Category: Published Research
Medical Masks Versus N95 Respirators for Preventing COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers
(Annals of Internal Medicine) Background: It is uncertain if medical masks offer similar protection against COVID-19 compared with N95 respirators. Objective: To determine whether medical masks are noninferior to N95 respirators to prevent COVID-19 in health care workers providing routine care. Design: Multicenter, randomized, noninferiority trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04296643).
Nov 29, 2022
A multivalent nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine against all known influenza virus subtypes
(Science) Because we cannot currently predict which subtype of the influenza virus will cause the next pandemic, researchers have made various attempts to produce a “universal” vaccine that could protect people from a wide swathe of subtypes. Although most of these efforts have focused on a limited set of antigens that are shared by many […]
Nov 29, 2022
(PLoS) Superspreading events are important drivers of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and long-range (LR) transmission is believed to play a major role. We investigated two choir outbreaks with different attack rates (AR) to analyze the contribution of LR transmission and highlight important measures for prevention.
Nov 22, 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
(Journal of Infectious Diseases) Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is associated with acute respiratory infection. We sought to identify RSV variants associated with prolonged infection.
Nov 21, 2022
(Neurology) The relationship between COVID-19 and epilepsy is uncertain. We studied the potential association between COVID-19 and seizures or epilepsy in the six months after infection. We applied validated methods to an electronic health records network (TriNetX Analytics) of 81 million people. We closely matched people with COVID-19 infections to those with influenza. In each […]
Nov 18, 2022
Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 in a study of 1,542,510 adults in England
(Nature) Infection with SARS-CoV-2 virus is associated with a wide range of symptoms. The REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission −1 (REACT-1) study monitored the spread and clinical manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 among random samples of the population in England from 1 May 2020 to 31 March 2022. We show changing symptom profiles associated with the different variants […]
Nov 15, 2022
Can mRNA vaccines transform the fight against Ebola?
(Nature) COVID-19 vaccines that rely on mRNA technology are credited with transforming humanity’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccines — one made by drug giant Pfizer with German biotech firm BioNTech, another by US pharmaceutical company Moderna — sped through clinical trials in just months and gained approval from major regulatory bodies less than a year after […]
Nov 14, 2022
(Lancet) Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of hospitalisation in infants. The burden of RSV infection in healthy term infants has not yet been established. Accurate health-care burden data in healthy infants are necessary to determine RSV immunisation policy when RSV immunisation becomes available.
Nov 11, 2022
Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection
(Nature) First infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is associated with increased risk of acute and postacute death and sequelae in various organ systems. Whether reinfection adds to risks incurred after first infection is unclear. Here we used the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ national healthcare database to build a cohort of […]
Nov 11, 2022