Researchers are working on questions of immunity and how to deal with viral variants Roughly six months ago, on December 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the United States. What followed was a push to get that shot, developed by PfizerContinue Reading
The questions are urgent, and the funding is in place. But a highly anticipated, $130 million clinical trial, meant to test the efficacy of the novel messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for COVID-19 against a key variant of the pandemic coronavirus as well as in people living with HIV and pregnantContinue Reading
Researchers in Israel say they’ve found a possible link between the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and cases of heart inflammation in young men ages 16 to 30, according to a report submitted this week to the country’s Ministry of Health. The report concluded that around 1 in 5,000 men who receiveContinue Reading
Human and mosquito cell nuclei have their own shapes, and researchers can mold one to look like the other. The differences between human DNA and mosquito DNA aren’t limited to the arrangement of letters in the genetic code. If you were to slice open a human cell and a mosquitoContinue Reading
Add eczema and itch to the list of health hazards from wildfire smoke. A burnt orange sky greeted San Francisco’s early risers for several days in November 2018. The California city’s residents usually enjoy good air quality. For nearly two weeks in a row, however, the air quality rangedContinue Reading
A man in China caught the first case of H10N3 bird flu ever reported in a human, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced Tuesday (June 1). The H10N3 strain of avian influenza normally causes mild disease in birds, and until now, no cases of the viral infection had been reportedContinue Reading
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can infect insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, reducing their ability to secrete insulin and sometimes causing cell death, a new study suggests. Damaging these insulin-producing cells, known as beta cells, can potentially worsen symptoms of diabetes, particularly type 1 diabetes, wherein the pancreas already makesContinue Reading
In patients with type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. In a small, early study, a vaccine for type 1 diabetes helped preserve the body’s natural production of insulin, at least in a subset of newly diagnosed patients. In patientsContinue Reading
The influenza virus that caused the 1918 pandemic mutated into variants, much like the novel coronavirus has done in the current pandemic, century-old virus samples reveal. The discovery could help explain why later waves of the 1918 flu pandemic were worse than the first. And while the results aren’t directlyContinue Reading
Testosterone levels may be linked to severity of COVID-19 disease. Men with low testosterone levels may be more likely to have severe COVID-19, a small new study suggests. Previous analyses found that men tend to develop more severe COVID-19 compared with women, but it wasn’t clear why. On average, menContinue Reading
