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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...5bedac-13c0-11eb-ad6f-36c93e6e94fb_story.html

 

"could"

The problem is if the viral load is too low for detection. These kinds of methods usually lack sensitivity (which was my conclusion when I studied these methods back in Uni).

 

The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4

 

Editorial: Sex differences in antiviral immunity in SARS‐CoV‐2 infection: mitochondria and mitomiR come into view

Open access, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apha.13571

 

Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States

Open access, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9

 

Largest COVID-19 contact tracing study to date finds children key to spread, evidence of superspreaders

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020...study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence

 

"Lead researcher Ramanan Laxminarayan, a senior research scholar in PEI, said that the paper is the first large study to capture the extraordinary extent to which SARS-CoV-2 hinges on “superspreading,” in which a small percentage of the infected population passes the virus on to more people. The researchers found that 71% of infected individuals did not infect any of their contacts, while a mere 8% of infected individuals accounted for 60% of new infections."

That's extraordinary if it's true. I was aware that there are differences in the extent to which individuals infect (or don't infect) others, but I didn't realise it could differ quite that much!

 

https://www.thailandmedical.news/ne...alternative-complement-pathway-by-sars-cov-2-
Factor D inhibitor and COVID

 

Moved post

14% of all UK coronavirus deaths linked to air pollution, study finds

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/med...tudy-finds/ar-BB1aq5hN?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=ASUDHP

 

I thought that was known virtually from the start.

I remember graphics showing outbreaks in Italy and a few other places tracking air pollution levels and I'm fairly sure they were only a month or so in.

 

Moved post

Covid: Antibodies 'fall rapidly after infection'
"Immunity is waning quite rapidly, we're only three months after our first [round of tests] and we're already showing a 26% decline in antibodies," said Prof Helen Ward, one of the researchers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54696873

Press release
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207333/coronavirus-antibody-prevalence-falling-england-react/

Declining prevalence of antibody positivity to SARS-CoV-2: a community study of 365,000 adults (preprint)
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-innovation/MEDRXIV-2020-219725v1-Elliott.pdf

 

This wasn't a prospective study, it was three separate cohorts at three different points in time. So there wasn't a "decline" in antibodies per se.

Participation was relatively low, providing the possibility of participation/sampling biases.

If you already know you have COVID, are you going to bother to do the test or fill in the questionnaire?

Also note:

I am also astounded by several the ignorant comments by the scientists on the Science Media Centre site who clearly haven't read the study. Several "experts" simply assumed that this was a prospective study and responded as if the antibody positivity was measured in the same participants more than once.

 

BBC reports study on COVID-19 antibodies. The percentage of people exhibiting them is declining. If this is the primary defense against infection, this argues against "herd immunity". On the other hand it tells essentially nothing about defense by T-cells. We remain uncertain.

 

What can be read into this - does it mean our immunity is likely to fade over time? Ie a potential vaccine effect would fade?

 

No, we can not infer this at all, as the people in each cohort were not tested more than once. The difference in test results between the 3 cohorts could simply be due to participation biases.

Other studies have shown that despite a modest drop of IgG from the peak, IgG responses are durable. This is typical of most viral infections and vaccines.

 

MIT developing ’heated face masks’ to kill off coronavirus

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...-kill-off-coronavirus/ar-BB1asiMS?ocid=ASUDHP

If they've got to the stage of patenting it, one would hope they have more evidence than just "believing" that it will work as specified, but these days, who knows? I suppose it could be speculative.

 

It doesn't have to be effective for you to patent and market a product!

 

@Jonathan Edwards

"Broadly-targeted autoreactivity is common in severe SARS-CoV-2 Infection"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.21.20216192v1.full.pdf+html

 

Interesting but difficult to know how to interpret. A prospective study with follow up would be more meaningful.
San and co have been interested inertia-follicuar B cell activation for some time, as were we at UCL - looking at antibodies bearing the VH4-34 framework epitope recognised by the 9G4 reagent. Autoreactive antibodies during acute illness may not be that surprising but I do not know of comparable studies of other infections. It would also be interesting if asymptomatic pre-existing ANA or RF predicted serious sequelae from Covid.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1321561302821580802