The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

Link seems to be broken.

ETA: For some reason I needed to clear cookies for the site to work.

 

I just retried it and it still worked. Maybe put the title or an extract into a search engine.

 

Yes I tried all that, then saw it the error message was suggesting to clear cookies, so I did that and then it loaded OK.

 

New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says

“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.

 

I would be wary of a top Italian doctor who says:
“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”

This guy has an axe to grind. Lower viral loads seems to me unlikely to mean much other than that people are being tested earlier in their illness.

 

yes, I also noticed that quote. This guy seems to think the government did the terrorizing, not the virus.

 

It could be read as there being need for someone to terrorise, i.e. some executive power.!

 

Ha, yes--another possible reading.

 

Not too sure when you look at that quote (unless he was quoted out of context) ...

To me he seems to be saying that those warning of the severe consequences of Covid 19, were terrorizing people unnecessarily.

ETA: I realise that may be what you meant though @dave30th.

 

Preliminary findings concerning a potential treatment for T cell depletion in acute COVID-19.

Spoiler: abstract

Liu, Yue-Ping & Pang, Yue & Hu, Zhenhong & Wu, Ming & Wang, Chenhui & Feng, Zeqing & Mao, Congzheng & Tan, Yingjun & Liu, Ying & Chen, Li & Li, Min & Wang, Gang & Yuan, Zilin & Diao, Bo & Wu, Yuzhang & Chen, Yongwen. (2020).

Thymosin alpha 1 (Tα1) reduces the mortality of severe COVID-19 by restoration of lymphocytopenia and reversion of exhausted T cells. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. 10.1093/cid/ciaa630. Background:
We previously reported that lymphocytopenia and T cell exhaustion is notable in acute COVID19 patients, especially in aged and severe cases. Thymosin alpha 1 (Tα1) had been used in the treatment of viral infections as an immune response modifier for many years. However, clinical benefits and mechanism of Tα1 supplement to COVID-19 are still unclear.

Methods:
We retrospectively reviewed the clinical outcomes of 76 severe cases with COVID-19 admitted into two hospitals in Wuhan from December 2019 to March 2020. The thymus output in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from COVID-19 patients was measured by T cell receptor excision circles (TREC). The levels of T cell exhaustion markers PD-1 and Tim-3 on CD8+ T cells were detected by flow cytometry.

Results:
Compared with untreated group, Tα1 treatment significantly reduces mortality of severe COVID-19 patients (11.11% vs. 30.00%, p=0.044). Tα1 timely enhances blood T cell numbers in COVID-19 patients with severe lymphocytopenia (the counts of CD8+ T cells or CD4+ T cells in circulation lower than 400/μL or 650/μL, respectively). Under such conditions, Tα1 also successfully restores CD8+ and CD4+ T cell numbers in aged patients. Meanwhile, Tα1 reduces PD-1 and Tim-3 expression on CD8+ T cells from severe COVID-19 patients in comparison with untreated cases. It is of note that restoration of lymphocytopenia and acute exhaustion of T cells are roughly parallel to the rise of TRECs.

Conclusions:
Tα1 supplement significantly reduce mortality of severe COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 patients with the counts of CD8+ T cells or CD4+ T cells in circulation lower than 400/μL or 650/μL, respectively, gain more benefits from Tα1. Tα1 reverses T cell exhaustion and recovers immune reconstitution through promoting thymus output during SARS-CoV-2 infection.

PDF of the entire paper is available from here.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa630/5842185

 

Merged thread

Transmission of Covid-19: the amount is important

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/...ansmission-dose.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

CD4+ T-cells are supposed to have some degree of cross reactivity with the viral proteins, even without prior exposure, otherwise the adaptive immune system would never work correctly!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_T_cell

But on the point I was making, the claim that there could be residual immunity due to prior exposure to other coronaviruses contradicts the claim that adaptive immune responses to (those other) coronaviruses are not long lived, as suggested by the authors in the paper I linked.

 

Just want to say that I may have had Covid toe. I treated it like gout, assuming that it was (haven't had it before) but it lasted longer than gout normally does. It lasted from early February to early March, and was painful enough to require paracetamol at first, and needed a dressing, which I had to change daily, and which was very difficult due to the skin sticking to the bandage. It was on the toe next to the big toe. Very relieved when it went!

Just want to add an 's' in case others have the problem I have in not being able to find words less than 4 letters long: toes.

 

From Medscape: "For Experts Who Study Coronaviruses, a Grim Vindication"

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1271079744725856256


Also posted to the CureME/Biobank update thread.

 

(Pre-print)

The hypothalamus as a hub for putative SARS-CoV-2 brain infection

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.08.139329v1

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1272433645731676160


https://twitter.com/user/status/1272439987997495297

 

Is this the right thread to talk about trends, whether up or down, in the number of cases? If not, please move this. Thanks!

Some websites that report confirmed coronavirus cases also show a 7 day rolling average. Some show a 14 day rolling average.

I know the general reason for using a longer period of time to look for trends. A large single day increase/decrease might not have much significance. Maybe there were just more tests done that day, etc.

But I don't understand the pros and cons of using 7 days vs. 14 days. Is one better than the other?

Any thoughts?