Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Latest Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Study suggests mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines remain effective against variants

A study reports that many VOCs are associated with impaired reduction in their susceptibility to neutralization by COVID-19 vaccines.

27 Jul 2021

Study reveals disparities in heart failure diagnosis within clinical practices

Many heart failure diagnoses may be missed in a primary care setting. Women, Black adults and individuals with lower net worth are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with heart failure in an acute care setting such as the emergency room or during a hospitalization, even if they reported symptoms of heart failure during a routine, outpatient health care appointment during the previous six months, according to new research published today in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.

27 Jul 2021

Increasing your risk of IBD through processed food

In this interview, News-Medical speaks to Dr. Neeraj Narula about ultra-processed food and how this can increase your risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease(IBD).

27 Jul 2021

How a doctor breaks norms to treat refugees and recent immigrants

Fatumo Osman, a 65-year-old Somali refugee who speaks limited English, was in a bind. She made too much money at a meal prep service job so she no longer qualified for Medicaid.

27 Jul 2021

CDC study on efficacy of mRNA vaccines against symptomatic COVID-19

A new study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server derives measures of substantial efficacy for these vaccines in preventing mild to moderate COVID-19 from a group of outpatients with and without a history of vaccination.

26 Jul 2021

More popular type of antihypertensive drugs causes slightly more side effects

Two types of drugs that are recommended as a first treatment for patients with high blood pressure were found equally effective in improving cardiovascular outcomes, but the more popular type causes slightly more side effects, finds a multinational observational study led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

26 Jul 2021

Two types of blood pressure drugs provide equal benefits, but side effects differ

People who are just beginning treatment for high blood pressure can benefit equally from two different classes of medicine - angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) - yet ARBs may be less likely to cause medication side effects, according to an analysis of real-world data published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

26 Jul 2021

Rosin soap as a potential SARS-CoV-2 disinfectant

In a research paper recently uploaded to the preprint server bioRxiv* by Bell et al. (July 19th, 2021), the potential of rosin soap as a virucide is investigated, finding a ten-thousand-fold drop in infectivity against enveloped viruses such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2 in particular.

26 Jul 2021

Novel atlas charts how different antibodies attack a major piece of SARS-CoV-2 machinery

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve, immunologists and infectious diseases experts are eager to know whether new variants are resistant to the human antibodies that recognized initial versions of the virus.

26 Jul 2021

CoVizu: Making visual sense of variation in SARS-CoV-2 genomes

A new study proposes a solution to this problem in the form of a new method that can both evaluate and visually represent high numbers of SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

25 Jul 2021

Researchers identify four themes as key contributors to diseases of despair in Pennsylvania

Financial instability, lack of infrastructure, a deteriorating sense of community and family fragmentation are key contributors to diseases of despair in Pennsylvania communities, according to Penn State College of Medicine and Highmark Health researchers.

23 Jul 2021

Global economic recovery at risk due to COVID-19 vaccine inequity

New Global Dashboard on COVID-19 Vaccine Equity finds low-income countries would add $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had the same vaccination rate as high-income countries. Global economic recovery at risk if vaccines are not equitably manufactured, scaled up and distributed.

23 Jul 2021

Advantages and challenges of intranasal vaccines to fight against COVID-19 infections

There are many reasons that an intranasal vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be helpful in the fight against COVID-19 infections, University of Alabama at Birmingham immunologists Fran Lund, Ph.D., and Troy Randall, Ph.D., write in a viewpoint article in the journal Science.

23 Jul 2021

Clinical trials during a pandemic – lessons from COVID-19

In this interview, Dr. Benedicte Roquebert, Dr. Stephanie Haim-Boukobza and Dr. Souad Mehlal discuss how COVID-19 has resulted in new ways to think about clinical trials during a pandemic.

From Cerba Research 23 Jul 2021

Can prior human seasonal coronavirus antibody response patterns predict SARS-CoV-2 inhibition?

A new study, recently released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, reports the intriguing finding that the cross-neutralizing antibodies elicited by human seasonal coronaviruses (sCoVs) show varying ability to prevent binding between the SARS-CoV-2 spike antigen and its cognate receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).

22 Jul 2021

New blood test could help predict the severity of COVID-19 symptoms

During the height of the pandemic, some hospitals were overwhelmed with patients seeking treatment for COVID-19.

22 Jul 2021

Wildfire smoke drives people in low-vaccinated areas indoors, raising outbreak fears

Missoula's new downtown library was teeming with people who might typically spend a Saturday afternoon hiking, biking or otherwise making the most of Montana's abundant outdoor recreation. One look at the soupy haze blanketing the city and it was clear why.

22 Jul 2021

A chilling cure: Facing killer heat, ERs use body bags to save lives

As a deadly heat wave scorched the Pacific Northwest last month, overwhelming hospital emergency rooms in a region unaccustomed to triple-digit temperatures, doctors resorted to a grim but practical tool to save lives: human body bags filled with ice and water.

22 Jul 2021

SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance identifies intricacies of stabilizing vs. destabilizing mutations

Some of these variants, known as variants of concern (VoC), have a much higher rate of transmission and increased mortality than the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. Therefore, it is imperative to assess the efficacy of the available vaccines against the circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains. In addition, tracking the continuously evolving genetic variants is also vital to prevent future outbreaks.

22 Jul 2021