Feb 25th, 2021 - The Severe Acute Respiratory Distress Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic poses special challenges for the society and especially the medical staff. Even if a rather mild course is assumed among pregnant women the measures to prevent transmission of the infection are of outstanding importance. To screen asymptomatic pregnant women during admission to our university maternal hospital we focused...

Feb 25th, 2021 - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2-induced hyperinflammation is a major cause of death or end-organ dysfunction in COVID-19 patients. We review adjunct host-directed therapies (HDTs) for COVID-19 management. The use of umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells as HDT for COVID-19 has been shown to be safe in phase 1 and 2 trials. Trials of anti-interleukin-6 receptor antibodies...

Feb 25th, 2021 - For Immediate Release: February 04, 2021 Statement From: Statement Author Leadership Role Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs - Food and Drug Administration Janet Woodcock M.D. Español As the public health agency responsible for regulating medical products, we must ensure that health care providers have the most up-to-date diagnostics, treatments and vaccines in their toolbox to fight this pa...

Feb 24th, 2021 - The proteins of coronavirus are classified to nonstructural, structural, and accessory. There are 16 nonstructural viral proteins beside their precursors (1a and 1ab polyproteins). The nonstructural proteins are named as nsp1 to nsp16 and they act as enzymes, coenzymes, and binding proteins to facilitate the replication, transcription, and translation of the virus. The structural proteins are b...

Feb 24th, 2021 - Data regarding the epidemiologic characteristics and clinical features of pediatric hematological patients are limited in this corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis. We investigated the status of 113 pediatric hematological patients in Wuhan union hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic from January 23 to March 10, 2020. All the patients had routine blood and biochemical examination, as wel...

Feb 24th, 2021 - These are the UK coronavirus stories you need to know about today. CQC's Nigel Acheson said: "We saw that staff were working hard to provide care to patients in very challenging conditions. "Given the pressure the trust was under, the decision to inspect during this period was a difficult one. However, we had significant concerns from reviewing our own data, the views of healthcare system partn...

Feb 24th, 2021 - High levels of antibodies were detected in people of all ages who received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a study preprint has suggested. Antibody prevalence in unvaccinated people was found to vary across the country. The highest rate (16.9%) was seen in London. Black people were also most likely to test positive at 22.4%, followed by Asian individuals at 20%, compared with...

Feb 24th, 2021 - The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in substantial mortality. Some specialists proposed chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for treating or preventing the disease. The efficacy and safety of these drugs have been assessed in randomized controlled trials. To evaluate the effects of chloroquine (CQ) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for 1) treating people with COVID-...

Feb 24th, 2021 - Understanding the effect of serum antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) on susceptibility to infection is important for identifying at-risk populations and could have implications for vaccine deployment. The study purpose was to evaluate evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on diagnostic nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) among patients with positive v...

Feb 24th, 2021 - New Advances and Breakthroughs in Immunotherapy and Precision Medicine for Patients With Blood Cancer The world of hematologic malignancies continues to move forward at a robust pace despite the challenges of the COVID era. Although some areas of clinical trials and basic research suffered short-term stoppages or delays due to the pandemic, the studies presented at the 2020 American Society of ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - We analyzed antibody response patterns according to level of disease severity in patients with novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Japan. We analyzed 611 serum specimens from 231 patients with COVID-19 (mild, 170; severe, 31; critical, 30). IgM and IgG antibodies against nucleocapsid protein (N) and spike 1 protein (S1) were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The peaks of ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - Frail older persons may have an atypical presentation of COVID-19. The value of rRT-PCR testing for identifying SARS-CoV-2 nursing homes (NH) residents is not known. To determine whether (i) atypical symptoms may predict rRT-PCR results and (ii) rRT-PCR results may predict immunization against SARS-CoV-2 in NH residents. A retrospective longitudinal study. eight NHs with at least ten rRT-PCR-po...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to rise and second waves are reported in some countries, serological test kits and strips are being considered to scale up an adequate laboratory response. This study provides an update on the kinetics of humoral immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and performance characteristics ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - Hospitalized COVID-19 patients often present with a large spectrum of clinical symptoms. There is a critical need to better understand the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 that lead to either resolution or exacerbation of the clinical disease. Here, we examine longitudinal plasma samples from hospitalized COVID-19 patients with differential clinical outcome. We perform immune-repertoire analysis ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - Residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities are at increased risk for severe coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) but may not be able to access monoclonal antibody therapies offered at outpatient infusion centers due to frailty and logistical issues. We describe a mobile monoclonal antibody infusion program for patients with COVID-19 in skilled nursing facilities and provide descripti...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - A year into the pandemic, the knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 infection risks among healthcare workers remains limited. In this cross-sectional study, we examined whether healthcare workers with high exposure to Covid-19 patients had a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection than other healthcare workers in a Norwegian University Hospital. We also investigated the prevalence of asymptomatic healthcare work...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - In recent months genomic characterization of pandemic SARS-CoV-2 isolates identified viral variants that are less susceptible to neutralization by convalescent plasma (CP), vaccine-elicited plasma/sera, or SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies than earlier SARS-CoV-2 strains. In this Viewpoint, Casadevall et al. argue against the causal association made in some press articles between the emergence o...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has spread across the world. The aim of our study was to characterize mild courses and to determine the antibody status for these patients. We initiated an appeal for convalescent plasma donations. 615 people contacted us, and we ultimately included 426 in our analyses, in ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 currently affected more than 108 million people worldwide with a fatality rate of 2.2%. Herein, we report the first case of liver transplantation (LT) performed with a liver procured from a SARS-CoV-2 positive donor. The recipient was a 35-years ...

Feb 23rd, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. Novavax says it plans to apply for US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in the second quarter of the year. Gregory M. Glenn, MD, president of research and development at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based company, said on a Washington Post live...