Long COVID can upend the lives of those who have it—when you’re a student, it can be even harder

Scientific Reports - Analytical and machine learning approaches identify a sea star steroid with promising activity for COVID-19 therapeutic development

Cell Death & Disease - SARS-CoV-2 delta and omicron variants alter trophoblast cell fusion and syncytiotrophoblast dynamics: new insights into placental vulnerability

npj Digital Medicine - Systematic review: digital biomarkers of fatigue in chronic diseases

People living in rural areas of the United States have poorer outcomes from acute COVID-19. Here, the authors show that higher mortality rates among rural dwellers persist for up to two years after the initial infection, even after accounting for baseline risk factors.

Polymerase template switching is an essential mechanism in coronaviruses (CoVs) that enables both sub-genomic (sg) RNA synthesis and increases genomic diversity via RNA recombination. Despite its impo...

Ensitrelvir is an antiviral drug that specifically targets the main protease (Mpro) of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been approved for the treatment of coronavirus d...

Mulholland et al. identify progenitor exhausted T cells, expressing intermediate levels of PD-1 (PD-1int), as a prominent source of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the murine atherosclerotic aorta and potential cellular targets driving checkpoint inhibition-elicited pro-atherosclerotic immune responses. They further demonstrate elevated levels of circulating PD-1-expressing T cells in individuals with subclinical cardiovascular disease.

Scientific Reports - COVID-19 vaccination lowers SARS-CoV-2 infection risk independent of diabetes, cancer and smoking in SHIP-COVID cohort, Northern Germany

BackgroundAlthough COVID-19 is primarily an acute disease, there are cases of persistent infection, primarily in immunocompromised patients. It is hypothesiz...

This Review explains how an improved understanding of immune and nervous system interactions in the central nervous system (CNS) has guided the use of immunotherapies (including chimeric antigen receptor T cells, oncolytic viruses, cancer vaccines and immune-checkpoint inhibitors) to treat CNS tumours. The authors highlight the outcomes of clinical trials that have used immunotherapy to treat primary brain cancers and provide a perspective on future directions for the field.

Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy - Lactylation of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is required for viral infection

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is of special concern to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), given their susceptibility to exacerbations caused by respiratory tract infect....

The widespread administration of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines has not eliminated breakthrough infections due to immune evasion by viral mutations. Whether i...

Introduction This study was undertaken in COVID-19 patients treated with and without Paxlovid™ (Paxlovid) in an outpatient setting to determine hospitalization from the community. Methods This retrospective secondary data observational cohort study was conducted between February and November 2022. All patients diagnosed by polymerase chain reaction for COVID-19 and at risk of COVID-19 disease progression were offered Paxlovid in the outpatient setting. Potential associations between Paxlovid use and likelihood of hospitalization, antibiotic use, and other clinical outcomes were explored using regression models as appropriate (i.e., logistic, multinomial, ordinal), adjusted for World Health Organization risk classification. Results Of 3011 COVID-19 patients offered Paxlovid, 2005 (67%) were treated with Paxlovid and 1006 (33%) chose not to take treatment. There was no evidence of a difference between groups in terms of vaccination status, viral load, age, or gender, although more patients of Arab ethnicity chose not to take treatment (p < 0.001). There were fewer hospital admissions in the group that took Paxlovid (p < 0.001). Some evidence of a reduction in the number of hospitalizations was found when adjusted for World Health Organization risk category (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.45–0.77), and a reduction was similarly found for the number of hospitalizations among patients with readmission (aOR 0.47, 95% CI 0.26–0.84). A reduction in the odds of antibiotic use was observed in the treated group for any cause (aOR 0.80, 95% CI 0.67–0.94) and specifically for COVID-19 (aOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.44–0.77). Conclusions Paxlovid treatment reduced hospitalization and antibiotic use, indicating its benefit in reducing severe outcomes and healthcare burden and supporting its use for reducing severe outcomes in COVID-19 patients. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier, NCT06291831.

Olfactory dysfunction (OD) is recognized as one of the major sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and previous studies have shown that smell loss in COVID-19 patients can persist for more than two years ...

Background While COVID-19 is more commonly known to present and persist in terms of respiratory symptoms, evidence for neurologic manifestations is limited. Objectives This study aims to provide an ep...

Persistent cognitive symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection have been widely reported, yet their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we applied an integrative framework—combi...

The US is in the midst of the second largest COVID-19 surge since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the CDC. During this surge, experts are predi

Structure-guided engineering of a trimeric ACE2 viral decoy reveals high affinity for spike protein, viral inhibition, and serum stability, offering a universal therapeutic strategy against SARS-CoV-2 variants and SARS-CoV-1 through symmetry-matched avidity.

npj Vaccines - Dysregulated inflammation in solid tumor malignancy patients shapes polyfunctional antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccination

Using data from the CoVPN 3008 study, the authors show that the neutralizing antibody correlate of risk holds in people living with HIV. However, the nAb correlate was weaker and shorter-lived in a vaccine-immunity versus hybrid-immunity population.

Scientific Reports - Comparing neutralizing antibody activity over time between naïve and convalesced COVID-19 vaccinated individuals

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), also known as COVID-19 disease has the ability to generate sequelae that extend for week…

The DECLARATION (safety and efficacy vs. placebo) and LIBERTY (exploratory safety head-to-head and combination with mRNA-based COVID vaccination) clinical trials are expected to begin around year-end ...