Disease/Infection News

RSS

Researchers find the right dosing of an old anti-tuberculosis drug

A considerably higher dose of the anti-tuberculosis drug rifampicin is safe and can also lead to a shorter treatment for tuberculosis and less resistance.

22 Mar 2021

AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine protects against symptomatic disease

Results from a large clinical trial in the United States and South America indicate that AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222, is well-tolerated and protects against symptomatic COVID-19 disease, including severe disease or hospitalization.

22 Mar 2021

Can SARS-CoV-2 still be transmissible once symptoms have subsided?

Researchers based at the University of Missouri, in partnership with U.S. government science facilities in Maryland, have reported that individuals severely infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be able to continue shedding infectious viral RNA for over three weeks after the symptomatic infection has passed.

22 Mar 2021

A green tea compound shows anti-SARS-CoV-2 properties in vitro

Researchers show the antiviral potential of a green tea compound against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

22 Mar 2021

SARS-CoV-2 variants develop resistance against type I interferons

A study conducted at the University of Colorado and National Institutes of Health, USA, has revealed that the resistance developed by newly emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 against host interferon responses could serve as a potential driving force for viral evolution.

22 Mar 2021

Prediction of antibody responses in recovered COVID-19 patients remains unclear

It is crucial to gain a better understanding of how an antibody response is developed against SARS-CoV-2, and how long it lasts. This will determine the antibody titers and duration that protect against reinfection by the virus. A new preprint on the medRxiv* server shows this to be still a distant goal.

22 Mar 2021

Male fertility and androgen production may be impacted by COVID-19

An interesting new study has appeared online in the journal Hormones that discusses the effects of COVID-19 on the male and female gonads.

22 Mar 2021

What are the chief predictors of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children?

A new study seeks to explore the factors associated with the diagnosis in children. The ability to rapidly diagnose COVID-19 in this age group is essential not only for monitoring progressive disease in individual children, but to avert further transmission chains.

22 Mar 2021

Could nanoparticle vaccines offer broad protection against sarbecoviruses?

To understand the ability of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-elicited antibodies to neutralize and protect against emerging variants (that are pathogenic) and other sarbecoviruses, a large team of researchers studied immunity by receptor-binding domain nanoparticle vaccines. They showed that a clinical-stage multivalent SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain nanoparticle vaccine (SARS-CoV-2 RBD-NP) protected mice from the SARS-CoV-2-induced disease.

22 Mar 2021

Preventing future pandemics by ending the wildlife trade

In this News-Medical interview, we spoke to Professor Diana Bell about the illegal wildlife trade and how we could prevent future pandemics by stopping it.

22 Mar 2021

Vaccine passports raise questions of equity, security, and privacy

Vaccine passports raise questions of equity, security, privacy, argues Crispin Maslog. China, where the COVID-19 pandemic began a long year ago, has now become the first country in the world to issue a vaccine passport to promote world economic recovery and facilitate cross-border travel.

22 Mar 2021

RADLogics AI-Powered COVID-19 solution reduces turnaround time

Moscow Center for Diagnostics & Telemedicine and RADLogics shared the results of a large-scale study (Moscow Experiment on the Computer Vision for the Analysis of Medical Images - mosmed.ai, NCT04489992) conducted by the Research and Practical Clinical Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine Technologies of the Moscow Health Care Department.

22 Mar 2021

Asymptomatic individuals the biggest problem in COVID battle

The researchers noted in a study published in the journal Science, that asymptomatic cases are those that do not manifest symptoms for the infection duration. In contrast, presymptomatic cases develop symptoms later in the course of infection.

21 Mar 2021

Clofazimine inhibits coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, study finds

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong found that Clofazimine, a lipophilic antimicrobial riminophenazine dye used in combination with agents like rifampicin and dapsone to treat leprosy, inhibits coronaviruses, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.

21 Mar 2021

People's politics, values shape COVID-19 risk perception and adoption of protective behaviors

People's politics and values are exerting a bigger influence on how much of a threat they feel from COVID-19 compared to objective indicators such as the number of confirmed cases.

21 Mar 2021

Hearing loss, other auditory problems strongly linked with Covid-19

Hearing loss and other auditory problems are strongly associated with Covid-19 according to a systematic review of research evidence led by University of Manchester and NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) scientists.

21 Mar 2021

Blocking folate metabolism could reduce SARS-CoV-2 viral replication in infected cells

The novel beta-coronavirus virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and coronaviruses, in general, alter the host's cellular metabolism to support massive production of ~30 kB viral genomes and subgenomic viral RNAs. However, how this is achieved is largely unknown.

21 Mar 2021

A review of the resilience of Chinese hospitals to the COVID-19 pandemic

A new review article, published on the medRxiv* preprint server, deals with several different aspects such as medical response capability, disaster health management, disaster preparedness, and health infrastructure safety, in China, by which they survived the COVID-19 crisis.

21 Mar 2021

Circular RNA vaccine shows neutralizing activity against B.1.351 variant

New preclinical research led by Wensheng Wei from Peking University in China has proposed the development of a circular RNA vaccine. Their findings showed the circular RNA vaccine creates neutralizing antibodies and strong T-cell responses against the receptor-binding domain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein.

21 Mar 2021

Research suggests SARS-CoV-2 vaccine distribution strategy focusing on where virus spreads more easily

The United States is a few days from reaching President Biden's goal of vaccinating 100 million people 100 days since he took office. While the United States leads the world in both the number of COVID-19 cases at over 29.7 million and deaths reaching past 539,000, it has stepped up as a leader in vaccinating its population.

21 Mar 2021