The researchers and scientists are still studying the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to identify what kind of complications it has on a person who is infected by the virus. As per a January 2020 study finding, infected patients who were mostly men

The coronavirus cases around the globe are at 2,995,757, with 207,022 deaths reported and 881,845 recoveries. The virus outbreak that began in 2019 continues to cause casualties, while health experts around the globe are extensively working on developing a vaccine and

Acclaimed actor Irrfan Khan passed away on the morning of April 29 after a battle with colon infection. In 2018, he had announced that he had been diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour and he had undergone treatment in the UK for a

China's National Health Commission reported 14 new confirmed coronavirus cases on May 9, the highest number since April 28, including the first for more than a month in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected late last year.

Four deaths reported today including three in Chennai, total fatalities reach 44

In the dark recesses of an underground fungus garden, a Panamanian leaf-cutting ant plucks a tuft of mycelia, the wispy part of the basidiomycete fungus […]

The post Mystery solved? Ants Protect Young From Infection By Cocooning Them in Fungus appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Elisa Reimer
Apr 23, 2020; 134:jcs246421-jcs246421
Articles

Apr 8, 2020; 133:e0702-e0702
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. in 2018.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent non-surgical treatment Tuesday for a benign gallbladder condition, according to a press release from the Supreme Court. She plans to participate in oral arguments from the hospital on Wednesday, according to the release.

In pain on Monday, Ginsburg went to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington after hearing the first-ever Supreme Court teleconference of oral arguments. At Sibley, she was diagnosed with acute cholecystitis, a condition in which a gallstone migrates to the cystic duct. She nonetheless participated in arguments from home on Tuesday, but was in enough pain that she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment of the infected duct later Tuesday.

Doctors not involved in Ginsburg's care said non-surgical treatment typically involves antibiotics and insertion of a tube to drain the infected duct.

Friends said the justice was in good spirits on Tuesday night, and watching the Metropolitan Opera on her iPad.

Ginsburg's emergency treatment coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court's historic live-streaming of its oral arguments in which the justices are participating by telephone because of the coronavirus. According to the court statement, Ginsburg, 87, is "resting comfortably" and plans to participate in oral arguments again on Wednesday when the court considers an important birth control case.

She is expected to remain in the hospital for another day or two.

Last year, Ginsburg completed three weeks of radiation treatment after a cancerous tumor was discovered on her pancreas. It was the fourth time in 20 years that she had been treated for cancer, and the second time in a year. In December 2019, she was operated on for lung cancer.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Most people infected with the novel coronavirus develop antibodies in response.

But scientists don't know whether people who have been exposed to the coronavirus will be immune for life, as is usually the case for the measles, or if the disease will return again and again, like the common cold.

"This to me is one of the big unanswered questions that we have," says Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, "because it really says, 'What is the full exit strategy to this and how long are we going to be contending with it?' "

He's one of many scientists on a quest for answers. And the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Antibodies, which are proteins found in the blood as part of the body's immune response to infection, are a sign that people could be developing immunity. But they are by no means a guarantee they will be protected for life – or even for a year.

Shaman has been studying four other coronaviruses that cause the common cold. "They're very common and so people seem to get them quite often," Shaman says. Ninety percent of people develop antibodies to those viruses, at least in passing, but "our evidence is those antibodies are not conferring protection."

That may simply because colds are relatively mild, so the immune system doesn't mount a full-blown response, suggests Dr. Stanley Perlman, a pediatrician who studies immunology and microbiology at the University of Iowa. "That's why people get colds over and over again," he says. "It doesn't really tickle the immune response that much."

He's studied one of the most severe coronaviruses, the one that causes SARS, and he's found that the degree of immunity depended on the severity of the disease. Sicker people remained immune for much longer, in some cases many years.

For most people exposed to the novel coronavirus, "I think in the short term you're going to get some protection," Perlman says. "It's really the time of the protection that matters."

Perlman notes that for some people the symptoms of COVID-19 are no worse than a cold, while for others they are severe. "That's why it's tricky," he says, to predict the breadth of an immune response.

And it's risky to assume that experiences with other coronaviruses are directly applicable to the new one.

"Unforutunately, we cannot really generalize what kind of immunity is needed to get protection against a virus unless we really learn more about the virus," says Akiko Iwasaki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Yale University School of Medicine.

An immunobiologist, she is part of a rapidly expanding effort to figure this out. She and her colleagues are already studying the immune response in more than 100 patients in the medical school hospital. She's encouraged that most people who recover from the coronavirus have developed antibodies that neutralize the coronavirus in a petri dish.

"Whether that's happening inside the body we don't really know," she cautions.

Research like hers will answer that question, eventually.

But not all antibodies are protective. Iwasaki says some can actually contribute to the disease process and make the illness worse. These antibodies can contribute to inflammation and lead the body to overreact. That overreaction can even be deadly.

"Which types of antibodies protect the host versus those that enhance the disease? We really need to figure that out," she says.

The studies at Yale will follow patients for at least a year, to find out how slowly or quickly immunity might fade. "I wish there was a shortcut," Iwasaki says, "but we may not need to wait a year to understand what type of antibodies are protective."

That's because she and other immunologists are looking for patterns in the immune response that will identify people who have long-term immunity.

Researchers long ago figured out what biological features in the blood (called biomarkers) correlate with immunity to other diseases, says Dr. Kari Nadeau, a pediatrician and immunologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She expects researchers will be able to do the same for the new coronavirus.

Nadeau is working on several studies, including one that seeks to recruit 1,000 people who were previously exposed to the coronavirus. One goal is to identify people who produce especially strong, protective antibody responses. She says the antibody-producing cells from those people can potentially be turned into vaccines.

Another critical question she's zeroing in on is whether people who become immune are still capable of spreading the virus.

"Because you might be immune, you might have protected yourself against the virus," she says, "but it still might be in your body and you're giving it to others."

That would have huge public health implications if it turns out people can still spread the disease after they've recovered. Studies from China and South Korea seemed to suggest this was possible, though further studies have cast doubt on that as a significant feature of the disease.

Nadeau is also trying to figure out what can be said about the antibody blood-tests that are now starting to flood the market. There are two issues with these tests. First, a positive test may be a false-positive result, so it may be necessary to run a confirmatory test to get a credible answer. Second, it's not clear that a true positive test result really indicates a person is immune, and if so for how long.

Companies would like to be able to use these tests to identify people who can return to work without fear of spreading the coronavirus.

"I see a lot of business people wanting to do the best for their employees, and for good reason," Nadeau says. "And we can never say you're fully protected until we get enough [information]. But right now we're working hard to get the numbers we need to be able to see what constitutes protection and what does not."

It could be a matter of life or death to get this right. Answers to these questions are likely to come with the accumulation of information from many different labs. Fortunately, scientists around the world are working simultaneously to find answers.

You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The scam machine shows no signs of slowing down, as fraudsters dispense bogus health advice, peddle fake testing kits and issue malware-laced purchase orders

The post Coronavirus con artists continue to spread infections of their own appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Halogenated nitrogenous disinfection by-products (N-DBPs) in water increase bacterial resistance to antibiotics, new research shows. The study found that a strain of bacteria which can cause disease in humans, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, increased its resistance to a range of different antibiotics by an average of 5.5 times after the bacteria were exposed to chemicals which form as by-products of common water treatment procedures. The results highlight the risks to public health which these currently unregulated by-products may cause.

The presence of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water is an emerging health concern. DBPs come in many classes and are chemically diverse, making them challenging to monitor. Swedish researchers have evaluated a new method for the simultaneous determination of a broader range of DBPs than typically possible using other available techniques. The method uses gas chromatography (a laboratory technique that separates and analyses vaporisable compounds in a mixture), together with a halogen-specific detector (XSD). Having been tested in real water samples from two municipal waterworks in Sweden, the method has been optimised for the simultaneous determination of a wide range of neutral DBPs.

In a previous post, I introduced a model simulating the exponential spread of a phenomenon like COVID-19. With more and more talks in the news about deconfinement plans, I thought it would be interesting to run multiple simulations with different deconfinement scenarios and observe the potential outcomes.... read more >>

Inhaling volcanic ash could weaken the body’s natural defences against infection, a recent study concludes. A team of researchers collected samples of ash from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland and, in laboratory tests, found that they reduced the ability of immune cells in lungs to fight off bacterial infections.

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Researchers from NTU Singapore have developed a semi-autonomous robot that can disinfect large surfaces quickly. Named eXtreme Disinfection roBOT (XDBOT), it can be wirelessly controlled via a laptop or tablet, removing the need for cleaners to be in contact with surfaces, thereby reducing the risk of picking up the virus from potentially contaminated areas....

Most women know the burning, itching signs of a yeast infection, but before reaching for an OTC medication, you might try these natural home remedies.

Nail disorders are rarely disabling or even painful. But they are a nuisance. One of the most common problems is toenail fungus (medical name onychomysosis)-about 15% of people have it, including nearly half of those over 70. This infection has received a great deal of press and advertisement time, as there are finally therapies that actually successfully eradicate these infections. A fast overview of the disease can really help us to get rid of it.

The Aquagenx water quality test kit lets Helioz quantify E. coli concentrations in lower climates at ambient temperature without electricity and labs

Sinus infection treatment Los Angeles at Vermont Urgent care is specific to each patient. Sinus infection treatment Los Angeles should be individualized to meet the needs of each patient. At Vermont Urgent Care, this is exactly the case.

HPV vaccine programs designed to reduce this significant public health threat, and recent research indicates that they're working. The American Dental Society supports the use of this vaccine

Access Physicians, the nation's leading physician-led telemedicine group, urges focus on clinical excellence and expertise, not just accessibility and convenience

Pure Health ran a 360-degree campaign to promote infection prevention that covered online and on-ground activations.

Global Engineering Firm Partnership to Distribute Bioionix Systems in Europe

A molecular dynamics study of 72 flavonoids indicates certain flavonoids inhibit the main protease of SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for COVID-19 disease.

CXS by Bioionix Destroys Listeria in Meat and Cheese Plants!

Sustainable Disinfection and Food Safety for Gouda Cheese Plant

Margaret M. Parker, MD, MCCM, and Luregn Schlapbach, MD, FCICM, review a survey of international practice on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of infections on extracorporeal life support in adults and children published in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine

The PFRDA, in a circular dated April 9, 2020, has declared coronavirus infection as a critical illness that is life-threatening in nature. Accordingly, partial withdrawal from NPS has been allowed for covering expenses related to the treatment of COVID-19.

tl;dr: Their 95% interval for the infection rate, given the data available, is [0.7%, 1.8%]. My Bayesian interval is [0.3%, 2.4%]. Most of what makes my interval wider is the possibility that the specificity and sensitivity of the tests can vary across labs. To get a narrower interval, you’d need additional assumptions regarding the specificity […]

Listen in as I use two calculators to track the difference in numbers of infections over a short period of time, depending on how many people each infected individual infects on average.

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

A method of treating hepatitis virus infection is disclosed. The method comprising administering to a human subject in need of such treatment an effective hepatitis virus-combatting amount of an alkyl lipid or alkyl lipid derivative.

A method of treating hepatitis virus infection is disclosed. The method comprising administering to a human subject in need of such treatment an effective hepatitis virus-combatting amount of an alkyl lipid or alkyl lipid derivative.

The present invention extends to a disinfection cap for disinfecting a male luer end of an infusion therapy device. The disinfection cap can include an internal reservoir containing an antimicrobial or saline solution which is sealed with a flexible septum to prevent the solution from evaporating. The septum can include one or more slits or pierceable seams that allow a male luer end of an infusion therapy device to be inserted through the septum and into the solution. While the male luer is inserted through the septum, the solution contacts both the inner and outer surfaces of the male luer. Because the septum reduces evaporation of the solution and prevents the solution from leaking out of the cap, the solution remains in contact with the male luer for a longer duration then when typical disinfection caps are used thereby increasing the effectiveness of the disinfectant.

Provided herein are novel compounds and novel protected compounds that can be derived from polymyxin, including, e.g., polymyxin A. The novel compounds have antibacterial properties against a diverse range of Gram negative bacteria and reduced toxicity compared to polymyxins such as polymyxin A. Also provided are antibacterial pharmaceutical compositions containing the novel compounds and novel protected compounds, as well as methods for preparing the antibacterial compounds and protected compounds.

Provided herein are novel compounds and novel protected compounds that can be derived from polymyxin, including, e.g., polymyxin A. The novel compounds have antibacterial properties against a diverse range of Gram negative bacteria and reduced toxicity compared to polymyxins such as polymyxin A. Also provided are antibacterial pharmaceutical compositions containing the novel compounds and novel protected compounds, as well as methods for preparing the antibacterial compounds and protected compounds.

A bed-side system for preventing infection that uses a flush and swab caddy attached to an IV pole or other bed-side equipment. By providing convenient and secure storage for pre-filled syringes, alcohol swabs, and other medical supplies, it can improve individual patient care. In an embodiment, the caddy attaches to the IV pole and comprises a locking compartment for pre-filled syringes and an open tray for alcohol swabs and other medical supplies. The syringes may be filled with saline, heparin, or another solution.

The present document describes methods of use of photo activated compositions for oral disinfection and/or treatments which comprise at least one oxidant, at least one photoactivator capable of activating the oxidant, and at least one healing factor chosen from hyaluronic acid, glucosamine and allantoin, in association with a pharmacologically acceptable carrier.

Conversely, greater infection rate suggests much lower fatality rate. A recent Stanford University study of COVID-19 infection in Santa Clara County suggests that the disease is vastly more widespread in the Bay Area than official data shows. Because the test was performed on volunteers rather than a randomized population, it is likely to have over-reported the rate of infection among its subjects.…

Devices, systems, and methods for disinfecting catheters used during in line catheter connections are provided. A disinfection device including one or more LED UV sources comprises a small volume kill zone. The disinfection device is configured to effectively disinfect fluid within the kill zone.