More than 1,700 primary school pupils from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary have received special training on stroke and heart attack through e-learning. A total of 152 classes from 29 primary schools and 56 teachers from the Visegrad Four countries participated in the project “V4 HOBIT: Saving Lives in the V4 through Health Education in Schools”.

The V4 HOBIT project was launched in March 2021 and its main coordinator is the Public Health Group of the Cerebrovascular Team of the International Clinical Research Centre of St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno. The project partners are Semmelweis University (HU), Jagiellonian University in Krakow (PL) and University Hospital of L. Pasteur (SK).

The HOBIT programme has been running in Czech schools since 2014. However, it is new for teachers and pupils from the other three countries. In Slovakia, pupils from 68 classes in 10 schools learned how to recognise the symptoms of a stroke or heart attack and what to do in that moment. Most of them were from Košice, but there were also schools from Bratislava, Považská Bystrica and Trstená. In Poland, most of the schools from one city, Krakow, participated. In total, there were 24 classes from 5 schools. In Hungary, schoolchildren from different schools and towns participated in the project. The 28 classes from 9 schools came from cities such as Szeged, Nyírbátor, Zalaegerszeg or Szigetszentmiklós. The Czech Republic was represented by 32 classes from 5 schools coming from Ostrava, Brno, Ústí nad Orlicí, Domažlice and Štětí.

HOBIT educates through simulation scenes

The e-learning of the HOBIT educational programme consists of three parts. First, pupils go through a short section of several test questions to find out how much they already know about stroke and heart attack. Then they watch a video and finally go through the test again.

In each of the participating countries, pupils’ knowledge of the selected diseases increased by at least 10% after completing the full test. The biggest jump was in Slovakia, where the numbers jumped from an average of 44.8% (pupils’ success rate on the first questions) to 59.5% (pupils’ success rate on the final test). The smallest difference between the first and second tests was in Hungary. While Hungarian pupils passed the first test with an average pass rate of 53.5%, they achieved a pass rate of 57% in the second test.

One test is not the end of the project

Around 1,700 pupils from the V4 countries took the e-learning and tests in two rounds. The results allowed the research team to compare what the pupils remembered from the previous testing and thus evaluate the effectiveness of the international HOBIT learning platform.

“The result of the overall testing of the pupils’ success rate in the second round is very similar to that of the first round, ranging from 55% to 60%. For us and for the teachers, this means that the HOBIT education programme makes sense. These diseases (note: stroke and heart attack) are part of our everyday lives. Pupils are enthusiastic about the programme and learn something they can really use in their lives. They are not so helpless in crisis situations,” says Renata Hejnová, the coordinator of the HOBIT programme in the Czech Republic.

The e-learning of the HOBIT training programme is still active on the website https://projecthobit.eu/ in all four languages. If you are interested in taking part in the training programme, you can contact the coordinators and get the necessary information by e-mail: projekthobit@fnusa.cz.

The implementation of the training programme in schools was carried out by GrapePR in Slovakia, Agencja Pretty Good in Poland and Diamond Agency in Hungary. In the Czech Republic, schools that had already been involved in the HOBIT programme in previous years were contacted.

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common malignant tumors in children. It typically affects very young children and sometimes occurs before birth. Neuroblastoma arises from immature cells that commonly form peripheral nerve tissue, including the adrenal medulla, where this tumour is most commonly diagnosed. The causes of the tumour are not fully understood, although it is known that tumour growth is associated with mutations that prevent proper cell development and maturation.

In the Czech Republic, neuroblastoma is diagnosed in approximately 20-30 children per year. The biggest challenge in the treatment of this tumour is its variability. While in some patients the tumour disappears spontaneously, neuroblastomas of so-called high risk often do not respond to treatment at all or the disease returns. Only about half of these patients are successfully cured.

The causes of tumour formation, treatment failure and the reasons for recurrence are therefore the focus of attention of scientists from all over the world. At the International Clinical Research Centre of St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, Jan Škoda, Ph.D., head of the Laboratory Oncology Translational Research team, is researching neuroblastoma. “During my internship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, I worked in the lab with Dr. Michael Hogarty, a leading expert in neuroblastoma research and treatment. We established a long-term collaboration, the results of which we are gradually publishing,” described Dr. Škoda.

One of the results of their collaboration is the paper “Reduced ER-mitochondria connectivity promotes neuroblastoma multidrug resistanceR”, which was published this year in the prestigious scientific journal EMBO Journal (IF 11.6) and which Dr. Škoda co-authored.

In the publication, the researchers focused on mitochondria in cancer cells and their role in therapy. Mitochondria are cellular organelles, i.e. microscopic formations in cells that perform specific functions, similar to organs in the human body, for example. They are fascinating components of our cells, which probably originated from bacteria sometime over two billion years ago. Mitochondria provide unique functions for the cell. They act as a kind of cellular powerhouse and are involved in, among other things, cell differentiation or cell death.

It is programmed cell death, so-called apoptosis, that is an important process in the human body. It is often more beneficial to the organism than spontaneous cell death, because during apoptosis the cell breaks down into smaller vesicles in a controlled manner and there is no risk of it bursting and spilling its harmful contents into the environment. It is also the activation of apoptosis that is the target of most anticancer drugs. The research team, which included Dr. Skoda, described a new mechanism by which neuroblastoma cells can escape available treatments. “Essentially, we found that therapy-resistant cancer cells lose the tight contacts between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum, another very important cellular organelle. This leads to a change in the composition of the mitochondria and they become less sensitive to cell death signals. This leads to a general resistance of the tumour cells, which are therefore very difficult to destroy even with otherwise perfectly effective drugs. Simply put, the changes that anticancer drugs induce in the cell are not perceived by these mitochondria and apoptosis is not triggered,” explained Dr Škoda.

Describing this new mechanism opens a new avenue for developing strategies to treat these resistant tumours.

The indispensable role of physical activity in maintaining the health of the population is well known, but time spent on sedentary activities – such as watching TV, playing computer games, sitting at the computer, reading, travelling (by bus, tram, car, etc.) – is not usually given the attention it should be. Between 2005 and 2017, time spent sitting in the Czech Republic increased from 58 % to 62 %. The most common activity that families spend their free time on is watching TV, which still exceeds time spent on the computer. More than 80 % of Czech families watch TV every day or almost every day.

Dr. Geraldo Maranhano Neto Ph.D, Senior Resercher in Cardiovascular Medicine at the International Clinical Research Centre (FNUSA-ICRC) of St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, published an article in the “Journal of Clinical Medicine”  in January 2022 on the impact of television viewing and physical activity on various health risks.

“The research showed that people who spent more than four hours a day watching TV had more total and abdominal fat, even if their physical activity fell into the medium or high category. For other risk factors, such as high blood pressure or triacylglycerol levels, TV viewing time was significantly higher in physically inactive individuals. This suggests that people who spend a lot of time in sedentary activities are more at risk for health risks, even if they are highly physically active,” says Dr. Neto.

“Unlike sedentary jobs, watching television is usually associated with the evening hours after eating dinner. During this time, we sit without breaks, and many of us associate watching TV with eating food, sugary drinks or smoking. It should be mentioned that time spent at home is steadily increasing, mainly due to the necessary isolation (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic) and the availability of streaming platforms. We must realise that sitting in front of the television for long periods of time is a habit that can be changed. Even those who exercise regularly should work on themselves in this regard,” said Dr Neto.

As an expert on physical activity, what recommendations would you give to Brno residents based on these results?

First, even if physical activity cannot prevent some of the health problems associated with sitting in front of the TV for long periods of time, it will always be beneficial to our health. It is good to constantly remind ourselves of this fact so that so-called inactivity is not an option for us.

It is also important to allow time between stopping watching TV and preparing for sleep. The key is to reduce the time spent in front of the TV to a maximum of 2 hours a day and replace it with other habits, such as reading, which helps very well with maintaining the quality of sleep. Eating food while watching TV should also be completely avoided. Remember that the time-honoured ‘everything in moderation’ applies to every habit, including watching TV.