Category: Covid-19

rnrnBackgroundrn

After a successful first WHO webinar held on 9 February 2021 on post COVID-19 condition, focusing on recognition and burden, WHO conducted a Delphi survey to come to a consensus on the clinical case definition of post COVID19 condition.

This second WHO webinar will present the consensus clinical case definition from the global Delphi exercise, and then expand on understanding the mechanisms that may cause post COVID-19 condition, and the care models to manage it.rn

There are at least seven mechanisms to be considered: inflammation/hyperinflammatory state; immune dysregulation/autoimmune; coagulation/vasculopathy; direct viral toxicity/viral perseverance/long-term infection; autonomic dysfunction/neurologic; endocrine/metabolic;rn and maladaptation of the ACE2 pathway. Likely, many interact synergically. Thus, this global meeting brings together stakeholders to advance the field in solidarity.

The objectives of this second WHO webinar are to:rn

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Expanding our understanding of post COVID-19 condition: Webinar 2 15 June 2021 13:00 - World Health Organization

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) Officials are reporting 1,150 active cases of coronavirus in Oklahoma Tuesday, June 15.

On Tuesday, data from the Oklahoma State Department of Health shows that the state has had 454,929 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since March of 2020.

Thats an increase of 535 cases since Friday, June 11.

At this point, officials believe there are 1,150 active cases of COVID-19 in Oklahoma.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oklahoma has seen 8,546 deaths as of Tuesday.

Officials say there were 125 Oklahomans hospitalized with COVID-19 on average over the past three days.

Health leaders say over 1.66 million Oklahomans have received their initial COVID-19 vaccine, while 1.35 million have completed the series.

To learn more about guidelines regarding the pandemic,visit the CDCs website.

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OSDH: 1,150 active cases of COVID-19 in Oklahoma - KFOR Oklahoma City

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) Rhode Island has reached a new milestone in its vaccination efforts as the states COVID-19 data continues to improve.

Data released Tuesday by the R.I. Department of Health shows 600,374 people are now fully vaccinated against the disease, while roughly 674,000 in total have received at least one dose.

The Health Department updated its weekly data on Tuesday, which showed decreases in new hospital admissions by week (from 35 last week to 22 this week) and new cases per 100,000 residents by week (from 21 to 18) while percent positivity by week remained at 0.5%.

The daily positivity rate also came out to 0.5%, with 23 new cases reported and more than 4,000 tests administered the previous day.

Another Rhode Islander has died after contracting the virus, bringing the states death toll to 2,723.

Nationwide, the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 600,000 on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Rhode Island health officials say 38 people in the state remain hospitalized with the virus, with six currently in the intensive care unit and seven on ventilators.

On Tuesday, Governor Dan McKee also announced state officials will no longer hold scheduled COVID_19 briefings, but will instead have general media availability every week.

The next news conference is scheduled for Thursday at 1 p.m., but going forward they will be held every Tuesday at 2 p.m., according to the governors office.

12 News plans to stream the media availability right here on WPRI.com.

COVID-19 specific briefings will be held on an as-needed basis, officials added.

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More than 600K Rhode Islanders now fully vaccinated against COVID-19 - WPRI.com

Introduction

In the race to vaccinate as many people in the U.S. as possible, several benchmarks have been proposed, including President Bidens goal of reaching 70% of adults in the U.S. with at least one dose by July 4. Whether or not this is attainable is unknown, as the pace of vaccination has slowed, and progress has varied substantially across states. Moreover, even where the 70% target is reached, whether nationally or in a particular state, achievement of the goal for the overall population may mask differences in vaccination rates across groups, particularly by race/ethnicity. To date, vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic people have lagged behind those of White people, largely due to access and logistical barriers as well as concerns about safety and potential side effects. As such, even if broad national vaccination goals are achieved, these groups may remain at higher risk, which could lead to widening health disparities and limit the nations recovery from the pandemic.

To further explore potential disparities in meeting vaccination benchmarks, researchers at Stanford University and KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) used current state-reported vaccination data by race/ethnicity to project vaccine coverage going forward, by state and nationally. Specifically, using the current pace of vaccination, we projected the share of people ages 12 and older who would receive at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of July 4 for four racial/ethnic groups (White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian) and assessed when 70% of each group would have received at least one dose. We were not able to include other groups in the analysis due to data limitations.

Our focus on vaccinations among those ages 12 and older differs from President Bidens goal, which is based on those 18 and older. We use a 70% vaccination rate as an illustrative measure for examining potential disparities across groups that may underlie an overall coverage rate. We focus on those ages 12 and older due to lack of systematic data on vaccinations by race/ethnicity and age. Our projected coverage levels will be lower than those among adults given that younger adolescents have only more recently become eligible for vaccination. Reporting on race and ethnicity is incomplete and inconsistent across states. Previous reporting on racial/ethnic disparities in vaccination through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other sources has not adjusted for these data discrepancies, resulting in reported coverage levels that likely underestimate actual population coverage. Although we have adopted a standard set of definitions and rules for reconciling unknown or discrepant data elements to enable transparent and comparable estimation of coverage over time and place, results must be interpreted as approximations in the context of missing and sometimes noisy data.

At the current pace of vaccination, 65% of those ages 12 and older would be at least partially vaccinated by July 4, but rates would be lower for Hispanic, and especially Black, people. Asian people are the only group estimated to exceed a 70% vaccination rate, while White people (66%) and Hispanic people (63%) will be shy of reaching this level, and only about half (51%) of Black people will have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by July 4, based on current trends (Figure 1). If the current pace of vaccination continues, Hispanic people nationally would reach a 70% threshold by the end of July (July 27), White people would reach this threshold by early August (August 2), but Black people would still not have reached this coverage level by the beginning of September. Hispanic people are projected to reach 70% coverage faster than White people despite having a lower rate of vaccination as of July 4, because their recent pace of vaccination has been faster than White people.

Progress toward achieving a 70% vaccination rate among those ages 12 and older by July 4, and disparities across race/ethnic groups, would also vary significantly across states. At the current vaccination pace, Asian people are on track to reach 70% of those ages 12 and older with at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose in nearly all reporting states (40 of 44), and White people are on track in just over a third of reporting states (18 of 47). Hispanic people are projected to reach this threshold in 13 of 44 reporting states, while Black people are estimated to reach this coverage level in only 5 of 47 reporting states (Figure 2, Tables 1 and 2).

To reach a 70% vaccination rate by July 4, the pace of vaccination would need to increase substantially in many states, particularly for Black people. Nationally, the daily pace of new vaccinations would need to be 7% faster than the current pace to achieve 70% vaccination coverage among Hispanic people ages 12 and older by July 4, while the pace for Black people would need to be over two and a half times faster than the current pace. The increases in vaccination rates needed to reach this coverage level also vary across states. The pace would need to at least double in 24 of 44 states reporting data for Hispanic people, 24 of 47 states reporting data for White people, and 36 of 47 states reporting data for Black people (Table 3).

If the pace of new vaccinations continues to slow even further, disparities between groups in achieving progress toward coverage goals would persist. For example, a slowdown of 25% would mean that, overall, the share of those ages 12 and older estimated to have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose would drop from 65% to 64%. Asian people would still reach a 70% coverage rate, coverage among White people would remain below this threshold, with 65% receiving at least one dose, and there would be larger gaps for Hispanic and Black people, with 61% and 50% receiving at least one dose by July 4, respectively. These patterns play out at the state level as well.

It remains to be seen whether President Bidens goal of at least 70% of adults receiving at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by July 4 will be achieved, particularly given the slowdown in vaccinations. Regardless of when this goal is achieved, it is important to recognize that this national benchmark may mask underlying disparities. This illustrative analysis, which examines potential disparities toward achieving a 70% coverage rate among people ages 12 and older, shows that Black and Hispanic people will likely be left behind even if and when national goals are achieved, with substantial variation across the country. As such, even if the nation, overall, reaches a broad level of protection through vaccination, certain groups and communities will remain at increased risk for COVID-19. These disparities in vaccination may lead to further widening of the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on people of color and health disparities more broadly. These findings underscore the importance of continuing to prioritize vaccine equity and focused efforts to deliver vaccinations to underserved people and areas, as well as the importance of maintaining these efforts even after broader national goals are achieved.

Marissa Reitsma, Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, Neesha Joseph, and Joshua Salomon are with Stanford University. Samantha Artiga, Jennifer Kates, Larry Levitt, and Anna Rouw are with KFF.

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Disparities in Reaching COVID-19 Vaccination Benchmarks: Projected Vaccination Rates by Race/Ethnicity as of July 4 - Kaiser Family Foundation

'We've got to carry on the legacy': Franklin family grieves father, husband lost to COVID-19  The Tennessean

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'We've got to carry on the legacy': Franklin family grieves father, husband lost to COVID-19 - The Tennessean

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the ... [+] World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on February 3, 2021. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP) (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

The lab leak hypothesis about the origin of Covid-19 has been getting a lot of attention lately, and deservedly so. This is the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, that conducts research on coronaviruses. Just a few weeks ago, a group of highly respected virologists and epidemiologists published a letter in the journal Science calling for a more thorough investigation, stating that the lab leak hypothesis was not taken seriously enough in earlier investigations.

The coincidence of having a major virus research facility, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), just a short distance from the live animal food market that was originally believed to be the source of the outbreak is too great to ignore. Even more curious is that WIV was actively doing research on coronaviruses in bats, including the bats that carry a strain of SARS-CoV-2 that is the closest known relative to the Covid-19 virus itself.

From the beginning of the outbreak, attention was focused on WIV, and various conspiracy theorists suggested, without any evidence, that the Covid-19 virus was either intentionally engineered, intentionally released, or both. Let me just say right off the bat that I dont believe either of those claims.

However, I do think the lab leak hypothesis is credible, and its also possible that gain of function research (more about this below) might be responsible.

In arguing against (unsupported) claims that the Chinese released the virus on purpose, a group of virologists published a paper very early in the pandemic, in March 2020, which looked at the genome sequence of the virus and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. Other studies since then have come to similar conclusions: the virus is very similar to naturally-occurring coronaviruses, and it is possible that it simply evolved naturally in the wild, probably in bats.

Even so, the lab leak hypothesis remains highly credible, regardless of whether or not the virus was genetically engineered. Heres why. First, we know that lab accidents can happen and viruses can escape, even if these accidents are rare. We also know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had thousands of viruses, including coronaviruses, in its facility. And despite claims that viruses couldnt possibly have escaped accidentally, a 2017 Nature article describing the then-new Wuhan Institute reported, perhaps prophetically, that worries surround the [Wuhan Institute of Virology], too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times.

The secrecy of the Chinese government, which has not yet allowed independent, outside scientists full access to WIV to investigate, hasnt helped matters. We need to know if any viruses in WIV are similar to the Covid-19 virus, and at this point we cant trust the Chinese governments assurances on this question. Of course, even if they allow outsiders to investigate now, we cannot know that they have preserved all the viruses that were present in the lab in the winter of 2019-2020.

Now lets talk about gain-of-function research. Gain of function, or GoF, refers to research that tries to make viruses or bacteria more harmful, by making them more infectious. This seems crazy, right? And yet its been going on for years, despite the efforts of many scientists to stop it. In the past, GoF research focused on the influenza virus, and in particular on a small number of scientists (highly irresponsible ones, in my view) who were trying to give avian influenzabird fluthe ability to jump from birds into humans. I wrote about this in 2013, and in 2017, and again in 2019, each time calling on the US government to stop funding this extremely dangerous work. The NIH did put a pause on gain-of-function research for a few years, but the work resumed in 2019.

Now, let me explain why GoF research does not require artificially engineering a virus. Viruses mutate very rapidly all by themselves, and RNA viruses like influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mutate even more rapidly than DNA viruses. So a GoF experiment doesnt need to engineer a virus to make it more infectious: instead, scientists can simply grow a few trillion viral particles, which is easy, and design experiments to select the ones that are more infectious. For example, some GoF research on bird flu simply sprays an aerosol mixture of viruses into a ferrets nose (influenza research often uses ferrets, since you cant ethically do this with people), and waits to see if the ferret comes down with the flu. If it does (and this has been done, successfully), the strain that succeeds now has a new function, because it can infect mammals. The viruses that are artificially selected (as opposed to natural selection) in these experiments will appear completely natural; no genetic engineering required.

We know that WIV was conducting gain-of-function experiments, and we know that its work included coronaviruses. Was the Wuhan Institute of Virology running GoF experiments on SARS-CoV-2 viruses from bats? Possibly. And if it was, these experiments could easily have produced a strain that infected humans. If a lab employee was accidentally infected with such a strain, that could have started the pandemic. And even if SARS-CoV-2 wasnt the subject of GoF experiments, a naturally-occurring strain being studied at WIV could still have infected one of their scientists and thereby leaked out into the population.

Im not saying that any of these events is likely. I am, however, agreeing with the scientists who, in their recent letter to Science, called for a deeper investigation into the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Finally, let me echo a sentiment they expressed in their letter, which is best said by simply quoting them: in this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virusoften at great personal cost. Rather than seeking to cast blame, we need to uncover the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, and any behaviors that led to it, as a means to help all societies prevent future pandemics.

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Lab Leaks And Covid-19: Why The Lab Leak Hypothesis Doesnt Mean The Virus Was Engineered - Forbes

India on Saturday cut taxes on medical equipment such as oxygen concentrators and drugs used to treat COVID-19 infections, after widespread criticism over healthcare costs during a devastating second wave of the virus in April and May.

The government cut taxes on medical grade oxygen, ventilators, the remdesivir antiviral drug, diagnostic kits, pulse oximeters and hand sanitizers to 5% from 12-18% with immediate effect.

The new levies will be in place until the end of September, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, adding it would include taxes on electric furnaces in crematoriums and ambulances.

"The rate cut has not be done with any cost implication (on government finances) in mind, it has been done so that people get some ease....the decision has been taken to provide ultimate ease to patients," Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj told a news conference.

The government, however, would continue to tax vaccines at 5%, he added.

The world's second-most populous country, where coronavirus cases hit a peak of 400,000 a day in May, reported 84,332 new infections on Saturday, the lowest in more than two months, data from the health ministry showed. There were 4,002 deaths.

The South Asian country's total COVID-19 cases stands at 29.4 million, with 367,081 fatalities.

During the second wave of the virus many people resorted to costly private treatment in what is still a low-income country.

Others paid twenty times the usual price for oxygen cylinders on the black market and huge sums to secure ambulances and hearses. read more

Experts have said millions of people remain vulnerable to new surges of infections, particularly in the countryside where two-thirds of the population lives.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the government would take over the inoculation programme from Indian states and offer free doses to everyone over the age of 18.

The government would allow private hospitals to have 25% of all vaccine supplies, but not to charge more than 150 rupees ($2.06) over the cost of the dose, he said.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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India cuts taxes on medicines and equipment to treat COVID-19 - Reuters India

About two-thirds of people eligible for inoculation against COVID-19 have now received two doses of the vaccine in Dubai, the tourist and business hub of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said.

Dubai is the most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE and has one of the world's busiest airports.

For six months the UAE has been running one of the world's fastest vaccination campaigns against COVID-19, initially using a vaccine developed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) and then adding the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca shots and Russia's Sputnik V.

DHA deputy director general Alawi Alsheikh Ali told Dubai Television late on Saturday that 83% of people aged over 16 - or about 2.3 million people - had now received at least one dose of a vaccine and that 64% had received two doses in the emirate.

The UAE recently said nearly 85% of its total eligible population had received at least one dose of a vaccine, without saying how many people had had both doses.

The UAE, which does not break down the number of cases by emirate, has seen a rise in the number of infections in the past month. It recorded 2,281 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total so far to around 596,000 cases. Daily cases peaked at almost 4,000 a day in early February.

DHA said 90% of the COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units in Dubai hospitals were unvaccinated, without specifying when that statistic was recorded.

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Two thirds of eligible people in Dubai fully vaccinated against COVID-19 - Reuters

Initial data support giving a dose of AstraZenecas COVID-19 vaccine (left) followed by one of Pfizer and BioNTechs (right).

By Gretchen VogelJun. 9, 2021 , 11:00 AM

Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Faced with short supplies of COVID-19 vaccines and unforeseen side effects, some countries have adopted an unproven strategy: switching shots midstream. Most authorized vaccines require two doses administered weeks or months apart, but Canada and several European countries are now recommending a different vaccine for the second dose in some patients. Early data suggest the approach, born of necessity, may actually be beneficial.

In three recent studies, researchers have found that following one dose of the vaccine made by AstraZeneca with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine produces strong immune responses, as measured by blood tests. Two of the studies even suggest the mixed vaccine response will be at least as protective as two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech product, one of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines.

Only a few of the potential vaccine combinations have been tested. But if mixing vaccines proves safe and effective, it could speed the effort to protect billions of people. This possibility opens new perspectives for many countries, says Cristbal Belda-Iniesta, a clinical research specialist at the Carlos III Health Institute. Governments, for example, could immediately distribute new doses without worrying about setting aside second shots of specific vaccines to give people weeks or months later.

Europe and Canada have an added incentive. Millions of people there received an initial dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine before governments recommended younger age groups avoid it because of the risk of a rare clotting disorder. They were left wondering what to do next: Get a second dose or switch to a different vaccine?

In a Spanish study that Belda-Iniesta helped lead, 448 people who received a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine 8 weeks after an initial AstraZeneca dose had few side effects and a robust antibody response 2 weeks after the second shot. All 129 blood samples tested could neutralize a noncoronavirus expressing spike, the SARS-CoV-2 surface protein key to infecting cells, he and colleagues reported last month on The Lancets preprint site.

Similarly, Leif Erik Sander, an infectious disease expert at the Charit University Hospital in Berlin, and colleagues found that 61 health care workers given the two vaccines in the same order, but 10 to 12 weeks apart, produced spike antibodies at levels comparable to a control group that received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech at the standard 3-week interval, and had no increase in side effects. Even more encouraging, their T cells, which can boost the antibody response and also help rid the body of already infected cells, responded slightly better to spike than fully vaccinated Pfizer-BioNTech recipients. A team conducting a smaller study in Ulm, Germany, had comparable results. Both groups have posted preprints on the medRxiv server.

Two different vaccines may be more potent than either vaccine alone, says Dan Barouch of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who helped develop the one-dose COVID-19 vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson. It and the two-dose AstraZeneca vaccine use a nonreplicating adenovirus as a vector to introduce DNA coding for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 into the recipients cells. Vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna instead use messenger RNA (mRNA) coding for spike, which cells take up and use to make the protein.

Mixing the two types of vaccine may give the immune system multiple ways to recognize a pathogen. The mRNA vaccines are really, really good at inducing antibody responses, and the vector-based vaccines are better at triggering T cell responses, Sander says. Matthew Snape, a vaccine expert at the University of Oxford, agrees the combination vaccine results so far are promising but cautions they dont resolve whether any improvement in T cell response results from longer dose intervals rather than the mixing.

The recent studies are imperfect because they are not designed to assess actual protection against COVID-19. That would require following large groups receiving different vaccine combinations to see who gets infected and sick over many months. The antibody and T cell measurements the studies rely on are thought to correspond to real-life protection, but studies are ongoing to determine exactly how reliable these correlates are.

Still, the findings support recent policy changes. Spain has authorized the mixing of the two vaccines for people under age 60. Other countries that have put age limits on the AstraZeneca vaccine, including Canada, Germany, France, Norway, and Denmark, have made similar recommendations.

More data are expected in the coming weeks. Snape and colleagues are studying eight vaccine permutations in roughly 100 people each: a first dose of either AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, followed by a dose of either the same vaccine or the opposite, with intervals of either 4 or 12 weeks. The group reported in The Lancet last month that people who received the mRNA vaccine just 4 weeks after AstraZenecas suffered significantly more side effects than those who received two doses of the same vaccine; data on those subjects immune response are pending. The program has expanded to include second doses of Modernas mRNA vaccine and the Novavax vaccine, which delivers the spike protein directly.

As the world races to vaccinate as many people as possible against COVID-19, these combination studies could be one more weapon against the just really embarrassing inequality in global vaccine access, says Hugo van der Kuy, a clinical pharmacologist at Erasmus Medical Center. It will be important to also include vaccines widely used outside Europe, he says, such as those made by the Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm, which rely on inactivated copies of SARS-CoV-2, and Russias Sputnik V, whose two doses each use a different adenovirus.Snape agrees. Mixing shots, he says, will be the reality for many countries around the world aiming to make best use of the vaccines available to them.

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Mixing COVID-19 vaccines appears to boost immune responses - Science Magazine

A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified mechanisms by which COVID-19 can lead to Alzheimers disease-like dementia. The findings, published in Alzheimers Research & Therapy, indicate an overlap between COVID-19 and brain changes common in Alzheimers, and may help inform risk management and therapeutic strategies for COVID-19-associated cognitive impairment.

Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D.

Reports of neurological complications in COVID-19 patients and long-hauler patients whose symptoms persist after the infection clears are becoming more common, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) may have lasting effects on brain function. However, it is not yet well understood how the virus leads to neurological issues.

While some studies suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infects brain cells directly, others found no evidence of the virus in the brain, says Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., assistant staff in Cleveland Clinics Genomic Medicine Institute and lead author on the study. Identifying how COVID-19 and neurological problems are linked will be critical for developing effective preventive and therapeutic strategies to address the surge in neurocognitive impairments that we expect to see in the near future.

In the study, the researchers harnessed artificial intelligence using existing datasets of patients with Alzheimers and COVID-19. They measured the proximity between SARS-CoV-2 host genes/proteins and those associated with several neurological diseases where closer proximity suggests related or shared disease pathways. The researchers also analyzed the genetic factors that enabled SARS-COV-2 to infect brain tissues and cells.

While researchers found little evidence that the virus targets the brain directly, they discovered close network relationships between the virus and genes/proteins associated with several neurological diseases, most notably Alzheimers, pointing to pathways by which COVID-19 could lead to Alzheimers disease-like dementia. To explore this further, they investigated potential associations between COVID-19 and neuroinflammation and brain microvascular injury, which are both hallmarks of Alzheimers.

We discovered that SARS-CoV-2 infection significantly altered Alzheimers markers implicated in brain inflammation and that certain viral entry factors are highly expressed in cells in the blood-brain barrier, explained Dr. Cheng. These findings indicate that the virus may impact several genes or pathways involved in neuroinflammation and brain microvascular injury, which could lead to Alzehimers disease-like cognitive impairment.

The researchers also found that individuals with the allele APOE E4/E4, the greatest genetic risk factor for Alzheimers, had decreased expression of antiviral defense genes, which could make these patients more susceptible to COVID-19.

Ultimately, we hope to have paved the way for research that leads to testable and measurable biomarkers that can identify patients at the highest risk for neurological complications with COVID-19, said Dr. Cheng.

Dr. Cheng and his team are now working to identify actionable biomarkers and new therapeutic targets for COVID-19-associated neurological issues in COVID long-haulers using cutting-edge network medicine and artificial intelligence technologies.

Yadi Zhou, Ph.D.; Jielin Xu, Ph.D., and Yuan Hou, Ph.D., are co-first authors on the study. The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Cleveland Clinics VeloSano Pilot Program.

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Cleveland Clinic-led Study Identifies How COVID-19 Linked to Alzheimers Disease-like Cognitive Impairment - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic