Month: November 2020

Categories : COVID Diseases, Syndromes and ConditionsTags :

Weight Link to COVID Risk Emphasised by CDC

On By ModernMedia

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US has included in its coronavirus risk warning people who are considered overweight (a BMI of 25 to 29.9, obese is above 30).

Dr Donald Hensrud, director of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program, explained that obesity already is associated with several complications – diabetes, high blood pressure, dyslipidaemia and cardiovascular disease.

Dr Hensrud said, “Now COVID-19 comes along, and we’ve got all the issues we had before plus some additional ones. Obesity is associated with low-grade inflammation and an effect on our immune system. This affects our susceptibility to COVID-19. People who are obese are more likely to develop COVID-19 and complications from it, including dying, than people who aren’t obese. In addition, people with diabetes and some of the other complications from obesity are also at increased risk. So obesity and its complications independently take the risks of COVID-19 and elevate them significantly.”

Dr Hensrud said that he noted patients of his had put on weight during lockdown due to comfort eating and staying at home without any exercise. In order to reduce their risk, people should resolve to eat a healthy diet and engage in exercise, although he cautioned that losing more than 10% body weight in six months can impact the immune system.

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and ConditionsTags :

Promising Drug May Worsen Instead of Treat Multiple Sclerosis

On By ModernMedia

A drug, TEPP-46,  that is being assessed to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) may in fact be worsening the progression of the disease, wrote University of Virginia on the Medical Xpress website.

MS is a debilitating disease which affects over one million people in America, in which the immune system attacks the myelin sheath, creating a range of effects in sufferers, from muscle spasms to numbness.

Presently available drugs to treat MS often have unwanted side effects, such as weakening the immune system. Originally developed to fight cancer, TEPP-46 is small-molecule drug that targets the changes in cellular metabolism that occur in both cancer and MS. However, the drug has been shown to produce off-target effects. In the mouse model used by the researchers, the inflammation was directed away from the spinal cord and into the brain. The researchers believed that this was the result of the drug harmfully changing T cells, but could not explain why. 

“It was not at all what we expected,” said MS researcher Alban Gaultier, PhD, of University of Virginia. “The take-home message is that we should be very careful and do more fundamental research before we propose to take this to clinical trials.”

Categories : COVIDTags :

Moderna COVID Vaccine Confers 94.5% Protection

On By ModernMedia

The BBC reports that, hot on the heels of Pfizer/BioNTech’s announcement of 90% protection conferred by their vaccine, Moderna has announced that their trial with 30 000 participants has achieved a 94.5% level of protection.

This is based on the first 95 participants to develop COVID, with only five having received the vaccine while the others received the placebo. Additionally, although 11 participants developed severe COVID, none came from the vaccine group.

Slight, short-lived adverse effects including headaches, fatigue and pain were reported after receiving the vaccine by patients. Prof Peter Openshaw, of Imperial College London commented, “These effects are what we would expect with a vaccine that is working and inducing a good immune response.”

Moderna’s vaccine also has an advantage over the Pfizer vaccine in that it can be stored at -20C for up to six months, and in a refrigerator for one month. This will significantly improve the logistics of its distribution, requiring a less intensive cold storage chain.

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

A Bad Rap? Statins Have “Nocebo” Effect

On By ModernMedia

According to an article by the BBC, new research funded by the Imperial Heart Foundation indicates that a significant portion of statins’ adverse side effects are attributable to the “nocebo” effect. 

Statins are one of the most prescribed tablets in the UK, used to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides levels, and raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. The effects help prevent heart attacks and stroke, but nearly a fifth of patients stop taking them due to side effects such as joint pain, muscle ache, fatigue and nausea. In 60 patients were recruited, who had all stopped taking statins due to their adverse effects. On a scale of 0 to 100, those taking placebo tablets reported a similarly high score (15.4) to those taking statins (16.3), compared to a group receiving no tablets (8).  The effect was so strong that many patients discontinued the dummy pills. 

The nocebo effect is the inverse of the placebo effect, where patients experience adverse effects even when they are taking a placebo. This is thought to explain why there is such a high prevalence of penicillin allergies when testing proves otherwise. 

Once the patients were talked through the nocebo effect, most were able to resume statins. It is not known as to why statins have such a powerful nocebo effect, although some attribute this to media creating a “self-fulfilling destiny”.

“If you stopped a man in the street and asked how do you feel about an aspirin or a statin a day, I think people would be much more positive about the aspirin,” said one of the researchers, Dr James Howard.

Categories : COVIDTags :

Elon Musk Says He May Have COVID

On By ModernMedia

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla tweeted that he may have COVID, according to Bloomberg.

The 49 year old tech entrepreneur said that so far his symptoms resemble those of a cold. He took four rapid antigen tests, which are cheaper and faster but two of them came back as negative and two came back as positive. He commented that these results were “extremely bogus”.

No stranger to courting controversy, Musk has in the past cast doubts about COVID, even claiming in March that there would be “zero” cases in the United States by April (which currently has recorded 153 496 new daily cases as of writing this article). He then appeared to cast further doubts, saying that the number of cases would “explode” due to the number of false positives.

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and ConditionsTags :

Vaping May Increase Respiratory Disease Risk

On By ModernMedia

Research has increasingly been focused on the health effects of vaping, usually touted as a way to quit combustible smoking, and evidence is accumulating for their risks.

Research by Boston University School of Public Health and School of Medicine has revealed that, far from being harmless, vaping may in fact raise the risk for a number of respiratory diseases by 21% for former e-cigarette users and 43% for current users.

Corresponding author Dr Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health at Boston University said, “This provides some of the very first longitudinal evidence on the harms associated with e-cigarette products.

“In recent years we have seen dramatic increase in e-cigarette use among youth and young adults which threatens to reverse decades of hard-fought gains,” Stokes said. “This new evidence also suggests that we may see an increase in respiratory disease as youth and young adults age into midlife, including asthma, COPD, and other respiratory conditions.”

Previous research has largely focused on in vitro studies, or short-term studies with human participants. The study used data from 21 618 participants from the nationally representative Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) survey. To isolate the effect of e-cigarettes, the researchers adjusted for any form of combustible smoking use, including second-hand smoking.

“With a longitudinal study design and extensive sensitivity analyses, the study adds to a growing body of evidence indicating long-term health risks of e-cigarette use to the respiratory system,” said study lead author Wubin Xie, a postdoctoral associate at Boston University.

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : COVID GeneticsTags :

Spike Protein Mutation May Be COVID’s Achilles Heel

On By ModernMedia

New research suggests that the very spike protein that makes SARS-CoV-2 so infective may also make it more vulnerable to vaccines. The characteristic “crown” of spikes on the virus gives rise to its “coronavirus” name.

A common mutation in the D614G protein makes a flap open in the spike. This spike makes it easier for the virus to latch onto cells, but this same flap opens a pathway directly into the virus’ core. This makes it easier for antibodies, such as those in the vaccines presently undergoing testing, to infiltrate into the virus, and disable it.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains: “The original spike protein had a ‘D’ at this position, and it was replaced by a ‘G,’ Several papers had already described that this mutation makes the protein more functional and more efficient at getting into cells.”

This mutation, they found, makes the virus replicate 10 times faster and also makes it more infectious.

When hamsters were exposed to the mutated and unmutated coronavirus strains, the ones infected with the mutated strain were found to transmit the virus much faster than those infected with the unmutated strain. Neither strain seemed to make the hamsters sicker, suggesting that the mutation does not make the virus more lethal. Researchers caution that the animal test results may not hold true for humans, and that constant vigilance in observing and documenting mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus is necessary. 

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : UncategorizedTags :

Assisted Hyperventilation: A New Way to Treat Alcohol Intoxication

On By ModernMedia

Alcohol impacts just about every bodily function, from brain function and circulation to nail growth. At high levels, alcohol intoxication can damage organs and lead to death.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately three million people around the world die due to alcohol intoxication each year. 

About 90% of alcohol is processed through the liver at a constant rate, and the only way to speed this up is dialysis. Thus, the only treatment for alcohol intoxication thus far has been to supply oxygen and intravenous fluids, and medications for cardiac support as needed.

The new approach simply adds the lungs to the process: simply by hyperventilating, three times more alcohol could be excreted via the lungs than the liver. 

“But you can’t just hyperventilate, because in a minute or two you would become light-headed and pass out,” explained Dr Fisher, anaesthesiologist and senior scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI). The decrease in CO2 in the bloodstream is what causes the sensation of light-headedness, as well as tingling in the extremities.

To get around this, the researchers created a simple device which returns the same amount of carbon dioxide to the lungs as was exhaled, no matter the volume of air.

“It’s [a] very basic, low-tech device that could be made anywhere in the world: no electronics, no computers or filters are required. It’s almost inexplicable why we didn’t try this decades ago,” said Dr. Fisher.

Source: Medical Xpress

Categories : COVIDTags :

Hydroxychloroquine Confirmed Ineffective in the Prevention of COVID

On By ModernMedia

An article published in The Lancet examines the evidence for the drug hydroxychloroquine’s controversial application as a treatment for COVID, which was initially very encouraging based on the drug in vitro inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the evidence now definitively shows that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective for COVID.

This would have been very useful if hydroxychloroquine, regularly used to treat rheumatic diseases, could have been used as an easily available treatment.

However, numerous studies since the beginning of the COVID pandemic have reiterated the same findings: that hydroxychloroquine does not reduce mortality risk for people hospitalised with COVID, nor does it shorten recovery times. Nevertheless, interest persisted in the possible preventative effects of hydroxychloroquine against COVID.    

Using electronic health records for 30 569 patients, a study comparing hydroxychloroquine use by rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus sufferers to non-users with the same maladies reported no significant difference in standardised cumulative COVID mortality associated with hydroxychloroquine use (0.23% among hydroxychloroquine users and 0.22% among non-users) with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.03 (95% CI 0·80–1·33).

These results reflect those of two studies where hydroxychloroquine was administered as prophylaxis to frontline and health care workers, which also showed no effect.

Categories : Cardiovascular Disease Mental HealthTags :

‘Flight or Flight’ Brain Region Linked to Heart Disease

On By ModernMedia

Research on marmosets as reported in The Conversation has revealed the role that a region of the brain called sgACC plays in emotional arousal. Over-activity of sgACC was already associated with the dampening of pleasure and reward stimulus, seen in depression. 

A threat was presented to the marmosets in the form of a rubber snake and the marmosets were conditioned with a tone to create an association. The tone was later made without the snake to de-associate it from threat. The experimental group had over-activity induced in sgACC, the control group did not.

They found that marmosets who had not had sgACC over-stimulated responding normally to the de-association, calming down more quickly, but the over-activity group displayed fear and elevated blood pressure for much longer.

The over-activity of sgACC was also linked to abnormal heart function – increased heart rate and reduced variability in heart rate even at rest, without the presence of a threat.

Such changes reflect the presence of anxiety. The abnormal heart rates suggests that sgACC promotes the “flight or fight” response.
Brain imaging showed, with over-activity in sgACC, concurrent increased activity in the amygdala and hypothalamus, and reduced activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, which is also seen in depression. Ketamine, a drug being investigated to treat depression, was shown to treat the depression aspects of sgACC over-activity, but in this case not anxiety – the marmosets remained fearful to stimulus.