COVID-19 Update: Virus in Heart Cells, ‘Long COVID’ Hyperlink
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Listed below are the coronavirus tales Medscape’s editors across the globe deem it be major to know about this day:
Virus in Heart Cells
SARS-CoV-2 has been learned in cardiac tissue of a child from Brazil with multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to COVID-19. The kid offered with myocarditis and died of coronary heart failure.
It is believed to be the first evidence of sing infection of coronary heart muscle cells by the virus; viral particles were identified in a quantity of cell lineages of the coronary heart, along side cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, mesenchymal cells, and inflammatory cells.
“The presence of the virus in varied cell kinds of cardiac tissue, as evidenced by electron microscopy, shows that myocarditis on this case is likely a sing inflammatory response to the virus infection in the coronary heart,” first author Marisa Dolhnikoff, MD, Division of Pathology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, suggested Medscape Medical News.
“Long COVID” Hyperlink with ME/CFS?
The persistence of long-time interval symptoms in some members with COVID-19 has opened up a fresh line of review into the mechanisms underlying myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
In fresh review, “chronic fatigue” changed into once listed as the tip symptom among members level-headed feeling in depressed health beyond 2 weeks after COVID-19 onset. Diversified chronic symptoms overlap with the diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS, which frequently arises after a viral illness.
“It offers a form of alternatives for us to gape potentially early ME/CFS and the arrangement it develops, however as neatly as, a lot of the review that has been completed on ME/CFS would possibly well well also additionally provide solutions for COVID-19,” said a dash-setter of the World Affiliation for Power Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.
First Documented Coronavirus Reinfection
A Hong Kong man who recovered from COVID-19 in April changed into once infected one more time four-and-a-half months later in essentially the major documented instance of human reinfection, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said this day.
By arrangement of genetic sequencing, researchers learned that the man had shriveled a a quantity of coronavirus tension from the one he had beforehand shriveled. He remained asymptomatic for the second infection. The findings are described in a paper approved by Clinical Infectious Ailments however now not but accessible online.
“The discovering doesn’t suggest taking vaccines will be ineffective,” Kai-Wang To, MD, a coauthor of the paper, suggested Reuters. “Immunity prompted by vaccination will be a quantity of from those prompted by natural infection,” To said.
T Cells a Extra True Immune Indicator?
Immune machine memory T-cell ranges accurately corresponded with COVID-19 severity in the first gape to deem a honest preference of responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection, from persons who were wholesome to members who were severely in depressed health.
T-cell response persevered in convalescent COVID-19 sufferers, suggesting that such responses provide a more actual measure of capacity long-time interval immune protection in comparison with antibody assays.
Measuring memory T-cells would possibly well well also assist to title members with asymptomatic or calm COVID-19 illness “who likely act inadvertently as essentially the major transmitters,” the researchers propose.
Daycare Centers Possess now not Would possibly presumably maybe accumulate to be Infection Hotbeds
Rhode Island, a pronounce that has saved its COVID-19 outbreak under pretty beautiful regulate, saw puny fresh viral transmission when the pronounce reopened daycare centers earlier this summer season, in maintaining with a fresh gape released by the US Centers for Illness Assist watch over and Prevention and the Rhode Island Division of Health.
The share of COVID-19 tests that arrive again obvious in Rhode Island — which is an indication of how widespread the infection is in a neighborhood — has been tremendously under the national common, hovering round 2%.
It will not be optimistic, then one more time, that cities and states combating increased charges of neighborhood transmission would bag the identical reassuring outcomes. Moderately heaps of the cases (75%) recorded in the Rhode Island daycare gape came about from mid- to leisurely July, when cases began to climb in the pronounce.
FDA Beneath Force?
The US Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sunday said it approved the utilization of blood plasma from sufferers who accumulate recovered from COVID-19 as a therapy for the illness, a day after President Donald Trump blamed the company for impeding the rollout of coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics for political reasons.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that Peter Marks, MD, director of the FDA’s Heart for Biologics Evaluation and Analysis and a high regulator who will assist decide the fate of a coronavirus vaccine, had vowed to resign if the Trump administration approves a vaccine sooner than it is miles proven to be safe and effective.
Marks suggested Reuters he has now not confronted any political tension and that the FDA would be guided by science alone. Would possibly presumably maybe accumulate to that substitute, “I would possibly well well also now not stand by and glance one thing that changed into once unsafe or ineffective that changed into once being build through,” Marks said.
Clinical Trials for Cannabinoid Drug OK’d
The FDA will allow fragment 1 scientific trials to proceed for a artificial cannabinoid drug designed to tackle acute respiratory wound syndrome (ARDS) that develops in excessive cases of COVID-19, in maintaining with the firm rising the experimental drug.
In Memoriam
As frontline healthcare workers esteem sufferers with COVID-19, they commit themselves to advanced, draining work and additionally build themselves vulnerable to infection. Thousands for the length of the sector accumulate died.
Medscape has published a memorial record to commemorate them. We can continue updating this record as, sadly, major. Please assist us make certain that this record is total by submitting names with an age, occupation or specialty, and arrangement through this arrangement. In uncover for you to allotment any a quantity of experiences, tales, or concerns related to the pandemic, please be a part of the dialog right here.
Ellie Kincaid is Medscape’s affiliate managing editor. She has beforehand written about healthcare for Forbes, the Wall Avenue Journal, and Nature Treatment. She’s going to be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ellie_kincaid .
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