, including premenopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause.

There is some evidence that supports the idea that perimenopausal women have the highest rates of dysregulated eating behaviors (eg, weight-control behaviors such as regular counting of calories or consumption of diet foods) of any reproductive stage at midlife and are significantly different from premenopausal women with regard to body dissatisfaction and feelings of fatness. Although findings such as these remain scant; the association between eating disorders and symptoms of perimenopause (eg, negative mood, depression, and fatigue) confirm that perimenopause may be a particularly risky time for eating pathology.

In this new small study, which sought to investigate the structure of eating disorder symptoms specifically during perimenopause and early postmenopause, the researchers used network analysis statistical models to compare the structure and importance of specific eating disorder symptoms across reproductive stages. Although they admit that larger studies are necessary with this underrepresented female population, the researchers believe that the study confirms that dissatisfaction with body image is a key risk factor for eating disorders across the lifespan, especially at midlife.

Study results are published in the article “Network analysis of eating disorder symptoms in women in perimenopause and early postmenopause.”

“This study shows that, similar to studies in young adults, dissatisfaction with body image remains a core feature of eating disorder pathology in midlife women. Specifically, fear of gaining weight and fear of losing control over eating habits are central symptoms of eating disorders in perimenopause and early postmenopause. These findings may help direct more targeted treatment strategies in women during midlife,” says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.

For more information about menopause and healthy aging, visit www.menopause.org. Founded in 1989, The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) is North America’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the health and quality of life of all women during midlife and beyond through an understanding of menopause and healthy aging. Its multidisciplinary membership of 2,000 leaders in the field—including clinical and basic science experts from medicine, nursing, sociology, psychology, nutrition, anthropology, epidemiology, pharmacy, and education—makes NAMS uniquely qualified to serve as the definitive resource for health professionals and the public for accurate, unbiased information about menopause and healthy aging. To learn more about NAMS, visit www.menopause.org. 

Journal Reference:

1. Finch, Jody E., Xu, Ziqian, Girdler, Susan, Baker, Jessica H. Network analysis of eating disorder symptoms in women in perimenopause and early postmenopause. Menopause, 2023 DOI: 10.1097/GME.0000000000002141

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230118092038.htm

Salmonella exposure a risk for colon cancer

 A new study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine links exposure to Salmonella bacteria to colon cancer risk.

The researchers, including a team led by Jun Sun from the University of Illinois Chicago, studied human colon cancer tissue samples and animal models and found that exposure to Salmonella was linked with colon cancers that developed earlier and grew larger.

The study authors first looked at data from a Netherlands-based retrospective study of colon cancer patients that found tissue samples taken during routine colon cancer surgery with Salmonella antibodies tended to be from people who had worse colon cancer outcomes.

Using Salmonella strains isolated from these tissue samples, Sun and her U.S.-based team studied mice with colon cancer that had been exposed to the bacteria. They observed accelerated tumor growth and larger tumors in mice with Salmonella exposure. They also saw that there was increased Salmonella translocated to the tumors.

"During infection, Salmonella hijacks essential host signaling pathways, and these molecular manipulations may cause oncogenic transformation. The current study tells us that more research is needed into the connection between Salmonella exposure and colon cancer risk in the USA, and that simply by practicing safe food preparation, we can potentially help to protect ourselves," said Sun, UIC professor of medicine.

Sun's collaborators in the Netherlands also studied the bacteria in vitro. They combined human cancer cells and pre-cancer cells with the Salmonella strain in the lab and measured any growth or changes in the tumor. They saw that even one infection caused transformation and that each Salmonella infection exponentially increased the rate of cell transformation.

"The mouse and tissue culture experiments show that Salmonella infection had a chronic effect to accelerate tumor growth," said Sun, who also is a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center at UIC. "This evidence tells us that we need to look closer at Salmonella exposure as an environmental risk factor for chronic diseases, such as colon cancer."

More information: Daphne M. van Elsland et al, Repetitive non-typhoidal Salmonella exposure is an environmental risk factor for colon cancer and tumor growth, Cell Reports Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100852

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-01-salmonella-exposure-colon-cancer.html