Category: Science

The influx of hospital patients due to 2018’s deadly flu epidemic is taking its toll. Here is how hospitals are dealing with the emergency.
— Read on time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/

Two publications came to my attention recently. The first one is Shared B cell memory to coronaviruses and other pathogens varies in human age groups and tissues:

Notably, prepandemic children also had class-switched convergent clones to SARS-CoV-2 and its viral variants, but not EBOV, at higher frequencies than adults. We hypothesize that previous HCoV exposures may stimulate cross-reactive memory, and that such clonal responses may have their highest frequencies in childhood.

These findings suggest that encounters with coronaviruses in early life may produce cross-reactive memory B cell populations that contribute to divergent COVID-19 susceptibilities.

The second one is Mesenchymal Stem Cells: The Secret Children’s Weapons against the SARS-CoV-2 Lethal Infection. I don’t understand enough about this one, but the hypothesis here is twofold:

First, the integrity presence of a stable regenerative state of pediatric and young individuals, mainly based on the support of active circulating stem cells; and, secondly, the active presence of the adaptive immune system characterized by a continuous turn-over of lymphocytes, NK and B lymphocytes.

Both studies, however, agree that

The SARS-CoV-2 infection in children appears to be an unusual event. Despite the high number of affected adult and elderly, children and adolescents remained low in amounts, and marginally touched.

Overall children are unaffected personally by this virus, and pose no threat to others, as they are far from being the initially-claimed main vector of transmission.

This also means children do not need to be vaccinated at all, let alone undergo the risk of an experimental drug only authorised for emergency use, and with no safety data available in that age group, nor with any long-term side effects known.

bioRxiv – the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
— Read on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.04.412098v1

A New Mutation Threatens A Fragile Recovery | COVID Candy
— Read on covidcandy.net/coronavirus/a-new-mutation-threatens-a-fragile-recovery/

Ivermectin proposes many potentials effects to treat a range of diseases, with its antimicrobial, antiviral, and anti-cancer properties as a wonder drug. It is highly effective against many microorganisms including some viruses. In this comprehensive systematic review, antiviral effects of ivermectin are summarized including in vitro and in vivo studies over the past 50 years. Several studies reported antiviral effects of ivermectin on RNA viruses such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Hendra, Newcastle, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest, Sindbis, Avian influenza A, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, Human immunodeficiency virus type 1, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Furthermore, there are some studies showing antiviral effects of ivermectin against DNA viruses such as Equine herpes type 1, BK polyomavirus, pseudorabies, porcine circovirus 2, and bovine herpesvirus 1. Ivermectin plays a role in several biological mechanisms, therefore it could serve as a potential candidate in the treatment of a wide range of viruses including COVID-19 as well as other types of positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses. In vivo studies of animal models revealed a broad range of antiviral effects of ivermectin, however, clinical trials are necessary to appraise the potential efficacy of ivermectin in clinical setting.
— Read on www.nature.com/articles/s41429-020-0336-z

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was a challenge for emergency care units worldwide due to the large numbers of patients, the scarcity of information, the medical resources, and the uncertainty regarding the disease’s etiology and pathogenesis. The transmission of the virus and a probable post-pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 will depend on how deep we can understand this disease, the duration of immunity and the degree of cross immunity between SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens either bacteria or fungi. Most mortalities have been treated to an atypical pneumonia consisted of a sudden worsening of general condition of the admitted positive COVID-19 patients. The severe thromboembolism often characterized by a violent pulmonary and systemic complications described with a blend of inflammatory-infectious patterns that rapidly shifted into a typical systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) or into an acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) that eventually concluded into a multi-organ failure (MOF) and death. The fatality rate reported in our Covid-19 structure, SG Moscati Hospital of Taranto province in Italy, was higher in aged male people with preexisting chronic pulmonary disease (COPD), patients with cancer and preexisting cardio-vascular diseases (CVD). We assumed a different theoretical position to clarify the higher mortality event seen among those patients that was not as obvious as it appeared, we thus offered different pathophysiological picture that could help to newly solutions in therapy and prevention.