Vaccine Monitoring Crucial as SARS-CoV-2 Variants Continue to Evolve March 11, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and the National Institute for Health and Care Research Biomedical Research Centre at UCLH have highlighted the importance of continued surveillance of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccine performance as the virus continues to evolve.
Published today as a research letter in The Lancet, their study compared the newer monovalent COVID vaccine, which specifically targets the XBB variant of Omicron (as recommended by the World Health Organisation), with older bivalent vaccines containing a mix of an Omicron variant and the original strain of COVID-19, which the UK deployed in Autumn 2023 before turning to monovalent vaccines1.
The researchers found that both vaccines generated neutralising antibodies against the most recent strain of Omicron, BA.2.86. However, the new monovalent vaccine generated higher levels of antibodies against a range of other Omicron variants.
The team collected blood and nasal mucosal samples both before and after a fifth dose vaccination from 71 participants of the Legacy study, a research collaboration between the Crick and the NIHR University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre. They compared the antibody levels before and after vaccination.
All 36 participants who received the bivalent vaccine and 17 who received the monovalent vaccine had boosted levels of antibodies against all variants tested, including the newest strain BA.2.86, which caused a wave of infection this winter. But those with the newer monovalent vaccine had 3.5x higher levels of antibodies against the XBB and BQ.1.1 strains after their booster vaccination.
The Pandemic Dramatically Reshaped Life Expectancy, Now We Know How Much by Daniel Lawler
March , 2024
Introduction:
(Science Alert) Covid-19 caused the average life expectancy of people worldwide to fall by 1.6 years during the first two years of the pandemic, a more dramatic decline than previously thought, a major study said Tuesday.
This marked a sharp reversal during a decades-long rise in global life expectancy, according to hundreds of researchers sifting through data for the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
"For adults worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a more profound impact than any event seen in half a century, including conflicts and natural disasters," said Austin Schumacher, an IHME researcher and lead author of the study published in The Lancet journal.
During 2020-2021, life expectancy declined in 84 percent of the 204 countries and territories analysed, "demonstrating the devastating potential impacts" of new viruses, he said in a statement.
The rate of death for people over 15 rose by 22 percent for men and 17 percent for women during this time, the researchers estimated
Simple Blood Test Could Predict Risk of Long-term COVID-19 Lung Problems March 15, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) UVA (University of Virginia) Health researchers have discovered a potential way to predict which patients with severe COVID-19 are likely to recover well and which are likely to suffer “long-haul” lung problems. That finding could help doctors better personalize treatments for individual patients.
UVA’s new research also alleviates concerns that severe COVID-19 could trigger relentless, ongoing lung scarring akin to the chronic lung disease known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the researchers report. That type of continuing lung damage would mean that patients’ ability to breathe would continue to worsen over time.
“We are excited to find that people with long-haul COVID have an immune system that is totally different from people who have lung scarring that doesn’t stop,” said researcher Catherine A. Bonham, MD, a pulmonary and critical care expert who serves as scientific director of UVA Health’s Interstitial Lung Disease Program. “This offers hope that even patients with the worst COVID do not have progressive scarring of the lung that leads to death.”
Long-Haul COVID-19
Up to 30% of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 continue to suffer persistent symptoms months after recovering from the virus. Many of these patients develop lung scarring – some early on in their hospitalization, and others within six months of their initial illness, prior research has found. Bonham and her collaborators wanted to better understand why this scarring occurs, to determine if it is similar to progressive pulmonary fibrosis and to see if there is a way to identify patients at risk.
To do this, the researchers followed 16 UVA Health patients who had survived severe COVID-19. Fourteen had been hospitalized and placed on a ventilator. All continued to have trouble breathing and suffered fatigue and abnormal lung function at their first outpatient checkup.
New Study Reveals COVID-19 May Have Originated in a Lab March 15, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) The origin of COVID-19 is highly debated – most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but research from the journal Risk Analysis, examined the likelihood of an unnatural origin (i.e. from a laboratory.)
The results indicate a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of the virus. The researchers used an established risk analysis tool for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, the modified Grunow-Finke assessment tool (mGFT) to study the origin of COVID-19. This risk assessment cannot prove the specific origin of COVID-19 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.
COVID-19 Antibody Discovery Could Explain Long COVID March 28, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) UVA Health researchers have discovered a potential explanation for some of the most perplexing mysteries of COVID-19 and long COVID. The surprising findings could lead to new treatments for the difficult acute effects of COVID-19, long COVID and possibly other viruses.
Researchers led by UVA’s Steven L. Zeichner, MD, PhD, found that COVID-19 may prompt some people’s bodies to make antibodies that act like enzymes that the body naturally uses to regulate important functions – blood pressure, for example. Related enzymes also regulate other important body functions, such as blood clotting and inflammation.
Doctors may be able to target these “abzymes” to stop their unwanted effects. If abzymes with rogue activities are also responsible for some of the features of long COVID, doctors could target the abzymes to treat the difficult and sometimes mysterious symptoms of COVID-19 and long COVID at the source, instead of merely treating the downstream symptoms.
“Some patients with COVID-19 have serious symptoms and we have trouble understanding their cause. We also have a poor understanding of the causes of long COVID,” said Zeichner, a pediatric infectious disease expert at UVA Children’s. “Antibodies that act like enzymes are called ‘abzymes.’
Abzymes are not exact copies of enzymes and so they work differently, sometimes in ways that the original enzyme does not. If COVID-19 patients are making abzymes, it is possible that these rogue abzymes could harm many different aspects of physiology. If this turns out to be true, then developing treatments to deplete or block the rogue abzymes could be the most effective way to treat the complications of COVID-1
