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

Yes, it's certainly cause for skepticism.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53095336

 

It bugs me that the BBC says UK when it was only going to be used in England. On a par with their ME work.

 

I didn't follow this through, but I noticed in passing by the local shop this afternoon that the Daily Mail had a front-page headline which implied that a deficiency of Vitamin D seemed to be associated with poor Covid-19 outcomes. Anyone know any more?

Once again, I can't believe I'm quoting the DM, but they do seem to have produced one or two good articles

 

Towards the bottom of this BBC article Vitamin D is mentioned (haven't read it properly yet):

"Meanwhile, work by Queen Mary University of London has suggested heart disease and vitamin D levels do not explain the increased risk of coronavirus in black, Asian and minority ethnic people.

Both had been suggested as potential explanations for the greater risk in some groups."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53097676

 

Well, I am over 60, have hypertension and have Type A Rhesus Positive blood. I also have ME.

Type A blood is supposed to give "a 50 percent higher risk of needing oxygen or a ventilator" in covid-19 patients in Italy and Spain.

I haven't had any breathing problems, but do have occasional pains in my chest. This has been the case for several days at least.

Also had apparent gout in one toe, referred to earlier.

So who knows...?

 

There's some interesting stuff about a possible new breath test arrived in my inbox from ProMED Mail today.

 

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/svart-sjuka-covidpatienter-behandlas-med-kortison

Severely ill covid patients are treated with cortisone in several large hospitals

 

COVID-19 –associated Diffuse Leukoencephalopathy and Microhemorrhages

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020202040

 

https://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X(20)30282-3/fulltext
COVID-19-associated delayed posthypoxic necrotizing leukoencephalopathy

 

In case you didn't see this question, I'm tagging you: @ukxmrv

 

Winning by a nose: the dogs being trained to detect signs of Covid-19

 

Vitamin D, BAME patients, and a possible link?

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsm...hit-harder/ar-BB15NuzM?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=ASUDHP

Strange where you find these stories during the pandemic ...

 

Decoding SARS-CoV-2 Hijacking of Host Mitochondria in Pathogenesis of COVID-19

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpcell.00224.2020

 

Would anyone like to share their thoughts on the usefulness and/or ethics of using human challenge studies to study COVID-19? (For those who aren’t aware: human challenge studies involve the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers). I was a bit alarmed to learn that WHO appears to be endorsing their use in a recent document entitled “Key criteria for the ethical acceptability of COVID-19 human challenge studies”:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream...2019-nCoV-Ethics_criteria-2020.1-eng.pdf?ua=1

I also came across this article:

The article then goes on to explain precisely why deliberately infecting volunteers with SARS-CoV-2 is unnecessary, uninformative, and unethical. I hope he is correct that this approach is uninformative (?). But mostly I hope that the overwhelming majority of people in the research community share the view that these challenge studies are unethical and that they won’t be permitted to go ahead...

https://www.stabroeknews.com/2020/06/09/features/project-syndicate/human-covid-19-vaccine-trials-are-unnecessary-uninformative-and-unethical/

 

There are only two ways to test the real-world efficacy of vaccines, a naturalistic randomised controlled study where you recruit a large population (tens of thousands of people) but only vaccinate half of them, and hope that many of them will be exposed to the infection. The other is to deliberately expose a much smaller number of people who have been vaccinated. The latter is the only choice to test effiacy in regions which means to control the spread of the infection are mostly successful.

Both have ethical issues. In the end, it is all about informed consent.

 

Thanks @Snow Leopard. So am I correct in my understanding that you disagree with the author of the article that the second type of study is “uninformative”? This is what he says in relation to that:

 

His argument about elderly individuals is a non-sequitur.

The reason why we have to test vaccines directly, is because seroconversion/antibody titres is not enough evidence to show the vaccine actually works. This is doubly so for SARS-2 vaccines, which are testing a variety of new and unproven vaccine technologies (that utilise genetic engineering), none of which is guaranteed. Whether you test in young people or elderly people is irrelevant on this point, since it is not antibody titres that we are interested in, but whether the antibodies actually neutralise the virus. It is true that elderly populations are less likely to seroconvert, but this is not specific to any vaccine and this doesn't discount the fact that the goal of vaccine efficacy is to achieve herd immunity - so that elderly people aren't exposed in the first place. Once we know the induced antibodies are effective at stopping infection in young volunteers, elderly participants don't have to be exposed to the virus for us to generalise whether the vaccine is likely to be effective - measurement of seroconversion would be sufficient.

Secondly, exposing volunteers speeds up the development process considerably, compared to a 3 month naturalistic exposure trial, and hence could save far more lives overall if the vaccine is able to be approved sooner!

Finally, he mentions that Australia, NZ, Taiwan etc have controlled the virus - this is true, but we can't hold the virus at bay forever without ongoing severe travel restrictions. For things to go back to normal, we need an effective vaccine.