Category: Covid-19

LONDON (AP) The announcement Monday that King Charles III has been diagnosed with cancer has come as a shock to many in Britain, largely because the 75-year-old monarch has generally enjoyed good health through the years.

Palace officials did not specify what kind of cancer the king has, or how serious his condition is. They only said that it was discovered during the kings recent hospital treatment for an enlarged prostate, but isnt prostate cancer.

Charles who came to the throne after his mother Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022 has started a schedule of regular treatments and will postpone public-facing duties, officials said.

Here is a look at Charles health history, from contracting COVID-19 to a series of injuries sustained from playing polo and hunting over the decades:

Charles was discharged from a private London hospital a week ago after undergoing treatment on an enlarged prostate.

Officials said the condition was benign, though the king canceled engagements and was urged to rest before the procedure.

An enlarged prostate is common in men over age 50 and affects thousands in the U.K. The condition affects how one urinates and isnt usually a serious health threat. Its not cancer and doesnt lead to an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.

Palace officials said the king publicized details about his condition in an effort to encourage other men to have their prostates checked in line with public health advice.

Charles had COVID-19 twice, but officials said that he only suffered mild symptoms both times.

He isolated at home in Scotland in March 2020, during the early days of the pandemic in the U.K. and before vaccines were available. He remained in good health, though he lost his sense of taste and smell for a time. Charles later spoke of the strange, frustrating and often distressing experience of being isolated from friends and family during lockdown.

Charles contracted the coronavirus a second time in February 2022. He had been triple-vaccinated at the time.

Charles was a keen polo player and suffered an array of injuries over years of sports and exercise.

In 1980 he was thrown and kicked by his pony during a polo match at Windsor and needed six stitches on his cheek.

In the 1990s he underwent several operations after he broke his right arm in a fall during a polo match and injured his left knee during another game.

In 2001 he was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital in an ambulance when his horse threw him during a polo match he was playing with his sons Prince William and Prince Harry.

Charles also had various injuries from hunting accidents. He broke a rib when he fell from his horse in 1998, and in 2001 he fractured a small bone in his shoulder after another tumble.

The king retired from playing polo after more than 40 years in 2005.

There has long been speculation about Charles swollen sausage fingers, with some suggesting they may be due to fluid build-up, arthritis or other conditions.

Whether the puffy digits are due to a health condition remains unexplained, but Charles has on more than one occasion jokingly referenced them himself.

In a BBC documentary on Charles coronation, the king was seen reassuring his son Prince William when he struggled to fasten one of the ceremonial robes. He jokingly told William not to worry, because you havent got sausage fingers like mine.

Charles has had other minor medical treatments over the years.

In 2008 he had a non-cancerous growth removed from the bridge of his nose in a minor, routine procedure. He had a hernia operation at a private hospital in 2003, and joked hernia today, gone tomorrow to waiting reporters when he was discharged the next day.

Charles, who has a degenerative disc at the base of his spine, has also spoken about his back pain. He is known to travel on royal tours with a cushion, and a velvet cushion is usually placed on his chair during state banquets at Buckingham Palace.

In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry wrote about Charles exercises at home to keep his constant neck and back pain in check.

Read the original post:

What we know about King Charles III's health history, from COVID-19 to polo injuries - The Associated Press

Brain fog is one of the most common, persistent complaints in patients with long COVID. It affects as many as 46% of patients who also deal with other cognitive concerns like memory loss and difficulty concentrating.

Now, researchers believe they know why. A new study has found that these symptoms may be the result of a viral-borne brain injury that may cause cognitive and mental health issues that persist for years.

Researchers found that 351 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 had evidence of a long-term brain injury a year after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The findings were based on a series of cognitive tests, self-reported symptoms, brain scans, and biomarkers.

As part of the preprint study, participants took a cognition test with their scores age-matched to those who had not suffered a serious bout of COVID-19. Then a blood sample was taken to look for specific biomarkers, showing that elevated levels of certain biomarkers were consistent with a brain injury. Using brain scans, researchers also found that certain regions of the brain associated with attention were reduced in volume.

Patients who participated in the study were "less accurate and slower" in their cognition, and suffered from at least one mental health condition, such as depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder, according to researchers.

The brain deficits found in COVID-19 patients were equivalent to 20 years of brain aging and provided proof of what doctors have feared: that this virus can damage the brain and result in ongoing mental health issues.

"We found global deficits across cognition," said lead study author Benedict Michael, PhD, director of the Infection Neuroscience Lab at the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, England. "The cognitive and memory problems that patients complained of were associated with neuroanatomical changes to the brain."

Cognitive deficits were common among all patients, but the researchers said they don't yet know whether the brain damage causes permanent cognitive decline. But the research provides patients who have been overlooked by some clinicians with proof that their conditions aren't a figment of their imaginations, said Karla L. Thompson, PhD, lead neuropsychologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine's COVID Recovery Clinic.

"Even though we're several years into this pandemic, there are still a lot of providers who don't believe that their patients are experiencing these residual symptoms," said Thompson, "That's why the use of biomarkers is important, because it provides an objective indication that the brain has been compromised in some way."

Some patients with long COVID have said that getting their doctors to believe they have a physical ailment has been a persistent problem throughout the pandemic and especially as it relates to the sometimes-vague collection of symptoms associated with brain fog. One study found that as many as 79% of study respondents reported negative interactions with their healthcare providers when they sought treatment for their long-COVID symptoms.

Researchers are unsure what's causing these brain injuries, though they have identified some clues. Previous research has suggested that such injuries might be the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain, especially in patients who were hospitalized, like those in this study, and were put on ventilators.

Brain scans have previously shown atrophy to the brain's gray matter in COVID-19 patients, likely caused by inflammation from a heightened immune response rather than the virus itself. This inflammatory response seems to affect the central nervous system. As part of the new study, researchers found some neuroprotective effects of using steroids during hospitalization to reduce brain inflammation.

The results suggest that clinicians should overcome their skepticism and consider the possibility that their patients have suffered a brain injury and should be treated appropriately, said James C. Jackson, PsyD, a neuropsychiatrist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. "The old saying is that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck," said Jackson.

He contends that treatments used for patients who have brain injuries have also been shown to be effective in treating long COVIDrelated brain fog symptoms. These may include speech, cognitive, and occupational therapy as well as meeting with a neuropsychiatrist for the treatment of related mental health concerns.

Treating long-COVID brain fog like a brain injury can help patients get back to some semblance of normalcy, researchers said. "What we're seeing in terms of brain injury biomarkers and differences in brain scans correlates to real-life problems that these patients are dealing with on a daily basis," said Jackson. These include problems at work and in life with multitasking, remembering details, meeting deadlines, synthesizing large amounts of information, and maintaining focus on the task at hand, he said.

There's also a fear that even with treatment, the aging of the brain caused by the virus might have long-term repercussions and that this enduring injury may cause the early onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in those who were already vulnerable to it. One study, from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), found that in those infected with COVID-19 who already had dementia, the virus "rapidly accelerated structural and functional brain deterioration."

"We already know the role that neuroinflammation plays in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease," said Thompson. "If long COVID is involved in prolonged inflammation of the brain, it goes a long way in explaining the mechanism underlying [the study's reported] brain aging."

In some ways, this study raises nearly as many questions as it does answers. While it provides concrete evidence around the damage the virus is doing to the brains of patients who contracted severe COVID-19, researchers don't know about the impact on those who had less serious cases of the virus.

For Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, the concern is that some long-COVID patients may be suffering from cognitive deficits that are more subtle but still impacting their daily lives, and that they're not getting the help they need.

What's more, said Al-Aly, it's unclear whether the impacts of the brain damage are permanent or how to stop them from worsening. Researchers and clinicians need a better understanding of the mechanism that allows this virus to enter the brain and do structural damage. If it's inflammation, will anti-inflammatory or antiviral medications work at preventing it? Will steroids help to offset the damage? "It's critical we find some answers," he said.

"SARS-CoV-2 isn't going anywhere. It will continue to infect the population, so if this is indeed a virus that damages the brain in the long term or permanently, we need to figure out what can be done to stop it," said Al-Aly.

Read the original post:

New Evidence Suggests Long COVID Could Be a Brain Injury - Medscape

A new study from researchers at Boston University School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania shows that a substantial proportion of excess mortality numbers counted as deaths from natural causes during the COVID-19 pandemic were actually attributable to the novel coronavirus.

The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,174,626 Americans have died due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic nearly 4 years ago. But excess mortalitydeaths that would not be expected compared to other yearshas also risen, suggesting COVID-19 has a role in those deaths, as well.

While other assessments of excess US mortality rates during the pandemic have looked at interruptions or delays in medical care and lockdowns, this study associates the excess deaths temporally with local increases in COVID-19 activity.

The study was based on natural-cause deaths and reported COVID-19 deaths for 3,127 US counties from March 2020 to August 2022. The researchers focused on excess deaths attributed only to natural causes, not excess deaths attributed to intentional or unintentional injuries or to accidents.

"We observed peaks in non-COVID-19 excess deaths in the same or prior month as COVID-19 deaths, a pattern consistent with these being unrecognized COVID-19 deaths that were missed due to low community awareness and a lack of COVID-19 testing, said corresponding author Andrew Stokes, PhD, in a Boston University press release.

We observed peaks in non-COVID-19 excess deaths in the same or prior month as COVID-19 deaths.

If delays and disruption in care were the primary cause of the excess mortality, then those deaths would have followed peaks in COVID activity, the authors explained.

Overall, 15.8 excess deaths were reported due to nonCOVID-19 natural causes for every 100 reported COVID-19 deaths across the study period. A total of 1,194,610 excess natural-cause deaths occurred nationally (90% posterior interval [PI], 1,046,000 to 1,340,204).

A total of 162,886 of these excess natural-cause deaths (90% PI, 14,276 to 308,480) were not reported as COVID-19.

The authors found significant regional patterns in these excess deaths: Nonmetropolitan counties reported the most natural-cause deaths for every 100 COVID deaths (36.0), as did counties in the West (Rocky Mountain states, 31.6 deaths; Pacific states, 25.5 deaths), and the South (East South Central states, 26.0 deaths; South Atlantic states, 25.0 deaths; West South Central states, 24.2 deaths).

"Contrary to prior literature which indicated that these gaps were mostly limited to the early months of the pandemic, we found nearly as many excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes in the pandemics second year as the first year," the authors concluded.

See the original post here:

COVID-19 behind thousands of excess US deaths, analysis shows - University of Minnesota Twin Cities

More than four years after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, most people are eager to leave COVID-19 in the rearview mirror.

Unfortunately, the virus has far from disappeared.

In the last week of December 2023 and the first few weeks of January 2024, the United States saw a bump in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker. Deaths caused by the virus have hovered around 1,400 per week since September 2023 and peaked at 2,029 weekly in early January, bringing the total COVID-19 deaths in the United States to 1.17 million by the end of January 2024.

These numbers are far lower than the hospitalizations and deaths during the peak of the pandemic, when more than 25,000 people in the United States died in a single week in January 2021. Infectious disease experts say this is because the virus has mutated to cause less severe disease, and most people now have some form of immunity between prior infections and vaccine protection.

Still, as hundreds of millions of people continue to get infected with the virus, and at least 20 million Americans have been diagnosed with long COVID, infectious disease experts warn the public to not let down their guard.

There is a little bit of the complacency of people saying, Now SARS-CoV-2 is over, I dont need to worry about it anymore, says Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol. Sci., co-director of the La Jolla Institute Center for Vaccine Innovation and an adjunct professor at the University of California, School of Medicine La Jolla Institute for Immunology. That is not true. We are in a new phase.

AAMCNews spoke with experts from academic medical institutions specializing in immunology, vaccinology, epidemiology, and critical care to answer common questions about COVID-19 in 2024.

How is the JN.1 variant different from previous strains?

The JN.1 variant, which is a subvariant of omicron, accounted for 83%-88% of all currently circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 as of Jan. 19, according to the CDC. The subvariant is known among virologists as a hypermutated variant, Sette says.

That is potentially concerning in the sense that its associated with potential for escaping the neutralizing antibody response, notes Sette.

This could explain an increase in people getting symptomatic disease, even after having been vaccinated or previously infected. Still, evidence suggests that this variant does not cause more severe disease than other variants. And T-cells, the bodys second line of defense against foreign pathogens on a cellular level, continue to respond well to infections with JN.1, Sette and a cohort of scientists in Sweden found in a recent study. Another study that is currently in preprint found that the bodys immune system can adapt to recognize the virus, even with various mutations.

So that is huge, potentially, Sette says. The immune system can actually keep up as the virus keeps mutating.

This is good news for people with healthy immune systems, and especially for those who get vaccinated, since it means they will likely be able to fight off the virus more easily.

How long does immunity from a COVID-19 infection last?

The immune response from a COVID-19 infection usually tamps down after 3-4 months, says Kawsar Talaat, MD, a vaccinologist and associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

If a person was infected during this latest wave and hadnt gotten the most recent COVID-19 vaccine, Talaat recommends getting vaccinated 3-4 months after recovering from the illness to maximize protection.

While COVID-19 rates tend to increase during the winter months in the United States, the virus hasnt yet fallen into a predictable seasonal pattern, with occasional regional surges throughout the year. For now, Talaat recommends that people follow the CDCs guidelines for vaccination. People at higher risk of complications from the virus might need more frequent vaccines under the advice of their physician.

I hear a lot of, COVID isnt so bad anymore, why should I keep getting vaccines? Talaat says. The reality is COVID isnt so bad if youre younger, healthier, and have a normal immune system. People with risk factors are still getting sick, being hospitalized, and, unfortunately, people are still dying.

Can I get COVID-19 even if Im up-to-date on vaccines?

Yes. Talaat notes that the vaccines that are currently available do not fully protect against infection and mild symptoms, which explains why some people get sick even after being vaccinated, but vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease. Because vaccination primes the immune system to the virus, vaccinated people and people who have been previously infected with the virus are likely to mount a quicker and stronger immune response, which can reduce the viral load in the body and moderate symptoms.

Those who have received the 2023 updated vaccines are more likely to dodge infections than those who havent. The CDC found that recent vaccination with the updated vaccine reduced symptomatic infections by 54% compared to those with waning immunity from an out-of-date vaccination status.

If I have COVID, should I take Paxlovid?

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the oral, antiviral medication, Paxlovid, to be prescribed for patients with mild or moderate symptoms of COVID-19 who have at least one risk factor for severe disease, such as people over the age of 50, people with chronic disease, or people with weakened immune systems. It must be taken within five days of the onset of symptoms in order to be fully effective. Studies have found the drug to be very effective at reducing risk of hospitalization and death.

Some people have reported experiencing a rebound after taking Paxlovid, meaning they seem to get better and then test positive again or experience symptoms again after a few days. However, physicians say the drug is still worthwhile for those at risk of severe disease, according to an article published by Yale Medicine, particularly since theres little evidence Paxlovid is any less effective against the more severe outcomes in these cases.

Paxlovid may also reduce the risk of developing long COVID, explains Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, FASN, chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System and clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

What are the risks of long COVID? Are there any treatments?

Al-Aly, who is one of the leading experts studying long COVID, says that people in his field tend to divide long COVID patients into two camps: those whose primary symptoms are brain fog, fatigue, dysautonomia (dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system), and post-exertional malaise; and those whose primary symptoms result from damage to organs.

Long COVID can affect nearly every organ system, Al-Aly says. It can affect nearly everyone across the lifespan, across demographic groups Its a very heterogeneous disease.

The chances of developing long COVID also seem to increase with each infection.

We clearly see people who say, I had COVID three years ago, I did just fine. I had it a second time and was just fine, only to succumb to long COVID after a third infection, he says.

When policymakers and the public only measure the impact of COVID-19 by counting deaths and hospitalizations, they miss the approximately 20 million in the country who have long COVID, including about 4 million people who cant work due to long COVID symptoms, Al-Aly explains.

And while Al-Aly and others in the field have conducted significant research into long COVID over the past four years, they are still unable to fully explain its cause or offer a cure or treatment beyond symptom relief.

Many of the patients who come to the Comprehensive COVID-19 Center (CCC) at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago come with a variety of unexplained symptoms and no diagnosis, adds Marc Sala, MD, a pulmonary and critical care specialist and co-director of the CCC. The CCC brings together a multidisciplinary team that includes specialists in neurology, pulmonology, cardiology, otorhinolaryngology, and other specialties to study and treat the varied symptoms of long COVID.

Some of the symptoms are nonspecific, like fatigue and shortness of breath, brain fog and cough 90 days after a COVID infection, Sala says. We do a good medical workup to rule out non-COVID causes, then youre left with diagnosis of exclusion [since] there is no biomarker for it.

Sala explains that one leading hypothesis on the cause of long COVID is that the virus hides in the body and continues to stimulate the host immune response over time. As the body is unable to fully clear the virus, patients with long COVID stay in a prolonged inflammatory state. With more research and clinical trials, hes hopeful that there will be progress on developing treatments.

But Sala fears that as the public has grown weary of COVID-19, interest and funding will move on to other issues, despite its importance.

Even if numbers [of long COVID cases] dwindle, there is value in studying this kind of [post-viral] condition, Sala says. I dont think this is the last virus of this nature well see.

Do the vaccines work against the latest variants?

The experts were unanimous on the question of the value of vaccines: theyre underappreciated.

In the United States, only 21.8% of adults and 11% of children had received the updated COVID-19 vaccine as of Jan. 26, 2024, despite nearly half of adults and children receiving a flu vaccine.

I cant tell you how amazing and unexpected it was that we basically hit a near home run with the first [mRNA] vaccines, Talaat says. Theyre incredibly effective at saving lives and preventing hospitalizations.

She noted that the current vaccines dont prevent infection, but there are new vaccines in clinical trials that could be delivered nasally that might stop a COVID-19 infection before it starts.

In the meantime, the existing vaccines can make a huge difference for public health.

You should get the vaccine to protect yourself, and if you think youre healthy, think about getting the vaccine to protect the loved ones around you who are at higher risk of having severe disease, Talaat says. None of us live in bubbles; we live in a community.

Al-Aly goes further, encouraging people to mask strategically, like on public transportation, and by lobbying policymakers to move forward with interventions like requiring buildings to have air filtration systems that reduce the circulation of infectious particles in the air.

We need a sustainable research endeavor, Al-Aly says. Pandemics produce disability and disease, we must study how [to] treat it, not only for the sake of people who are sick now, but for the sake of our kids and grandkids who are going to experience future pandemics.

See more here:

Had COVID recently? Here's what to know about how long immunity lasts, long COVID, and more - AAMC

Fatigue leads the list of persistent problems experienced by people with long Covid which is why patients have pushed back against treatment approaches that endorse escalating levels of exercise for a condition that researchers are still trying to understand. They fear post-exertional malaise, the debilitating price to be paid for pushing their bodies too hard.

Researchers from the U.K. were well aware of those potential harms. Working with patients, they designed a trial called REGAIN to test a way to provide mental health therapy and exercise guidance to people with long Covid without making their conditions worse. Their goal was to help people manage their symptoms, improve their functioning, and reduce their distress.

On Wednesday, they reported in BMJ that people enrolled in an online program said their health improved more than people who received standard care, which was a one-hour advice session on how to cope with such problems as fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, and muscle aches.

Rehab delivered live online improves health-related quality of life for people with long Covid at three and 12 months, study co-author Gordon McGregor, professor of clinical exercise physiology and rehabilitation at University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust, said on a call with reporters. This is the first high-quality study to confirm the benefit and also confirm a lack of harm from rehabilitation.

The 485 study subjects, who had been discharged three months earlier from hospital stays for Covid-19, were divided into two groups. One group of 287 people had a one-on-one session in which the general advice for coping was given. The intervention group of 298 also had an hour-long session, but it was devoted to planning an individual, self-paced approach to eight-week group sessions of psychological counseling and exercises.

That intervention was developed with people who had long Covid, as well as with clinicians, academics, and other stakeholders involved in care of people with the condition. It was very much led by the long Covid community, McGregor said.

The weekly home-based sessions were online, a decision made with the large number of people who might potentially benefit from such treatment in mind. The exercises were as simple as steps and squats for some and chair-based movements for others, supervised by a trained physiotherapist or exercise physiologist, and supported by health psychologists. The goal was to help improve muscle strength and endurance, cardiovascular fitness, coordination, and balance and to build confidence to engage in physical activity.

No special equipment was required, just body weight, and no planks, McGregor said just any kind of movement that would involve improvements in strength, balance and proprioception to try and get people moving, more than anything.

After three months, 17% of people in the intervention group reported on standard research questionnaires that their overall health was much better now, compared with 8% in the usual care group. After 12 months, depression was lower in the intervention group compared to the usual care group; cognitive function was the same.

Early on, the researchers were contacted by members of advocacy groups who expressed concerns about exercise training.The fear is that, as in another post-viral condition, myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, intense fatigue and worsening of other health issues after physical or mental activity will follow exertion. A clinical trial looking at exercise in RECOVER, the controversial long Covid research project from the National Institutes of Health, prompted backlash when an exercise study was announced in late 2022.

There are some caveats to keep in mind with the REGAIN study, outside experts said.

This study focuses on a post-hospitalized group who are demographically distinct from the community-managed post-Covid patients we see much more commonly, said Emily Fraser, a consultant in respiratory medicine at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and clinical lead of the post-Covid clinic in Oxford. She was not involved in the trial. I think we therefore need to be careful how we extrapolate the findings to community patients.

Matt Sydes, professor of clinical trials and methodology at University College London and also not involved in the trial, has questions. It would be interesting to know more about the duration of symptoms participants had before joining the trial, particularly as people might look to apply the findings now to people who have been living with long Covid for a prolonged period.

A companion editorial approved of the trials approach: Regular monitoring in the REGAIN trial did not identify any episodes of post-exertional exacerbations of symptoms, providing reassurance that individualized exercise at home in online groups supervised by a trained physiotherapist or exercise physiologist is safe.

Study co-author McGregor struck a modest tone.

Were not under any illusions. REGAIN is not a panacea, he said. We believe that these findings will assist clinicians with treatment strategies.

View original post here:

Long Covid study tests exercise as treatment option - STAT

A University of Alberta research team brings together immunologists, virologists, rheumatologists and metabolomics experts in an effort to discover exactly what is ailing the sickest long COVID patients and find treatments for them.

In recently published research, the team reports that a disproportionate number of people affected nearly 70 per cent are female and face debilitating symptoms that are identical to chronic fatigue syndrome, now referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS. Blood samples show telltale amino acid deficiencies, suggesting readily available supplements have potential as therapy.

Statistics Canada reports that one in nine Canadians had post-COVID-19 condition or long COVID by June 2023, meaning they experienced continuing symptoms three or more months after infection. As many as 60 per cent of patients with symptoms at 12 months experience the most severe, chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms.

We do not actually believe that long COVID is a separate new disease, explains rheumatologist and clinical immunologist Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, professor of medicine, who is an expert in fatigue associated with rheumatic illnesses.

Some symptoms such as the loss of taste and chest pain are very specific for COVID, but we see a common pathway with ME/CFS, which leads to the same fatigue, brain fog, post-exertional malaise, widespread pain and non-refreshing sleep, he says.

More women than men are likely affected because females have more robust immune systems, explains immunologist Shokrollah Elahi, professor in the School of Dentistryand principal investigator on the study.

This robust immune response protects women at the acute phase of disease, so we see that mortality is higher in men, but later on it can result in collateral damage in women from a hyper-immune response, says Elahi.

For the study, the researchers carried out clinical exams and analyzed blood samples from 75 people. Fifteen of them had never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and were used as a healthy control group.

Thirty patients had persistent severe long COVID symptoms 12 months after their acute infection that met the criteria for a ME/CFS diagnosis. Fifteen others were hospitalized at the time of their acute infection but then recovered fully, and 15 had the infection but never developed acute or long-lasting symptoms. All 60 COVID cases were confirmed as the Wuhan viral strain in 2020 using molecular testing at the University of Alberta Hospital.

Analysis at Canadas Metabolomics Innovation Centre, based at the U of A, showed that all of the people who had acute COVID exhibited some changes, but the 30 long COVID patients exhibited several persistent metabolomic abnormalities 12 months after their acute illness.

The first change the researchers noted was abnormally low levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the cellular source of energy, likely due to mitochondrial dysfunction caused by the disease.

Mitochondria are like the powerhouses of the cell, generating ATP, which is like a rechargeable battery that provides power to cells, Elahi explains. When those two are not working properly, it may explain why these patients are always tired they simply dont have enough energy to function and carry out their routine activities.

Next, the team noted signs of chronic systemic inflammation, including finding markers of compromised gut integrity resulting in gut products leaking into the blood a problem often observed in patients with HIV.

Finally, the researchers noted significantly lower-than-normal levels of the amino acids sarcosine, glutamine and serine in the plasma of the long COVID patients. All three are associated with normal brain function. Sarcosine is used as a supplement to treat depression and schizophrenia, low glutamine can cause the gut to leak, and low serine is associated with seizures and learning difficulties.

Strikingly, the team found that long COVID patients with lower plasma levels of these amino acids were more likely to report symptoms of clinical depression, anxiety and mental impairment.

Cohen Tervaert and Elahi hope to study the amino acid deficiencies further in animal models and would also like to do further research to determine whether sarcosine supplements, in particular, for patients with long COVID.

The goal is to treat patients and help them get better, says Cohen Tervaert. The sarcosine option is completely new, so that's why its important.

Elahi is focused on a soon-to-be-published paper on RNA sequencing of an even larger group of long COVID patients.

We are looking at the genes to identify the cause of all these changes in long COVID patients, he says.

Cohen Tervaert hopes the work will lead to more research involving patients with ME/CFS in general.

ME/CFS has been labelled as a psychosomatic disease, and patients still have to fight for recognition by their doctors and their peers, he says. For some, they can never leave their beds again. It really is a disease that needs more attention.

This research project was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology. Shokrollah Elahi is a member of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, the Women and Childrens Health Research Institute, the Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta, the Alberta Transplant Institute and the Glycomics Institute of Alberta. Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert and Mohammed Osman are supported by Arthritis Society Canada and the Dutch Kidney Foundation.

The rest is here:

The sickest long COVID patients face symptoms identical to chronic fatigue syndrome - University of Alberta

Lifestyle

By Katherine Donlevy

Published Feb. 7, 2024, 5:33 p.m. ET

Glow sticks are having a glow-up.

Researchers have discovered that brightly colored party favors are perfect not just for illuminating dance floors but also for identifying biothreats.

Professors at the University of Houston announced last month they are partnering with the US Navy to use the glow sticks to diagnose and detect toxins, like COVID-19.

We are for the first time applying the shelf-stable, low-toxicity, low-cost chemistry of common glow sticks to develop bright and rapid diagnostic tests called lateral flow immunoassays (LFIs) like fluorescent-dyed nanoparticles that, when exposed to glow stick activation chemicals, emit bright visible light that can be readily imaged using a smartphone or simple camera, said Richard Willson,a professor of the universitys Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department, said in a statement.

We will adapt the technology of glow sticks widely used in military signaling applications to excite fluorescent LFI particles to increase their detectability.

The process is as simple as breaking a glow stick, Willson and teammates research assistant professor Binh Vu and research associate professor KaterinaKourentzi said.

When one bends the party favor, it breaks a small glass container inside that releases a hydrogen peroxide mixture that collides with a second substance to create the spectacular glow partygoers know and love.

Similarly, the researchers used the same acid mixture when inside the sticks to detect nanoparticles of toxins and germs, giving them the same easily detectable bright colors seen in party bracelets and necklaces.

The results will also pop up on a test strip similar in size and usage to a pregnancy test.

And while the results would be bright enough to see with the naked eye in a dark room, the team created a little plastic box to exclude light and let a smartphone camera do the reading.

The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the need for rapid, inexpensive and ultrasensitive immunoassays for point-of-care diagnostic applications, the team wrote.

The team has been using glow-in-the-dark materials to enhance and improve rapid COVID-19 home tests since March of last year.

Willson came up with the original idea when he noticed a glowing star pasted on the ceiling of his young daughters bedroom, leading him to use the same phosphors to make particles more detectable and tests more accurate.

This technology can be used for detecting all kinds of other things, including flu and HIV, but also Ebola and biodefense agents, and maybe toxins and environmental contaminants and pesticides in food, Willson and his team said at the time.

The simple testing practice will make it easier for the US Navy to detect and prevent the constantly growing list of threat-producing toxins brought on by climate change, the university said.

Naval Medical Research Commands Biological Defense Research Directorate drives scientific innovation that enhances the biodefense posture of the Navy and the Department of Defense. Through partnership with the University of Houston, Naval Medical Research Command is using its expertise in designing and building handheld antibody tests (lateral flow immunoassays or LFIs) with new fluorescent chemistry to build a more sensitive test for biothreats, Navy Spokesperson Commander Jessica L. McNulty for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery told The Post in an email.

The new fluorescent chemistry could, in theory, be used broadly when paired with appropriate antibodies in a lateral flow immune assay to detect a variety of infectious diseases.

The $1.3 million project is being funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Load more...

https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/lifestyle/houston-professors-navy-using-glowsticks-to-detect-biothreats/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

Read the original:

US Navy to use party glow sticks for detection of biothreats like COVID-19 - New York Post

The pandemic continues to have negative long-term public health consequences, with preventative health screenings and wellness visits showing the biggest declines, new evidence suggests.

In an original investigation published last Friday in JAMA Health Forum, investigators at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center evaluated changes in healthcare access and preventative screenings among U.S. adults between 2019 and 2022. The researchers observed that in 2021, there were fewer outpatient wellness visits and that screening rates for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and common cancers were lower than before the pandemic. The scientists also showed that access to these services varied across racial and ethnic groups.

Our finding that preventative health screenings did not return back to pre-pandemic levels has critically important public health implications, said corresponding author Rishi K. Wadhera, section head of Health Policy and Equity at the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology at BIDMC, who is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The consequences of disruptions in preventive health screenings during the pandemic could be devastating over the long term, especially if those patterns continue to persist through today.

Our finding that preventative health screenings did not return back to pre-pandemic levels has critically important public health implications.

Using deidentified data from more than 90,000 respondents to a national health survey, Wadhera and colleagues evaluated access to regular and preventative healthcare and assessed whether race and ethnicity and/or socioeconomic factors played a role. While there was no change in having a usual place for care in 2019 versus 2021, having a wellness visit in the past year was less common in 2021 for all adults, with the decline most pronounced for Asian adults. White, Black, and Hispanic adults likelihood of having a wellness visit rebounded in 2022, but remained below pre-pandemic levels for Asian adults.

The proportions of adults who received screenings for cardiovascular disease, blood glucose levels, and cervical, breast, and prostate cancer were lower overall in 2021 versus 2019, with Asian adults experiencing the steepest declines. For colorectal cancer screening, Black and white adults had the steepest declines.

The investigators showed that these declines were not due to disruptions in insurance coverage during the pandemic; fewer adults overall reported delaying medical care and not receiving care due to costs in 2022 than in 2019. This finding may have been due to federal and state governments bolstering safety-net protections, including expanding Medicaid coverage through a continuous enrollment provision in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which mitigated loss of coverage. The Medicaid continuous enrollment provision ended in 2023, and an estimated 16 million adults have since been disenrolled from Medicaid.

Heart disease and cancer are leading causes of death in the U.S., and persistently lower rates of routine screenings could have potentially major consequences for morbidity and mortality long-term, particularly in light of rising cardiometabolic disease rates in young adults, said first author Chris Alba, a medical student at Harvard and research fellow at the Smith Center. Racial and ethnic minority populations received the fewest preventative screenings in 2019, and a slower recovery from pandemic-related disruptions in these services may worsen health care disparities in future years. These findings highlight the urgent need for concerted health system, public health, and health policy efforts to increase preventative screenings among all eligible U.S. adults.

In an analysis of the same data set published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Wadhera and colleagues examined how the pandemic impacted food insecurity among low-income households. The team showed that food insecurity decreased from 21 percent in 2019 to 16 percent in 2021, but returned back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

Among the subset of low-income people receiving federal nutritional benefits as part of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), food insecurity decreased significantly from 35 percent in 2019 to 22 percent in 2021, and remained lower in 2022. Thats due to historic increases in SNAP benefits enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which are now expiring on a state-by-state basis.

Despite worsening unemployment and economic loss caused by the pandemic, food insecurity decreased in 2021 among low-income adults, highlighting the importance of unprecedented increases in nutritional benefits through the SNAP program during the pandemic, said Wadhera. Our findings provide important insights as Congress debates the upcoming farm bill, which will determine the U.S. nutritional policy for the next five years.

Changes in Health Care Access and Preventative Health Screenings by Race and Ethnicity: Co-authors included Christopher Alba of Harvard Medical School and ZhaoNian Zheng of BIDMC.

Food Insecurity Among Low-Income U.S. Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Co-authors included Aaron L. Troy, Isabella Ahmad, and ZhaoNian Zheng of BIDMC.

This research was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (grants R01HL164561 and K23HL148525). Wadhera reported receiving grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute during the conduct of this study and personal fees from Chambercardio and Abbott outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

See more here:

New evidence shows COVID-19 isn't done with us yet Harvard Gazette - Harvard Gazette

FILE - The Justice Department in Washington, Nov. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

(NewsNation) The Department of Justice announced three people convicted of bank fraud in 2023 have been sentenced for illegally obtaining and misusing $3.5 million worth of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans issued under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES).

The three are 59-year-old Khadijah X. Chapman of Atlanta, who was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison; 42-year-old Daniel C. Labrum of South Jordan, Utah, sentenced to two years in prison; and 58-year-old Eric J. ONeil of Bethel, Connecticut, who received two years and three months of prison time.

Per the DOJ, the three fraudulently obtained PPP loans for fictitious businesses in 2020 and 2021. The defendants worked with coconspirators to falsify information and submitted fraudulent documents to financial institutions in Boise and elsewhere to collectively obtain approximately $3.5 million in relief funding intended for small businesses struggling with the economic impact of COVID-19.

According to a report by the Small Business Administration issued in June 2023, more than $200 billion of funds allocated to aid small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been fraudulently obtained, 17% of the total $1.2 trillion issued.

Meanwhile, in a Government Accountability Office report from November of last year, it was announced the DOJ has brought federal fraud-related charges against at least 2,191 individuals or entities in cases involving federal COVID-19 relief programs, consumer scams, and more. At least 1,525 of these individuals or entities were found guilty or liable of a crime.

Original post:

DOJ announces sentencing for 3 convicted of COVID-19 relief fraud - NewsNation Now

BEIJING - Joggers, people walking their dogs and families out for a stroll after dinner are usually a common sight along Beijings Liangma River.

But there is hardly anyone in the area in recent days.

In the Chinese capital city, public parks, buses and subway trains have also become emptier, with traffic a breeze on Beijings Second Ring Road, which is notorious for jams on normal days.

Busy Beijing, a city of 22 million people, is finally taking a breather as migrants head home for what has been dubbed as Chinas first real Chinese New Year celebrations since the Covid-19 pandemic.

A 30-seater cafe along Liangma River, which usually draws customers from the surrounding office and residential buildings and foreign embassies, sold just two beverages on the morning of Feb 6.

Thats about 90 per cent lower than our usual sales, said waitress Li Feifei, 28, who added that the cafe is usually at its busiest in the morning.

We thought that the crowds would stay until at least a day before Chinese New Year eve, the day of the reunion dinner. But it seems like no one is in the mood to work, or they have sneaked back home.

The worlds largest annual human migration, Chinas yearly Chinese New Year travel rush, called chunyun, is expected to break records in 2024.

The number of trips over the 40-day travel period, from Jan 26 to March 5, is expected to hit a record nine billion via road, rail, water or air.

The figure would be nearly double that of the 4.07 billion chunyun trips in 2023.

The surge in travel comes a year after China finally lifted strict Covid-19 restrictions in late 2022.

Worries about new waves of infections had dampened travel sentiment during Chinese New Year in 2023.

For the upcoming Year of the Dragon, considered the most auspicious animal in the Chinese zodiac, little is stopping millions of Chinese from returning to their home towns or going on holidays to celebrate the spring festival.

A total of 480 million train trips, the main mode of transportation in China, are expected to be made across the country during chunyun a 38 per cent jump from 2023 and up 17 per cent from 2019 before the pandemic, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.

Baker Gao Yuan, 29, is really excited to return home to Karamay city in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in north-western China.

It would be her first trip home for Chinese New Year since she first came to Beijing for work in 2019. Worries about being banned from returning to the capital city, under the countrys zero-Covid curbs, had made her stay put previously.

View original post here:

Beijing empties out as migrants head home for first 'real' CNY after Covid-19 pandemic - The Straits Times