Wazir, Hakim

Abstract Background: Leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood forming tissues, compromises the immune system putting the body at risk of aggressive infections like septicemia. This can not only progress to septic shock but also death. The occurrence of the two conditions makes it almost necessary to understand the epidemiological patterns to increase the rates of survival. This study assesses the trends in mortality in patients with leukemia and septicemia in the United States from 1999-2023. Methods : We analyzed death certificates of adults aged 5 to 84 years' from the CDC-WONDER database with Leukemia (ICD-10 codes: C91, C92) and Septicemia (ICD-10 codes: A40, A41) from 1999-2023. Age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMR) per 100,000 population were stratified by gender, race, census region, year and age. Join-Point analysis was performed to estimate annual percent change (APC) and average annual percent change (AAPC) in mortality trends, along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results : Between 1999 and 2023, Leukemia and Septicemia caused 56,497 deaths in patients aged 5 to 84 years. The total AAMR decreased from 0.78 in 1999 to 0.66 in 2023. Demographically, AAMR among the men decreased significantly from 1.04 to 0.85 (AAPC: -0.65; 95% CI: -0.80 to -0.49). Females experienced a decline in mortality from 0.59 to 0.46(AAPC: -0.44; 95% CI: -0.71 to -0.17). In terms of race, a slight decrease in mortality was witnessed in the mortality of Non-Hispanic (NH) Black or African Americans from 0.91 to 0.7 (AAPC:-1.13 ; 95% CI: -1.43 to -0.82), moreover the AAMR in the Hispanics decreased from 0.8 to 0.63 (AAPC: -0.04; 95% CI: -0.04 to -0.58) while those among the white community decreased from 0.78 to 0.68 (AAPC: -0.39; 95% CI: -0.58 to -0.19). Moreover, the Asian community also experienced a declining death rate. Geographically, regions in the Midwest showed the highest overall AAMR (0.75), followed by the West,Northeast and areas in the South with an overall AAMR of 0.72 . Between the urban and rural areas, rural areas had a higher AAMR as compared to the urban areas with an overall AAMR of 0.17. When stratified according to states, AAMRs varied highly from the highest in Kentucky (0.89) to the lowest in Maine(0.26). Conclusion: The overall mortality rates for leukemia and septicemia decreased between the years 1999-2023. The greatest change was seen in males, regions in the Northeast, racially in NH Blacks and the rural areas.

With the advancement in reusable rocket propulsion technology, space tourist trips into outer space are now becoming a possibility at a cost-effective rate. As such, astronauts will face a host of health-related challenges, particularly on long-duration space missions where maintaining a balanced healthy microbiome is going to be vital for human survival in space exploration as well as mission success. The human microbiome involves a whole list of micro-organisms that reside in and on the human host, and plays an integral role in keeping the human host healthy. However, imbalances in the microbiome have been directly linked to many human diseases. Research findings have clearly shown that the outer space environment can directly affect the normal microbiome of astronauts when the astronaut is exposed to the microgravity environment. In this study, we show that the simulation of microgravity on earth can mimic the outer space microgravity environment. Staphylococus aureus (S. aureus) was chosen for this study as it is an opportunistic pathogen, which is part of the normal human skin microflora and the nasal passages. This study’s results show that S. aureus proliferation was significantly increased under a microgravity environment compared to Earth’s gravity conditions, which complements previous work performed on bacteria in the outer space environment in the International Space Station (ISS). This demonstrates that this technology can be utilised here on Earth to mimic the outer space environment and to study challenging health-related questions. This in return saves us the cost on conducting experiments in the ISS and can help advance knowledge at a faster rate and produce countermeasures to mitigate the negative side effects of the hostile outer space environment on humans.