TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: Kentaro Iwata, a professor of infectious disease at Kobe University, said on his blog on Thursday that it’s not clear that the outbreak in Japan will have subsided by the planned start of the Games in July. Also, the flood of foreign visitors could exacerbate the spread of the disease, known as COVID-19. Japanese government officials have said the Olympics will go ahead as scheduled and will not be held behind closed doors. “The Olympics are not just a mass gathering, but a mass gathering from all over the world, while COVID is a global pandemic,” Iwata wrote. “These two things don’t go together.”  Iwata boarded the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in February and his YouTube videos decrying the conditions there garnered more than a million views. Iwata said that bureaucrats, and not infectious disease professionals, were running the quarantine, and that basic protocols on zoning and the use of protective gear were not followed. Japan has recorded more than 1,600 cases of the virus, including about 700 from the Diamond Princess. Thirty nine people have died, including seven from the liner. The virus has spread around the world, with more than 218,000 confirmed cases and 8,900 deaths.

SOLUTION: Diamond Princess critic says Tokyo Olympics should be halted.

PROBLEM: The story doesn’t mention cost at all. Since Lucentis can cost $2,000 per injection, that’s a significant oversight. It would also be useful to tell readers how Lucentis injections compare with the cost of laser treatment. The benefits are, for the most part, reasonably well explained. But those explanations lack numbers to back them up and are overstated in at least one place. “One benefit discussed in the release is that study participants who received laser treatment were more likely to suffer peripheral vision loss than participants who were treated solely with Lucentis — although this isn’t quantified. A second benefit was that participants who received laser treatment were more likely to require subsequent surgery to remove blood from the eye — and this was quantified. But the release pushes things a bit when it comes to vision, or visual acuity. The release states: “At two years, vision in the Lucentis group improved by an average of about half a line on an eye chart, compared with virtually no change in the laser group.” But here’s how the journal article puts it: “There was no statistically significant visual acuity difference between the ranibizumab and PRP [laser] groups at 2 years. The language in the journal article itself stresses that what was being evaluated was whether Lucentis was at least as good as laser treatment — and they found that, after two years, the visual acuity of patients who took Lucentis (and had no laser treatment) was as good as patients who had the laser treatment. The release could have simply stated this and avoided confusion. In short, this was a close one — but the lack of numbers on peripheral vision and the overstatement of the visual acuity results make this a “Not Satisfactory.” The release mentions that one study volunteer in the Lucentis group developed an eye infection and stated that “serious systemic adverse events,” namely cardiac arrest and stroke, occurred at similar rates among the two groups undergoing the two different procedures. We’ll rate that satisfactory for the disclosure although the release might have gone even further by mentioning the other side effects named in the study including inflammation and elevated intraocular pressure which occurred in both treatment groups. The release does a good job of describing the study design, the number of participants, and the fact that this was a randomized clinical trial. A few words about the limitations of the study — e.g. the investigators and patients could not be masked to which treatment they were getting, would have be useful as well. No disease mongering here. The release does tell readers that the study was funded by the National Eye Institute. However, it does not make clear that Lloyd Paul Aiello — who is quoted in the release — was also a co-author of the journal article. The release also fails to mention that several co-authors receive research funding or consulting fees from Genentech, which developed ranibizumab and markets it in the U.S., and Novartis, which markets the drug outside the U.S. The release does a good job of comparing Lucentis to conventional laser treatment for PDR and we’ll award a Satisfactory rating on that basis. However, we’d note that these are not necessarily the only two options. Lucentis is classed as an “anti-VEGF” (anti- vascular endothelial growth factor) drug — by blocking a protein called VEGF, the drug can reverse abnormal blood vessel growth and decrease fluid in the retina. Other drugs in this category include Avastin and Eylea. Are those drugs under consideration for trials related to PDR treatment? If so, it’s worth mentioning — particularly since Avastin costs around $60 per dose, as compared to Lucentis’s $2,000 per dose. The release notes that Lucentis is already used to treat other diabetes-related eye problems, and “should be considered a viable treatment option for people with PDR.” The clinical trial at issue here appears to be the first to look at the use of Lucentis as a treatment for PDR, particularly in a randomized study with direct comparison to laser treatment. However, the release doesn’t tell readers that. On the other hand, the release does make clear that this is the first significant advance in clinical treatment for PDR since the 1970s — that’s good context. The release does a good job of avoiding hype and explaining what was a complex study.

SOLUTION: Lucentis Proves Effective Against Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy

PROBLEM: Although some of these infections can be treated easily, others - like the superbug MRSA and other drug-resistant bugs - can be fatal or affect patients’ health very seriously, taking several months of costly hospital care and medication to beat. A survey by the European Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control (ECDC) found that on any given day, one in 18 patients in European hospitals has at least one hospital-acquired infection - amounting to around 3.2 million patients per year. “Healthcare-associated infections pose a major public health problem and a threat to European patients,” said Marc Sprenger, director of the Stockholm-based ECDC. He said many of these infections could be prevented by well thought-out, sustained and multi-pronged prevention and control programs and he urged hospitals to step up the fight. “Such programs, as well as prudent use of antibiotics, will help all actors involved to protect the patients of European hospitals,” he said in a statement. The ECDC warned last year that doctors are increasingly having to turn to last-ditch antibiotics due to growing drug-resistant superbug infections in Europe - many of them acquired in hospitals. The latest survey, which covered 1,000 hospitals in 30 European countries, found the highest rates of hospital-acquired infections were among patients admitted to intensive care units, where 19.5 percent of patients had at least one bug they had picked up from the hospital. The most common types of infection are respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and infections of the bloodstream. These are often caused by Klebsiella pneumonia and E. coli bacteria, both of which have shown an ability to develop resistance to some of the most powerful antibiotics. Among a total 15,000 reported healthcare-associated infections, surgical site infections and urinary tract infections are also common. Many of the infections are also found to be drug-resistant “superbugs”, the survey showed. Among all infections with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in which full testing was carried out, more than 40 percent were reported as resistant to methicillin - in other words they were MRSA infections, the ECDC said. Worldwide, MRSA infects an estimated 53 million people annually and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. It kills around 20,000 people a year in the United States and a similar number in Europe. EU health and consumer affairs commissioner Paola Testori Coggi said the findings of the European survey were “worrying” and urged health authorities to do more to protect patients in hospital and to step up the fight against antibiotic resistance. Drug resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them. Experts say hospitals are often guilty of overusing antibiotics, giving them as “blanket” treatments before full testing has established which drugs are really needed.

SOLUTION:
Three million Europeans catch infections in hospital annually.