A new study conducted by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in the risk of dyslipidemia, a condition characterized by abnormal lipid levels in the blood. The research, which analyzed data from more than 200,000 adults, found…

UK Biobank data has revealed that COVID-19 infection can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from any cause for at least up to three years. This trend was seen in people already diagnosed with and those without previously detected cardiovascular disease. Further, the risk of heart attack…

A trial comparing the self-replicating mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, developed by U.S. biotech Arcturus Therapeutics in collaboration with CSL, with BioNTech/Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine shows it is able to elicit better immune responses 12 months after vaccination than the approved mRNA vaccine. The self-amplifying technology developed by Arcturus allows quick and long-lasting…

Patients show substantial cognitive decline 12–18 months after hospitalization for COVID-19, a new year-long study of over 350 patients finds. The rate of decline, the researchers report, is comparable to 20 years of aging. Further, MRI scans and blood tests showed these patients had brain injury markers and reduced brain…

People with obesity have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2, according to a new study led by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. They used electronic medical record data on over 70,000 patients from their own hospital system.  Obesity is known to predict worse outcomes and…

A new study by researchers from the Gladstone Institutes and collaborators shows that the blood coagulation protein fibrin is the culprit that causes the unusual clotting and inflammation that are the primary symptoms of COVID-19. The discovery upends the prevailing view that blood clotting is a consequence of the inflammation…

A new nasal COVID-19 vaccine is ready for clinical trials, said K. Anand Kumar, managing director of Indian Immunologicals and one of the co-authors of a new report on the vaccine. Called CDO-7N-1, it “induces robust mucosal and systemic neutralizing antibody and T-cell subset responses, in mice, hamsters, and macaques…

A new study reveals higher incidence of mental illness for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people. Vaccination appeared to strongly mitigate mental illness. For example, the incidence of depression among the unvaccinated after hospitalization for COVID-19 was up to 16.3 times higher. This elevation in mental…

By reanalyzing the AncestryDNA COVID-19 study, researchers have found that many genetic risk factors for COVID-19 and influenza do not overlap. The study found that risk factors for each of these respiratory illnesses do share a common feature—they are linked to cell surface proteins that may be required for viral…

New types of lung cells that can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 have been identified by scientists at the Sanford Burnham Prebys, the University of California San Diego, and their international collaborators. These cells include some without known viral receptors. Their work could not only lead to new discoveries about COVID-19…

Research led by Helmholtz Munich in Germany showed COVID-19 infection in high-risk young people almost doubled the rate of progression to type 1 diabetes during the pandemic compared with those who were not infected with the virus. The pandemic showed that COVID-19 increased the risk of diabetes. A systemic review…

People resistant to COVID-19 have “never-seen-before” immune responses and possibly high levels of HLA-DQA2. These findings come from researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University College London (UCL), Imperial College London, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and their collaborators who used data from a unique “challenge study.” Severe acute respiratory syndrome…

The results of two back-to-back randomized double-blind placebo controlled trials has shown that a 100-year-old vaccine originally developed to prevent tuberculosis helps protect people with type 1 diabetes from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The research by investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) found that the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)…

There’s new evidence the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines don’t provide much mucosal immunity, according to a team of French researchers. In a study that included more than 400 patients, there was some mucosal immunity provided by these vaccines, but previously infected people had a greater response. This suggests that new approaches,…

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can damage the heart in patients with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) without directly infecting heart tissue, a new study has found. These findings suggest it is systemic inflammation that causes this damage.  “The research also suggests that suppressing the inflammation through treatments might…