Lifeboat Foundation

Newborns and babies have so far seemed to be largely unaffected by the coronavirus, but three new studies suggest that the virus may reach the fetus in utero.

Even in these studies, the newborns seemed only mildly affected, if at all — which is reassuring, experts said. And the studies are small and inconclusive on whether the virus does truly breach the placenta.

“I don’t look at this and think coronaviruses must cross across the placenta,” said Dr. Carolyn Coyne of the University of Pittsburgh, who studies the placenta as a barrier to viruses. She was not involved in the new work.

Covid-19 is a respiratory infection that damages the lungs. New evidence has emerged that Covid-19 also causes damage to the heart even with no preexisting conditions:

Objective To explore the association between cardiac injury and mortality in patients with COVID-19.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study was conducted from January 20, 2020, to February 10, 2020, in a single center at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; the final date of follow-up was February 15, 2020. All consecutive inpatients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were included in this study.

Continue reading “Association of Cardiac Injury With Mortality in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19 in Wuhan, China” »

Five critically ill COVID-19 patients got better after receiving the treatment. Three have left the hospital and two are in stable condition.

A French medical laboratory has said it is ready to give the French authorities “millions of doses” of an anti-malaria medication that early tests have suggested may help cure Covid-19.

The initial cases of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)–infected pneumonia (NCIP) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019 and January 2020. We analyzed data on the first 425 confirmed cases in Wuhan to determine the epidemiologic characteristics of NCIP.

Since December 2019, an increasing number of cases of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)–infected pneumonia (NCIP) have been identified in Wuhan, a large city of 11 million people in central China.^1–3 On December 29, 2019, the first 4 cases reported, all linked to the Huanan (Southern China) Seafood Wholesale Market, were identified by local hospitals using a surveillance mechanism for “pneumonia of unknown etiology” that was established in the wake of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak with the aim of allowing timely identification of novel pathogens such as 2019-nCoV.⁴ In recent days, infections have been identified in other Chinese cities and in more than a dozen countries around the world.⁵ Here, we provide an analysis of data on the first 425 laboratory-confirmed cases in Wuhan to describe the epidemiologic characteristics and transmission dynamics of NCIP.

Old human cells can become more youthful by coaxing them to briefly express proteins used to make induced pluripotent cells, Stanford researchers and their colleagues have found. The finding may have implications for aging research.

Such undocumented cases are still contagious and the study found them to be the source of most of the virus’s spread in China before the restrictions came in. Even though these people were only 55 per cent as contagious as people with symptoms, the study found that they were the source of 79 per cent of further infections, due to there being more of them, and the higher likelihood that they were out and about.

“If somebody’s experiencing mild symptoms, and I think most of us can relate to this, we’re still going to go about our day,” says Shaman. “These people are the major driver of it and they’re the ones who facilitated the spread.”

SARS-CoV-2 uses the SARS-CoV receptor ACE2 for host cell entry.

The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is primed by TMPRSS2.

Antibodies against SARS-CoV spike may offer some protection against SARS-CoV-2.

Continue reading “SARS-CoV-2 Cell Entry Depends on ACE2 and TMPRSS2 and Is Blocked by a Clinically Proven Protease Inhibitor” »

The FDA gave doctors the OK to begin using convalescent plasma donated by COVID-19 survivors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients.