Influenza News and Research

Latest Influenza News and Research

Experts call for transformative change to reduce future pandemics

Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts from around the world.

30 Oct 2020

Study: ICE detention centers experienced repeated outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses

More than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers experienced large, repeated outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses in the last three years, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Francisco.

30 Oct 2020

COVID-19 study: Researchers recruit frontline workers to identify asymptomatic individuals

Fifteen hundred frontline workers are being recruited for a yearlong study to find what percentage are positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, what percentage become positive and whether the antibodies they produce protect them from reinfection.

30 Oct 2020

Symptoms and outcomes of 3.32 million people tested for SARS-CoV-2

A recent study published on the preprint server medRxiv* in October 2020 shows the need for large-scale studies on the clinical characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 at the national and international scale. This is essential to shape interventions and optimize the use of resources to contain and manage a second wave of the pandemic.

30 Oct 2020

COVID-19 patients at risk of fatal co-infection during ICU stays

Researchers in the UK have conducted a study showing that a high proportion of patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) acquire a secondary bacterial co-infection during their hospital stay.

29 Oct 2020

Mental health challenges associated with COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020

This brief is a summary of the policy brief prepared in the context of the Swiss national COVID-19 science task force (https://ncs-tf.ch/en/).

29 Oct 2020

Antiviral inhibitor DDX42 shows broad activity against Chikungunya, HIV and SARS-CoV-2

By exploiting type 1 interferon's ability to foster an antagonistic cellular environment for viral replication, a research group from France pinpointed DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX42 as an intrinsic inhibitor of HIV, but also other pathogenic viruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Chikungunya virus.

29 Oct 2020

Research shows why certain people infected with COVID-19 show no symptoms

Researchers worldwide have been surprised to see that individuals can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the virus that produces COVID-19 - without showing symptoms. Since these individuals expose others to infection without knowing it, it is important to find an explanation and hopefully a solution to this.

29 Oct 2020

Majority of people infected with mild-to-moderate COVID 19 mount robust antibody response

The vast majority of individuals infected with mild-to-moderate COVID 19 mount a robust antibody response that is relatively stable for at least five months, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published October 28, in the journal Science.

29 Oct 2020

Researchers develop infectious disease model for forecasting elections

Forecasting elections is a high-stakes problem. Politicians and voters alike are often desperate to know the outcome of a close race, but providing them with incomplete or inaccurate predictions can be misleading.

29 Oct 2020

Genomic analysis of early SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in the UK

By analyzing 50,887 SARS-CoV-2 genomes, the team has provided insights into the micro-epidemiological patterns underlying the features of one of the world's largest national COVID-19 epidemics.

28 Oct 2020

Scientists warn Americans are expecting too much from a vaccine

The White House and many Americans have pinned their hopes for defeating the COVID-19 pandemic on a vaccine being developed at "warp speed." But some scientific experts warn they're all expecting too much, too soon.

28 Oct 2020

Scientists identify new therapeutic targets for SARS-CoV-2

To identify new potential therapeutic targets for SARS-CoV-2, a team of scientists at the New York Genome Center, New York University, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, performed a genome-scale, loss-of-function CRISPR screen to systematically knockout all genes in the human genome.

27 Oct 2020

Researchers generate a transcriptomic map of the COVID brain

COVID-19 is known to be associated with multiple changes in gene expression, but many of these are also seen in chronic brain conditions as well as in some abnormal mental conditions. A recent study published on the preprint server bioRxiv in October 2020 uncovers the molecular basis of this association.

26 Oct 2020

Joint Pathology Center selects Huron Digital Pathology’s image search engine to unlock vast knowledge contained in world’s largest human tissue repository

Huron Digital Pathology announced today that the Joint Pathology Center (JPC), the premier pathology reference center for the United States federal government and part of the US Defense Health Agency, has selected Huron’s artificial intelligence-enabled LagottoTM image search engine to index and search JPC’s growing digital image archive.

From Huron Digital Pathology 26 Oct 2020

EKF launches PrimeStore® MTM pathogenic sample collection and transportation kit

EKF Diagnostics, the global in-vitro diagnostics company, announces that it has launched a PrimeStore® MTM sample collection kit.

From EKF Diagnostics 26 Oct 2020

Researchers present COVID RdRp structure at 2.5A

In a recent bioRxiv* preprint publication, Christopher J. Russo et al. report the structure of favipiravir ribonucleoside triphosphate (favipiravir-RTP) in complex with the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) bound to a template: primer RNA duplex. They determine the structure by electron cryomicroscopy (cryoEM) to a resolution of 2.5 Å.

26 Oct 2020

Scientists devise new method to map HIV's sugary shield in unprecedented detail

Scientists from Scripps Research and Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a method for mapping in unprecedented detail the thickets of slippery sugar molecules that help shield HIV from the immune system.

23 Oct 2020