Author: Claudinne Miller
Long COVID Taste Loss May Not Involve Taste Buds
Med Page Today Study attempts to untangle taste and olfactory dysfunction 1 year after infection. Taste dysfunction was gone 1 year after exposure to COVID-19, but smell loss remained for some people, a national cross-sectional study showed. Empirically measured taste function didn’t differ between individuals who had acute SARS-CoV-2 infection a year earlier and uninfected […]
Apr 24, 2024
W.H.O. Broadens Definition of Airborne Diseases
NYT After a drawn-out global controversy over the coronavirus, the W.H.O. has updated its classification of how pathogens spread through the air. In the early days of the Covid pandemic, a team of scientists called on the World Health Organization to acknowledge that the disease could spread through the air. Initially, the agency rebuffed them, despite growing […]
Apr 24, 2024
Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains
University of California Riverside Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming […]
Apr 24, 2024
Lasers, Inflatable Dancers and the Fight to Fend Off Avian Flu
NYT Some poultry growers are turning to innovative tactics to protect their flocks, deploying deterrents like drones, air horns, balloons and decoy predators. Loren Brey, a poultry grower in Minnesota, walked onto the farm where his egg-laying turkeys nest in November to discover a handful of hens, dead from the highly pathogenic avian flu. Within […]
Apr 24, 2024
Man dies after 613-day COVID-19 infection that underwent 50 mutations
Scripps News Through the 613 days of infection, the virus evolved into a “novel immune-evasive variant” that had mutated over 50 times. A new report by Dutch scientists revealed a very peculiar case: On Feb. 2022, a 72-year-old man with a compromised immune system was admitted to Amsterdam University Medical Center with a COVID-19 infection. The virus in […]
Apr 24, 2024
Chronic wasting disease feared in deaths of 2 hunters who ate deer meat
USA Today The recent report of two hunters who developed neurological diseases after eating infected deer meat has scientists concerned that ‘zombie deer disease’ could pass to humans as mad cow disease did. Two hunters who ate meat from deer known to have chronic wasting disease − or “zombie deer disease” − developed similar neurological conditions and died, raising […]
Apr 24, 2024
Deforestation pushes animals in Uganda forest to eat virus-laden bat poo
BBC Animals in a Ugandan forest have been eating bat poo laden with viruses after tobacco farming wiped out their usual food source, a study has found. A virus linked to Covid-19 was among the 27 identified in the poo eaten by chimpanzees, antelopes and monkeys. Researchers say this finding sheds light on how new […]
Apr 24, 2024
Bird Flu Outbreak in Cattle May Have Begun Months Earlier Than Thought
New York Times A single spillover, from a bird to a cow, led to the infections, a review of genetic data has found. The bird flu outbreak in American dairy cattle may have begun in January, or even as early as December, a new analysis of genetic data suggests. The Department of Agriculture announced in late […]
Apr 24, 2024
First measles case confirmed in West Virginia since 2009
WV News A patient of WVU Medicine in Monongalia County has tested positive for measles. WVU Medicine announced Monday that a patient tested positive after visiting an outpatient clinic last week and is recovering at their home. The U.S. has seen an uptick in measles cases in 2024, but this is the first case confirmed in West […]
Apr 24, 2024
Massive amounts of H5N1 vaccine would be needed if there’s a bird flu pandemic. Can we make enough?
STAT Helen Branswell The unsettling reality of H5N1 bird flu circulating in dairy cow herds in multiple parts of the United States is raising anxiety levels about whether this dangerous virus, which has haunted the sleep of people who worry about influenza pandemics for more than 20 years, could be on a path to acquiring the ability […]
Apr 24, 2024