UC San Diego researchers describe why SARS-CoV-2 subvariants spread more rapidly than the original virus strain, and how an early treatment might have made people more susceptible to future infections.
Below is a brief roundup of news and story ideas from the experts at UCLA Health. For more information on these stories or for help on other stories, please contact us at [email protected].
A UCLA-led team has developed an inexpensive, universal oral COVID-19 vaccine that prevented severe respiratory illness and weight loss when tested in hamsters, which are naturally susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. It proved as effective as vaccines administered by injection or intranasally in the research. If ultimately approved for human use, it could be a weapon against all COVID-19 variants and boost uptake, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and among those with an aversion to needles.
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Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridioides difficile, Candida auris, Drug-resistant Shigella. These bacteria not only have difficult names to pronounce, but they are also difficult to fight off. These bacteria may infect humans and animals, and the infections they cause are harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat.
New research from Leela Nageswaran, assistant professor of operations management in the University of Washington Foster School of Business, considers whether individuals should be able to select their vaccine type.
A Kaiser Permanente study confirms the benefit of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir, also known as Paxlovid, as an early-stage treatment to prevent hospitalization for people with mild to moderate COVID-19, regardless of prior immunity or age. The study was published March 15, 2023, in Lancet ID.
Research is shedding light on why ‘breakthrough’ Omicron infections occur in vaccinated individuals and suggests those who are both vaccinated and experienced previous infection have better protection against getting sick again.
A group of researchers have used the Advanced Photon Source to look at monoclonal antibodies to subvert the “shield” of the Lassa virus, potentially paving the way for new therapies.
Trust in information given out by the government on cancer fell sharply among the Black population, by almost half, during the COVID-19 pandemic findings of a national US study have shown.
It's sleep awareness week, according to the National Sleep Foundation. It’s important to understand how sleep deprivation can impact your health. Most people recognize that if they don’t get enough sleep, their mood and memory will suffer the next day.
A new software tool developed by Texas Biomedical Research Institute and collaborators can help scientists and vaccine developers quickly edit genetic blueprints of pathogens to make them less harmful. The tool, called CoDe – short for Codon Deoptimization – enables users to make precise edits to a genetic code to make genes less functional – in other words, to deoptimize the genes.
In reviewing data from previous studies, a team lead by researchers at the University of Chicago and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) found that individuals who had fewer than six hours of sleep per night in the days surrounding vaccination had a blunted antibody response. That indicates efforts to promote heathy sleep duration ahead of an immunization could be an easy way to improve vaccine effectiveness.
Reducing the methylation of a key messenger RNA can promote migration of macrophages into the brain and ameliorate symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model, according to a new study publishing March 7th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Rui Zhang of Air Force Medical University in Xian, Shaanxi, China. The results illuminate one pathway for entrance of peripheral immune cells into the brain, and may provide a new target for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
To evaluate best strategies for increasing vaccination rates, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, collaborated with Danish researchers to develop and implement a nationwide trial in Denmark testing nine different electronic messaging tactics among adults over age 65.
A clinical trial testing a freeze-dried, temperature-stable experimental tuberculosis (TB) vaccine in healthy adults found that it was safe and stimulated both antibodies and responses from the cellular arm of the immune system.
The recent public health emergency declarations in New York and London due to polio infections and detection of the virus in these cities’ wastewater strongly indicate that polio is no longer close to being eradicated. Now, four members of the Global Virus Network (GVN) proposed changes in global polio eradication strategy to get the world back on track to one day eliminating polio’s threat.
The recent public health emergency declarations in New York and London due to polio infections and detection of the virus in these cities’ wastewater strongly indicate that polio is no longer close to being eradicated.
Public and private sector health officials and public policymakers should team up immediately with community leaders to more effectively disseminate accurate narratives regarding the life-saving benefits of vaccines to counter widespread, harmful misinformation from anti-vaccine activists in the United States.
Public and private sector health officials and public policymakers should team up immediately with community leaders to more effectively disseminate accurate narratives regarding the life-saving benefits of vaccines to counter widespread, harmful misinformation from anti-vaccine activists.
What promoted citizens to favour a fair distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic? This is the focus topic in the current study of Konstanz researchers, political scientists Dirk Leuffen, Pascal Mounchid and Max Heermann as well as sociologist Sebastian Koos, published in npj Vaccines.
After more than two years since its discovery, six million deaths, and half a billion reported cases, there is still no effective cure for COVID-19. Even though vaccines have lowered the impact of outbreaks, patients that contract the disease can only receive supportive care while they wait for their own body to clear the infection.
A new Australian study led by SAHMRI and Flinders University has uncovered fundamental differences in how the AstraZeneca and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines impact the immune system.
For parents, the decision to vaccinate their kids against SARS-CoV-2 is complex, influenced by scientific evidence, political and social pressures, and views about individual versus collective benefits of vaccination.
A new study has found that people with a university degree were less likely to believe in COVID-19 misinformation and more likely to trust preventive measures than those without a degree.
Analyzing the most extensive datasets in the U.S., researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have revealed that vaccination against COVID-19 is associated with fewer heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular issues among people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The research letter, “Impact of Vaccination on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients with COVID-19 Infection,” was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on February 20. The research will also be presented on March 5, 2023 in a poster session in New Orleans, LA, at the American College of Cardiology’s 72nd Annual Scientific Session Together With World Heart Federation’s World Congress of Cardiology.
Although the public had been alerted that this winter could be a potentially bad flu season, barely half of Americans said in January that they had received a flu shot, a vaccination level unchanged in a representative national panel from the comparable period last year.
Largest review and meta-analysis assessing the extent of protection following COVID-19 infection by variant and how durable that protection is against different variants, including 65 studies from 19 countries.
In an article published in Frontiers in Public Health, researchers Carlos Alós-Ferrer of the Center for Neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich and Jaume García-Segarra and Miguel Ginés Vilar of the Department of Economics at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló have questioned the distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 and propose an algorithm to satisfy the properties that experts in medical ethics consider fundamental.
This study shows vaccination against COVID-19 is an essential strategy to improve outcomes in this high-risk population. The results support guidelines that patients with cancer should receive at least 3 COVID-19 vaccine doses.
A biomedical researcher at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, part of Main Line Health, has created a groundbreaking resource for scientists seeking to develop new and better vaccines in the fight against COVID-19.
People afflicted with autoimmune diseases may someday receive help through treatments now under development by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) licensee and its’ collaborations with two major pharmaceutical companies.
When designing strategies to create lasting impact in a particular community, there is no better resource than the strength and intelligence of the community members themselves, and in this case, girls and women. Using crowdsourcing as a framework, a Saint Louis University researcher aims to increase HPV vaccination and HPV screening to lower incidents of cervical cancer among girls and women in Nigeria.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $3.8 million to Texas Biomedical Research Institute to further develop a promising HIV vaccine candidate that stops the virus upon entry, before it begins rapidly spreading throughout the body.
Investigators in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai have confirmed that people who have had COVID-19 have an increased risk for new-onset diabetes—the most significant contributor to cardiovascular disease.
COVID-19 vaccines did not cause an increased risk of adverse events such as heart attack, stroke, cardiac arrest, myocarditis, pericarditis, and deep vein thrombosis.
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Researchers tested lambda’s effectiveness using a randomized placebo-controlled trial involving adults with COVID-19 from both Canada and Brazil, who freely volunteered for the study. A total of 931 people received lambda and 1,018 received a placebo. Eighty-three per cent of the trial participants were vaccinated. Researchers ran the lambda trial from June 2021 to March 2022.
A single-dose of the antiviral drug peginterferon lambda reduced by half the risk of hospitalization or a visit to the Emergency Department due to COVID-19, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Cleveland Clinic researchers have launched the next step in their novel study of a vaccine aimed at preventing triple-negative breast cancer, the most aggressive and lethal form of the disease.
An analysis led by Brown University researchers showed that work shift is an important factor to consider when designing workplace health interventions.
People who know someone who became ill with COVID-19 or died from the disease are twice as likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a study led by Rutgers and Penn State University.
Few studies have evaluated the waning of vaccine effectiveness against severe outcomes caused by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection. Hong Kong is providing inactivated and mRNA vaccines, but the population had limited protection from natural infections before the Omicron variant emerged.
Breakthrough COVID-19 infections after vaccination occurred in 7.5% of Texans surveyed and higher odds were associated with Hispanic ethnicity, larger household size, rural versus urban living, type of vaccination, and multiple comorbidities, according to findings from UTHealth Houston School of Public Health published today in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Pia Pannaraj, MD, MPH, an infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, was awarded $4.2 million from the National Institutes of Health to study COVID-19 immunity in children.