Medicine – Page 16

Coronavirus, Employment, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

‘Immunity Passports’ could create a new category of privilege

May 22, 2020

Being infected with the virus could come with more freedom

A new type of test uses a small blood sample to look for the presence of coronavirus antibodies.

In one version of the future, a new type of test that measures antibodies would help restore a sense of normalcy for some people even as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. With the right antibodies, some may be immune to the virus, unable to get sick or spread the virus to others. Widespread testing for these antibodies could pave the way for so-called immunity certificates, which would allow people who have already been exposed to the virus to return to public life.

But the hope may be dashed by significant scientific and ethical concerns. For starters, diagnostic testing is already extremely limited in the United States, to say nothing of the more experimental antibody testing. Experts worry that antibody testing isn’t guaranteed to prove immunity. And if it does, the resulting immunity passports could be used to discriminate against untested people and those who aren’t immune — in the workplace, for example. That could lead people to intentionally expose themselves to Covid-19, banking on the hope that they’ll survive and earn the documentation they need to reenter society.

Continue reading… “‘Immunity Passports’ could create a new category of privilege”

DNA, Medicine, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Molecules identified that reverse cellular aging process

May 15, 2020

A new discovery paves the way for novel drugs that could help safeguard DNA and slow the aging process

Central to a lot of scientific research into aging are tiny caps on the ends of our chromosomes called telomeres. These protective sequences of DNA grow a little shorter each time a cell divides, but by intervening in this process, researchers hope to one day regulate the process of aging and the ill health effects it can bring. A Harvard team is now offering an exciting pathway forward, discovering a set of small molecules capable of restoring telomere length in mice.

Telomeres can be thought of like the plastic tips on the end of our shoelaces, preventing the fraying of the DNA code of the genome and playing an important part in a healthy aging process. But each time a cell divides, they grow a little shorter. This sequence repeats over and over until the cell can no longer divide and dies.

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Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Researchers use live virus to identify 30 existing drugs that could treat COVID-19

May 11, 2020

Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., a professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys, gestures to experimental assays that test for compounds that may treat COVID-19.

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the University of Hong Kong, Scripps Research, UC San Diego School of Medicine, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and UCLA have identified 30 existing drugs that stop the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Almost all of the drugs are entirely different from those currently being tested in clinical trials, and weren’t previously known to hold promise for COVID-19 treatment. The new candidates expand the number of “shots on goal” for a potential COVID-19 treatment and could reach patients faster than drugs that are created from scratch. The study was placed on bioRxiv (pronounced “bio-Archive”), an open-access distribution service for preprints of life science research.

“We believe this is one of the first comprehensive drug screens using the live SARS-CoV-2 virus, and our hope is that one or more of these drugs will save lives while we wait for a vaccine for COVID-19,” says Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., director of the Immunity and Pathogenesis Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys and senior author of the study. “Many drugs identified in this study—most of which are new to the COVID-19 research community—can begin clinical trials immediately or in a few months after additional testing.”

Continue reading… “Researchers use live virus to identify 30 existing drugs that could treat COVID-19”

Analysis, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

CDC data shows 9% vaccine effectiveness for influenza A, virus H3N2 flu shot last year

April 13, 2020

While governments, international bodies and the public health community scramble to arrest the COVID-19 virus, now a pandemic, and with states of emergency declared nationwide and in Massachusetts, medical experts are still trying to come up with vaccines that can do a better job against various strains of influenza that have sickened and killed people for many decades.

The experts say the effectiveness rate of flu shots should be at least 90% successful.

But data collected for nearly two decades by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention show effectiveness rates often hovers between 40 and 50%.

Data from the 2018-2019 flu season, the most recent set of complete information, first published in June, indicated that a flu shot to prevent influenza A, the H3N2 strain, was only 9% effective in preventing onset of the flu, among all age groups.

Continue reading… “CDC data shows 9% vaccine effectiveness for influenza A, virus H3N2 flu shot last year”

Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Israeli COVID-19 treatment shows 100% survival rate – preliminary data

April 9, 2020

Biologists work in a laboratory at Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. in Haifa

Not only have all the patients survived, according to Pluristem, but four of them showed improvement in respiratory parameters.

Six critically ill coronavirus patients in Israel who are considered high-risk for mortality have been treated with Pluristem’s placenta-based cell-therapy product and survived, according to preliminary data provided by the Haifa-based company.

The patients were treated at three different Israeli medical centers for one week under the country’s compassionate use program and were suffering from acute respiratory failure and inflammatory complications associated with COVID-19. Four of the patients also demonstrated failure of other organ systems, including cardiovascular and kidney failure.

Not only have all the patients survived, according to Pluristem, but four of them showed improvement in respiratory parameters and three of them are in the advanced stages of weaning from ventilators. Moreover, two of the patients with preexisting medical conditions are showing clinical recovery in addition to the respiratory improvement.

Continue reading… “Israeli COVID-19 treatment shows 100% survival rate – preliminary data”

Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

F.D.A. approves first coronavirus antibody test in U.S.

April 3, 2020

A cell, in greenish brown, heavily infected with coronavirus particles, in pink.

Such a test may help scientists learn how widespread the infection is, and how long people remain immune after recovering.

A cell, in greenish brown, heavily infected with coronavirus particles, in pink.Credit…Niaid, via Reuters

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new test for coronavirus antibodies, the first for use in the United States.

Currently available tests are designed to find fragments of viral genes indicating an ongoing infection. Doctors swab the nose and throat, and amplify any genetic material from the virus found there.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

YC startup Felix wants to replace antibiotics with programmable viruses

April 2, 2020

Right now the world is at war. But this is no ordinary war. It’s a fight with an organism so small we can only detect it through use of a microscope — and if we don’t stop it, it could kill millions of us in the next several decades. No, I’m not talking about COVID-19, though that organism is the one on everyone’s mind right now. I’m talking about antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

You see, more than 700,000 people died globally from bacterial infections last year — 35,000 of them in the U.S. If we do nothing, that number could grow to 10 million annually by 2050, according to a United Nations report.

The problem? Antibiotic overuse at the doctor’s office or in livestock and farming practices. We used a lot of drugs over time to kill off all the bad bacteria — but it only killed off most, not all, of the bad bacteria. And, as the famous line from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park goes, “life finds a way.”

Enter Felix, a biotech startup in the latest Y Combinator batch that thinks it has a novel approach to keeping bacterial infections at bay – viruses.

Continue reading… “YC startup Felix wants to replace antibiotics with programmable viruses”

Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

A neural network can help spot Covid-19 in chest x-rays

April 2, 2020

COVID-Net could help scientists develop an AI tool that can pick up telltale signs.

The news: An open-access neural network called COVID-Net, released to the public this week, could help researchers around the world in a joint effort to develop an AI tool that can test people for Covid-19.

What is it? COVID-Net is a convolutional neural network, a type of AI that is particularly good at recognizing images. Developed by Linda Wang and Alexander Wong at the University of Waterloo and the AI firm DarwinAI in Canada, COVID-Net was trained to identify signs of Covid-19 in chest x-rays using 5,941 images taken from 2,839 patients with various lung conditions, including bacterial infections, non-Covid viral infections, and Covid-19. The data set is being provided alongside the tool so that researchers—or anyone who wants to tinker—can explore and tweak it.

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Coronavirus, Healthcare, Historical Perspectives, Medicine, Science & Technology News

The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.

March 28, 2020

This novel coronavirus is a sneaky variety similar to those that have been responsible for the most destructive outbreaks of the last 100 years.

Viruses have spent billions of years perfecting the art of surviving without living – a frighteningly effective strategy that makes them a potent threat in today’s world.

That’s especially true of the deadly new coronavirus that has brought global society to a screeching halt. It’s little more than a packet of genetic material surrounded by a spiky protein shell one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, and leads such a zombie-like existence, it’s barely considered a living organism.

But as soon as it gets into a human airway, the virus hijacks our cells to create millions more versions of itself.

There is a certain evil genius to how this coronavirus pathogen works: It finds easy purchase in humans without them knowing. Before its first host even develops symptoms, it is already spreading its replicas everywhere, moving onto its next victim. It is powerfully deadly in some, but mild enough in others to escape containment. And, for now, we have no way of stopping it.

Continue reading… “The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.”

brains, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

High-speed microscope captures fleeting brain signals

March 26, 2020

When a neuron fires, calcium flows into the cell in a wave that sweeps along the cell body. Images of this infragranular neuron were obtained three times per second by two-dimensional scanning with a Bessel focus. Redder structures are deeper in the mouse cortex. (UC Berkeley images by Na Ji)

Electrical and chemical signals flash through our brains constantly as we move through the world, but it would take a high-speed camera and a window into the brain to capture their fleeting paths.

University of California, Berkeley, investigators have now built such a camera: a microscope that can image the brain of an alert mouse 1,000 times a second, recording for the first time the passage of millisecond electrical pulses through neurons.

“This is really exciting, because we are now able to do something that people really weren’t able to do before,” said lead researcher Na Ji, a UC Berkeley associate professor of physics and of molecular and cell biology.

The new imaging technique combines two-photon fluorescence microscopy and all-optical laser scanning in a state-of-the-art microscope that can image a two-dimensional slice through the neocortex of the mouse brain up to 3,000 times per second. That’s fast enough to trace electrical signals flowing through brain circuits.

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Medicine, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

The next challenge for getting to Mars: What happens to the human body in space

March 24, 2020

From NASA’s Moon to Mars program to Elon Musk’s ambitious plan to send a million people to Mars by 2050, the race is on to get human feet on the red planet. With increasingly sophisticated rockets and robotics, the technological challenges standing in the way of this goal are fast being eroded.

But there might be a different issue which hampers plans to take people off-planet and send them out to explore the rest of the solar system. Strange things happen to the human body in space, and we’re going to need to find ways to address these medical issues if we want to be able to send astronauts on long-duration missions like the several years that a Mars mission might require.

Digital Trends spoke to University College London cardiologist Dr. Rohin Francis, who has performed studies into space medicine, about how human bodies respond to long-term habitation of the space environment and what that might mean for manned missions to Mars.

Continue reading… “The next challenge for getting to Mars: What happens to the human body in space”

Big Problems, Coronavirus, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Teva to send US millions of malaria pills with potential to help COVID-19

March 21, 2020

Hydroxychloroquine one of several drugs cited in recent days as being possibly effective against coronavirus; Israeli firm says it will provide as many as possible at no cost

Israeli generic drug giant Teva announced Friday that it will provide ten million doses of its anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which could potentially prove effective in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, to US hospitals free of charge.

The company said six million doses will be delivered to US hospitals by March 31, and more than ten million in a month.

“We are committed to helping to supply as many tablets as possible as demand for this treatment accelerates at no cost,” Teva executive vice president Brendan O’Grady said.

Continue reading… “Teva to send US millions of malaria pills with potential to help COVID-19”