Category: COVID
So You Say You Haven’t Had Covid. You’re Probably Mistaken, Study Finds
(KFF) Researchers tested 1,574 people from August 2021 to May 2022, and 44% of them said they had never had covid. But serologic testing found that 42% of them had antibodies that indicated a previous infection. Meanwhile, new research shows that SARS-CoV-2 can live on some groceries for days.
Dec 5, 2022
Teens’ brains aged faster during the first year of the pandemic, study says, and stress may be to blame
(CNN) The brains of US teens have physically changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, aging faster than normal, a new study says. The young study participants also reported more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and what scientists call internalized problems – meaning feelings of sadness, low self-esteem and fear and trouble regulating their emotions – after the first […]
Dec 5, 2022
How Qatar Provided Early Answers About COVID Immunity
(MedPage Today) While the world turns its attention to Qatar for the World Cup, the tiny Middle Eastern nation jutting into the Persian Gulf is more recognized in the medical research community for providing some of the earliest insights into vaccine efficacy, waning immunity, and reinfection during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a national healthcare system […]
Nov 29, 2022
Covid becomes plague of elderly, reviving debate over ‘acceptable loss’
(Washington Post) In October, Felton’s team logged six deaths due to the virus, many of them among vaccinated people. Their ages: 80s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 90s.They included Betty Witzel, 88, described by her family as a tomboy who carried snakes in her pocket as a child and grew up to be a teacher, mother of […]
Nov 29, 2022
MRI Highlights Brain Blips Long After COVID Symptoms Have Subsided
(MedPageToday) A specialized type of MRI showed lingering brain abnormalities in patients up to 6 months after they recovered from COVID-19. Data from susceptibility-weighted MRI in 46 COVID-recovered patients and 30 healthy controls showed that the former had significantly higher susceptibility values in regions of the frontal lobe and brain stem, according to Vidur Mahajan, […]
Nov 29, 2022
Is it Covid, flu or RSV? A few hallmarks can help distinguish among the illnesses
(NBC News) Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are together driving a national wave of respiratory illnesses. Around 76% of U.S. hospital inpatient beds are full, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Pediatric beds are at a similar level, though six states have 90% or more of their pediatric beds full, […]
Nov 28, 2022
COVID-19 disrupts gut microbiome
(NIH) The trillions of microbes living in the gut—bacteria, fungi, and viruses—are known collectively as the gut microbiome. Research has shown that changes in gut microbes may contribute to a variety of diseases and conditions. COVID-19 patients often have imbalances in their gut microbes that allow antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections to take over. These patients also […]
Nov 22, 2022
What Covid taught scientists and the public about the flu
(NBC News) For nearly three years, the medical and scientific world scrutinized Covid. That research helped experts gain a new understanding of a much older virus: the flu. On March 3, 2020, the head of the World Health Organization began a daily press briefing exhorting countries around the world to do more to stop the spread […]
Nov 22, 2022
Vaccine Breakthrough Could Finally Bring COVID to Its Knees
(DailyBeast) With new COVID variants and subvariants evolving faster and faster, each chipping away at the effectiveness of the leading vaccines, the hunt is on for a new kind of vaccine—one that works equally well on current and future forms of the novel coronavirus. Now researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland think they’ve found a […]
Nov 21, 2022
Rare, convergent antibodies targeting the stem helix broadly neutralize diverse betacoronaviruses
(Cell Host and Microbe) Humanity has faced three recent outbreaks of novel betacoronaviruses, emphasizing the need to develop approaches that broadly target coronaviruses. Here, we identify 55 monoclonal antibodies from COVID-19 convalescent donors that bind diverse betacoronavirus spike proteins. Most antibodies targeted an S2 epitope that included the K814 residue and were non-neutralizing. However, 11 […]
Nov 21, 2022