Stamp prices rise for the third time in five years amid financial woes for Canada Post
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
Scientists think they may have pinpointed the cause of a mysterious outbreak of liver disease that affected children worldwide last year.
In a study published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature, researchers from the University of California and the New York State Department of Public Health present new evidence linking the outbreak of hepatitis with adenoviruses – which can cause a range of illnesses including the common cold -- and adeno-associated viruses.
Last April, scientists and health officials were puzzled when children in the U.K., Spain, Israel, the U.S., Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and France began suddenly developing severe cases of hepatitis with no known cause. By May, hospitals in Canada were reporting cases of rare pediatric hepatitis, too.
By August 2022, clusters of cases were reported in 35 countries.
To date, the outbreak has been linked to 1,000 cases of acute pediatric hepatitis globally. As a result of the outbreak, 50 children have needed liver transplants and at least 22 have died.
Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver. Acute hepatitis occurs when the liver function is impaired for less than six months. It's usually associated with viruses like hepatitis A, B, or C, but can have other triggers.
At the time of the initial outbreak, close to half of the hepatitis cases had been tied to an adenovirus infection. With funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, senior author Dr. Charles Chiu and his co-researchers set out to explore the link further.
“We were surprised by the fact that the infections we detected in these children were caused not by an unusual, emerging virus, but by common childhood viral pathogens,” Chiu, professor of laboratory medicine and medicine at the University of California, said in a media release.
Adenoviruses make up a large family of viruses that can spread from person to person, causing a range of illnesses including colds, pinkeye and gastroenteritis. Adeno-associated viruses are also widespread in the human population. While they are not known to cause disease on their own, they can replicate in the liver, causing liver inflammation, when paired with a "helper" virus such as an adenovirus.
The timing of the outbreak not long after schools had reopened for in-person learning hinted that students affected by the outbreak had been exposed to a combination of adenoviruses and adeno-associated viruses in school, and had developed hepatitis as a result.
What Chiu and his co-authors discovered through their research supports this theory.
The team used PCR and several other testing methods to examine plasma, whole blood, nasal swab and stool samples from 16 pediatric cases in six states — Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and South Dakota — from Oct. 1, 2021, to May 22, 2022. They compared those specimens with 113 control samples.
When they genotyped the blood samples, they found adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) in 93 per cent of the cases and found adenoviruses in all of the cases. Eleven of those cases were specifically linked to a type of adenovirus associated with gastroenteritis. On top of those infections, they found additional infections with Epstein-Barr, herpes and enterovirus in 88 per cent of the samples.
"Our results suggest that co-infection with AAV2 may cause more severe liver disease than infection by an adenovirus and/or herpesvirus alone," the authors wrote, adding that the severity of the disease caused by co-infection with AAV2 could be compared to the liver failure caused by hepatitis D virus.
Their findings were consistent with those of two other studies conducted in the United Kingdom, which found the same AAV2 strain in samples from affected children. All three studies identified co-infections from multiple viruses, and 75 per cent of the children in the Chiu's study had three or four viral infections.
While clusters of acute severe hepatitis in children have declined, Chiu said the best way to protect children from the condition in the future is to help prevent the spread of common childhood infections in general, by practising good hand hygiene and staying home when sick.
– With files from Solarina Ho and Rhythm Sachdeva
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
Defence lawyers for Jeremy Skibicki have told the court the accused unlawfully caused the death of four women, but argue he is not criminally responsible due to mental disorder.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Italy's mafia rarely dirties its hands with blood these days. Extortion rackets have gone out of fashion and murders are largely frowned upon by the godfathers.
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush money trial fined him US$1,000 on Monday for violating his gag order once again and sternly warned the former president that additional violations could result in jail time.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Researchers in Israel are turning to artificial intelligence to comb through piles of records to try to identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust whose names are missing from official memorials.
Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine and Moscow warned that tensions with the West are deepening.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.