Are antibodies that attack a patient’s own organs contributing to severe forms of COVID-19? A new study suggests specific antibody tests that may reveal the answer.
The Spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 must bind to proteins on the surface of human cells to trigger an infection.
KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
Scientists in the UK and Germany discovered a new doorway that the COVID-19 virus uses to infect human cells. This reveals new therapeutic possibilities for blocking the virus.
Vaccines work by teaching your immune system about new viruses. Your immune cells are very clever – they will remember what they learnt, and protect you if you encounter that virus in the future.
Are patients with severe COVID-19 victims of their own immune response?
JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/Getty Images
Patients suffering from severe COVID-19 may be experiencing a rogue antibody response similar to that seen in autoimmune diseases. The findings offer new approaches for COVID-19 therapy.
Hepatitis C led to an estimated 400,000 deaths in 2016.
(Shutterstock)
Michael Houghton, an Edmonton-based virologist, was one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for the discovery of hepatitis C.
Classroom experiments show how the coronavirus can spread and who’s at greatest risk.
Tom Werner via Getty Images
Experiments in college classrooms show how tiny respiratory droplets known as aerosols can spread, even with good ventilation. The risk isn’t the same in every seat.
The microbes in the mother’s gut can alter the number of neurons in the baby’s brain and the connections they make.
bestdesigns/Getty Images
Helen Vuong, University of California, Los Angeles
Microbes in the gut aren’t just important for digesting your food. In pregnant women, these gut microbes are producing chemicals that are essential for proper brain development of the fetus.
When a person sneezes, tiny droplets, or aerosols, can linger in the air.
Jorg Greuel via Getty Images
The SARS-CoV-2 virus usually infects the body via the ACE2 protein. But there is another entry point that allows the virus to infect the nervous system and block pain perception.
Death rates vary by demographic, with age and race playing big roles.
AP Photo/Kathy Willens
Using random testing, researchers in Indiana were able to calculate death rates by age, race, and sex and found sharp increases in risk of death among older and non-white state residents.
Children run as an agent of the National Institute of Public Hygiene carries out fumigation in the Anyama district of Abidjan,Ivory Coast.
SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images
A warming climate may change the types of viruses that thrive. A new report suggests that the threat of malaria may be replaced by dengue, for which there is no treatment and no cure.
Institutions like hospitals and transit systems have been using UV disinfection for years.
Sergei Bobylev\TASS via Getty Images
UV disinfection is a proven means of killing pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but it’s not risk-free.
Schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania have already found Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, in their water systems.
Andrew Whelton/Purdue University
When water stagnates in pipes, harmful metals and bacteria can accumulate and make people sick. Buildings that were shut down for weeks during the pandemic may be at risk.
Introducing healthy genes to replace defective ones is the essence of gene therapy.
KTSFotos/Getty Images
The immune system is trained to destroy viruses, even when they carry therapeutic cargo as is the case in gene therapy. Now researchers have figured out how to dial down the immune response.
Easy, fast coronavirus testing is critical to controlling the virus.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Zoë McLaren, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The new BinaxNOW antigen test is quick, easy, accurate and cheap. It could solve the US testing problem, but the emergency use authorization only allows people with COVID-19 symptoms to get tested.
Reports describe a Hong Kong man who was reinfected with the coronavirus after returning from Europe. Does that mean he wasn’t immune after the first infection?
Billions of people are going to need a coronavirus vaccine and that demand is going to be hard to meet.
Francesco Carta fotografo/Moment via Getty Images
Once a coronavirus vaccine is approved, billions of doses need to be manufactured. Current vaccine production is nowhere near ready, for a variety of reasons, but planning now could help.
There’s a faster way to complete vaccine trials, but is it ethical?
Skaman306/Moment via Getty Images
Challenge trials – purposefully exposing volunteers to the coronavirus – could speed up the development of a vaccine. But there are serious ethical concerns with this approach.
Director, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital and Consultant Physician, Department of Infectious Diseases, Alfred Hospital and Monash University, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity