Mar 18th, 2023 - Understanding the level and characteristics of protection from past SARS-CoV-2 infection against subsequent re-infection, symptomatic COVID-19 disease, and severe disease is essential for predicting future potential disease burden, for designing policies that restrict travel or access to venues where there is a high risk of transmission, and for informing choices about when to receive vaccine d...

Mar 18th, 2023 - SARS-CoV-2 has developed a variety of approaches to counteract host innate antiviral immunity to facilitate its infection, replication and pathogenesis, but the molecular mechanisms that it employs are still not been fully understood. Here, we found that SARS-CoV-2 NSP8 inhibited the production of type I and III IFNs by acting on RIG-I/MDA5 and the signaling molecules TRIF and STING. Overexpres...

Mar 17th, 2023 - Despite a large proportion of the population having been vaccinated and infected, Singapore had SARS-CoV-2 waves driven by the BA.5 and XBB sublineages of the omicron (B.1.1.529) variant. Data on the protective immunity against medically attended, symptomatic reinfections with omicron BA.4, BA.5, and XBB conferred by previous SARS-CoV-2 infections and vaccinations are scarce. We therefore aimed...

Mar 17th, 2023 - To explore the International Network for Child and Family Centred Care (INCFCC) members' experiences and views on the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the nursing workforce. On the 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While some countries adopted a herd immunity approach, others imposed stricter measures to reduce the transmission of the virus. Hospit...

Mar 17th, 2023 - Until now, the treatment protocols for COVID-19 have been revised multiple times. The use and approval of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for COVID-19 treatment represent exceptional achievements in modern science, technology and medicine. SARS-CoV-2 Omicron evasion of pre-existing immunity represents a serious public health problem nowadays. This systematic review with meta-analysis p...

Mar 17th, 2023 - The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths and has resulted in disastrous societal and economic impacts worldwide. During SARS-CoV-2 infection, abnormal levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines have been observed and were associated to the severity of the disease. Type I (-α/β) and Type III (IFN-λ) interferons are family members of cytokines that play an important role in fighting viral re...

Mar 16th, 2023 - The published estimates of SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Russia are few. The study aimed to assess the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Arkhangelsk (Northwest Russia), in a year after the start of the pandemic, to evaluate the population adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), and to investigate characteristics associated with COVID-19 seropositive status. We conducted a SARS-CoV-2 ser...

Mar 16th, 2023 - COVID-19 in immunocompromised hosts has emerged as a difficult therapeutic management problem. Immunocompromised hosts mount weak responses to SARS-CoV-2 and manifest infection outcomes ranging from severe disease to persistent infection. Weakened immune systems mean greater viral loads and increased opportunities for viral evolution. Gupta, Konnova, et al. report the emergence of resistant SAR...

Mar 16th, 2023 - Vaccine is the cost-effective and reliable public health intervention to combat the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. The vaccination is considered safe and effective at any stage of pregnancy; however, pregnant women show more vaccine hesitation than the general population. This study aims to assess pregnant women's awareness, perception, and acceptability of COVID-19 vaccine attending antenatal cli...

Mar 16th, 2023 - The capability of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant to escape immunity conferred by mRNA vaccines has led to the development of Omicron-adapted vaccines. In this study we aimed to compare the immune response to the ancestral strain and to the BA.1 Omicron variant following administration of the original vaccine and the Omicron-adapted vaccine. This is an ongoing phase 3, double-blinded randomized ...

Mar 16th, 2023 - Expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants in populations with prevalent immunity from prior infection and vaccination, and associated burden of severe COVID-19, has raised concerns about epidemiologic characteristics of these lineages including their association with immune escape or severe clinical outcomes. Here we show that BA.4/BA.5 cases in a large US healthcare system ...

Mar 15th, 2023 - Genetic-based COVID-19 vaccines have proved highly effective in reducing the risk of hospitalization and death. As they were first distributed on a large-scale population, adenoviral-based vaccines were linked to a very rare thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome and the interplay between platelets and vaccinations increasingly gained attention. To study the crosstalk between platelets and t...

Mar 15th, 2023 - Pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells have been identified in SARS-CoV-2-unexposed individuals, potentially modulating COVID-19 and vaccination outcomes. Here, we provide evidence that functional cross-reactive memory CD4+ T cell immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is established in early childhood, mirroring early seroconversion with seasonal human ...

Mar 14th, 2023 - There is a need for vaccines that can induce effective systemic, respiratory mucosal, and cellular immunity to control the COVID-19 pandemic. We reported previously that a synthetic mucosal adjuvant SF-10 derived from human pulmonary surfactant works as an efficient antigen delivery vehicle to antigen presenting cells in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts and promotes induction of infl...

Mar 13th, 2023 - There is growing evidence to suggest that severe disease in children infected with common viruses that are typically benign in other children can result from inborn errors of immunity or their phenocopies. Infection with SARS-CoV-2, a cytolytic respiratory RNA virus, can lead to acute hypoxemic COVID-19 pneumonia in children with inborn errors of type I interferon (IFN) immunity or autoantibodi...

Mar 11th, 2023 - As the key component of host innate antiviral immunity, type I interferons (IFN-Is) exert multiple antiviral effects by inducing hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). However, the precise mechanism involved in host sensing of IFN-I signaling priming is particularly complex and remains incompletely resolved. This research identified F-box protein 11 (FBXO11), a component of the E3-ubiquitin l...

Mar 10th, 2023 - Global mitigation strategies to tackle the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2 have produced a significant decrease of the severity of 2020/21 seasonal influenza, which might result in a reduced population natural immunity for the upcoming 2021/22 influenza season. To predict the spread of influenza virus in Italy and the impact of prevention and control measures, we present an age-structured Susceptibl...

Mar 10th, 2023 - mRNA-based vaccines dramatically reduce the occurrence and severity of COVID-19, but are associated with rare vaccine-related adverse effects. These toxicities, coupled with observations that SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with autoantibody development, raise questions whether COVID-19 vaccines may also promote the development of autoantibodies, particularly in autoimmune patients. Here we ...

Mar 10th, 2023 - In November 2019, the idea of a zoonotic virus crossing over to human transmission in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, and then soaring across the globe to claim over 6.3 million lives and persisting to date, seemed more like wild science fiction than a future reality. As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continues, it is important to hallmark the imprints the pandemic has made on science. This review c...

Mar 9th, 2023 - The typical chest CT patterns seen in COVID-19 patients were far less frequent in individuals infected with Omicron and in the vaccinated, a retrospective multicenter study from France showed. In the analysis of nearly 4,000 chest CTs of patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2, multivariable analysis found that individuals infected during the period of Omicron predominance were 54% less likely to di...