A comprehensive review published today in Nature Medicine offers an initial glimpse of the multi-organ effects of long-term COVID-19 and suggests a framework for the care of COVID-19 long-haulers through dedicated, multidisciplinary clinics.
A new survey of dozens of surge capacity managers at hospitals nationwide captures the U.S. health care system’s pandemic preparedness status in the months before the first COVID-19 cases were identified in China.
Using molecular dating tools and epidemiological simulations, researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 virus likely circulated undetected for two months before the first human cases of COVID-19 were described in Wuhan, China in late-December 2019.
A Michigan Medicine team’s online guidelines have been viewed more than 30,000 times by providers in 150 countries since the beginning of the pandemic--and their deployment of an effective COVID-19 therapy has been a model for health systems and hospitals statewide.
Last fall, many older adults were on the fence about getting a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a poll taken in October. But a new poll taken in late January shows a large uptick in positive attitudes, including among people over 50 who are Black, Hispanic or in fair or poor health.
New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 can evade antibodies that work against the original form of the virus that sparked the pandemic, potentially undermining the effectiveness of vaccines and antibody-based drugs now being used to prevent or treat COVID-19.
A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides evidence that COVID-19 patients’ heart damage is caused by the virus invading and replicating inside heart muscle cells, leading to cell death and interfering with heart muscle contraction. The researchers used stem cells to engineer heart tissue that models the human infection and could help in studying the disease and developing possible therapies.
Spread of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the New York City region that shares worrisome similarities with other recent variants has been identified by scientists at Columbia University.
UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers are using stem cell-derived organoids to study how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with various organ systems. Their findings may help explain the wide variety in COVID-19 symptoms and aid the search for therapies.
COVID-19 can spread from asymptomatic but infected people through small aerosol droplets in their exhaled breath. Most studies of the flow of exhaled air have focused on coughing or sneezing; however, speaking while near one another is also risky. In Physics of Fluids, scientists used smoke and laser light to study the flow of expelled breath near and around two people conversing in various relative postures commonly found in the service industry, such as in hair salons, medical exam rooms, or long-term care facilities.
The study also showed that the number of COVID-19 infections in pregnant patients from nearly all communities of color in Washington was high. There was a twofold to fourfold higher prevalence of pregnant patients with COVID-19 infections from communities of color than expected based on the race-ethnicity distribution of pregnant women in Washington in 2018.
A new strain of the coronavirus in Southern California, first reported last month by Cedars-Sinai, is rapidly spreading across the country and around the world as travelers apparently carry the virus with them to a growing list of global destinations, according to new research published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The strain now accounts for nearly half of current COVID-19 cases in Southern California.
A new study out of the University of Chicago has found that during the initial wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City, only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 cases of the virus was symptomatic. The research team found that non-symptomatic cases substantially contribute to community transmission, making up at least 50% of the driving force of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
A restaurant outbreak in China was widely reported as strong evidence of airflow-induced transmission of COVID-19, but it lacked a detailed investigation about exactly how transmission occurred. In Physics of Fluids, researchers at the University of Minnesota report using advanced simulation methods to capture the complex flows that occur when the cold airflow from air conditioners interacts with the hot plume from a dining table and the transport of virus-loading particles within such flows.
DALLAS – Feb. 8, 2021 – World health experts have long suspected that the incidence of COVID-19 has been higher than reported. Now, a machine-learning algorithm developed at UT Southwestern estimates that the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since the pandemic began is nearly three times that of confirmed cases.
A new study, led by professors at the University of Chicago and Duke University, found that COVID-19 cases in the southern state of Karnataka, India, are nearly 95 times greater than reported.
The study, which followed 240 pregnant women between March and June 2020, found that the COVID-19 mortality rate in the pregnant women was significantly higher when compared to the COVID-19 mortality rate in similarly aged individuals within Washington state.
A new strain of the coronavirus has been found in more than one-third of COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles and may be contributing to the acceleration of the recent surge of cases across Southern California, according to new research from Cedars-Sinai.
A new study published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society examines the recovery of lung function and overall wellness in individuals who had varying degrees of COVID-19 severity. Little is known about lung health following infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and whether later respiratory problems, fatigue and ill health are associated with the disease’s initial severity.
President-elect Joe Biden has signaled that fighting the COVID-19 pandemic will be an immediate priority, but Inauguration Day is still two months away. Confirmed COVID-19 cases are likely to increase to 20 million by the end of January, predicts a Washington University in St. Louis forecasting model.
PPPL scientists have developed a unique program to track the zig-zagging dance of hot, charged plasma particles that fuel fusion reactions.
Findings from a national study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) “do not support” the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Researchers have created an experimental device that, instead of inhibiting inflammatory proteins in COVID-19 patients, changes the phenotype of circulating white blood cells, helping wean two patients off ECMO.
A research team led by UC Irvine and the University of Washington has created a new model of how the coronavirus can spread through a community. The model factors in network exposure — whom one interacts with — and demographics to simulate at a more detailed level both where and how quickly the coronavirus could spread through Seattle and 18 other major cities.
Scientists using the Advanced Photon Source have discovered new insights into the ways the SARS-CoV-2 virus camouflages itself inside the human body.
Results may lead to closer monitoring of heart failure patients in hospital and at home
One of the proteins on the virus – located on the characteristic COVID spike – has a component called the receptor-binding domain, or RBD, which is its “Achilles heel.” That is, he said, antibodies against this part of the virus have the potential to the neutralize the virus.
Aerosol microdroplets do not appear to be extremely efficient at spreading the virus that leads to COVID-19. While the lingering microdroplets are certainly not risk-free, due to their small size they contain less virus than the larger droplets that are produced when someone coughs, speaks, or sneezes directly on us, said researchers at the University of Amsterdam’s Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute. The results were published in Physics of Fluids.
What about the kidneys make them a hotspot for COVID-19’s cytokine storm? A research team says it’s the presence of a protein found on specialized renal transport cells.
As the pandemic continues, researchers have increasingly focused on the extent to which respiratory droplets carrying the coronavirus travel and contaminate the air after an infected person coughs. While scientists have studied the properties of air at the mouth, less is known about how these properties change as the cough cloud travels. In Physics of Fluids, researchers estimate the evolving volume of the cough cloud and quantify the reduction in its volume in the presence of a face mask.
Certain oral antiseptics and mouthwashes may have the ability to inactivate human coronaviruses, according to a Penn State College of Medicine research study.
A COVID-19 vaccine candidate that underwent extensive preclinical testing this spring and summer shows potent preclinical immune responses — including several that distinguish it from other COVID-19 vaccine approaches — according to a preprint deposited in the BioRxiv repository.
A large, international study of COVID-19 patients confirmed that cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, stroke and cancer can increase a patient’s risk of dying from the virus.
Most COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients in Southern California during the early months of the pandemic appear to have been infected by a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus introduced to the region from New York state via Europe, not directly from China, where the virus was first detected, according to a new study conducted at Cedars-Sinai.
A new international study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), The University of Liverpool and the University of Southampton is the first to give a detailed snapshot of how the body's CD4+ T cells respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Among the findings, their work suggests that early in the illness, patients hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19 develop a novel T cell subset that can potentially kill B cells and reduce antibody production.
New research from the University of Georgia supports growing evidence for airborne transmission of COVID-19 in enclosed spaces.
Reopening university and college campuses with primarily in-person instruction is associated with a significant increase in cases of COVID-19 in the counties where the schools are located.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, some locations have experienced decreasing numbers of cases followed by an increase. In the journal Chaos, mathematicians report a method to analyze these numbers for evidence of a first or second wave. The authors studied data from all 50 U.S. states plus D.C. for the seven-month period from Jan. 21 to July 31. They found 31 states and D.C. were experiencing a second wave as of the end of July.
In July, after weeks of steady but relatively slow increases in COVID-19 infection rates in Santa Barbara County, the number of cases per day began a steep climb, setting records with alarming frequency.
UNC School of Medicine researchers took striking images of the SARS-CoV-2 virus produced by infected respiratory epithelial cells inside human respiratory tract cultures. The New England Journal of Medicine featured this work in its “Images in Medicine” section.
In a tremendous demonstration of global collaboration, clinician-scientists have pooled data from 121 hospitals in eight countries to find that inexpensive, widely available steroids improve the odds that very sick COVID-19 patients will survive the illness.
As countries experience a steep surge in COVID-19 infections, face masks have become increasingly accepted as an effective means for combating the spread of the disease when combined with social distancing and frequent hand-washing. Increasingly people are using clear plastic face shields and masks with exhalation valves instead of regular cloth or surgical masks, since they can be more comfortable. In a paper published in Physics of Fluids, researchers investigate whether they are as effective.
If CDC guidelines aren’t enough to convince you that face shields alone shouldn’t be used to stop the spread of COVID-19, then maybe a new visualization study will. Researchers simulated coughing and sneezing from a mannequin’s mouth using a laser light to visualize droplets expelled. They tested a plastic face shield and found that they block the initial forward motion of the exhaled jet, however, aerosolized droplets are able to move around the visor with relative ease.
DALLAS – Aug. 20, 2020 – A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report. Both were treated and recovered.
A study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago discovered that children younger than 5 years with mild to moderate COVID-19 have much higher levels of genetic material for the virus in the nose compared to older children and adults. Findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, point to the possibility that the youngest children transmit the virus as much as other age groups. The ability of younger children to spread COVID-19 may have been under-recognized given the rapid and sustained closure of schools and daycare during the pandemic.
A new study from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering analyzes how the coronavirus spreads indoors—information that could help businesses and schools take precautions to reduce the chance of COVID-19 transmission as they reopen.
From mRNA vaccines entering clinical trials, to peptide-based vaccines and using molecular farming to scale vaccine production, the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing new and emerging nanotechnologies into the frontlines and the headlines. Nanoengineers at UC San Diego detail the current approaches to COVID-19 vaccine development, and highlight how nanotechnology has enabled these advances, in a review article in Nature Nanotechnology published July 15.
Most patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (coronavirus) pneumonia experienced improvement after receiving a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug normally given for rheumatoid arthritis, according to an observational study at Cedars-Sinai. Outcomes for patients who received the drug, tocilizumab, included reduced inflammation, oxygen requirements, blood pressure support and risk of death, compared with published reports of illness and death associated with severely ill COVID-19 patients.
Strategies for the safe reopening of low and middle-income countries (LMICs) from months of strict social distancing in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic must recognise that preserving people’s health is as important as reviving the economy, argue an international team of researchers.
Findings from an online survey of more than 53,000 American adults suggest that using heartburn medications known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) once or twice daily significantly increases the odds of a positive test for COVID-19 compared to those who do not take PPIs. This research appeared online July 7, 2020 in pre-print format in The American Journal of Gastroenterology.
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