The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging in India, with over 4.5 million cases, 75.000 deaths and more than 90,000 new cases a day. At present there are few effective therapeutic options, which means that healthcare providers are faced with ongoing challenges in managing the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A new study based
The strong pro-inflammatory response known as cytokine storm is said to play an important role in the pathophysiology of a severe variant of covid-19. But researchers at Radboudumc University (Matthijs Kox et al.) doubt that. In a small-scale study published in JAMA, they argue that many studies look at different cytokines and do not make a
One of the features distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from its more pathogenic counterpart SARS-CoV is the presence of premature stop codons in its ORF3b gene. In this paper it’s shown that SARS-CoV-2 ORF3b is a potent interferon antagonist, suppressing the induction of type I interferon more efficiently than its SARS-CoV ortholog. Phylogenetic analyses and functional assays reveal
An infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can affect multiple organs. With this in mind, researchers of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Cornell University in the US have investigated cellular factors that could be significant for an infection. To this end, they analysed the activity of 28 specific genes in a wide range of human
Source: The New England Journal of Medicine In a laboratory setting, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was inoculated into human bronchial epithelial cells. This inoculation, which was performed in a biosafety level 3 facility, had a multiplicity of infection (indicating the ratio of virus particles to targeted airway cells) of 3:1. These cells
Dozens of major hospitals across the U.S. are grappling with whether to ignore a federal decision allowing broader emergency use of blood plasma from recovered COVID patients to treat the disease in favor of dedicating their resources to a gold-standard clinical trial that could help settle the science for good. As many as 45 hospitals
Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs reduces the risk of death by 20 percent, an analysis of seven international trials found on Wednesday, prompting the World Health Organization to update its advice on treatment. The analysis — which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone — found that steroids improve survival
