Latest healthcare news

COVID-19 and the Heart Is it affected? This is looked at by Valentina Puntmann and others in the Journal of American Medical Association Cardiology published July 22, 2020. They pose the question “What are the cardiovascular effects in unselected patients with recent...

Does Hydroxychloroquine, as President Trump has indicated, actually improve outcome in mild to moderate COVID-19 disease? Finally, a trial which looks at treatment for COVID-19 in mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.  It was published in the New England Journal of...

Can Animals Catch SARS-CoV-2 and get COVID-19 Infection? An interesting article published by Patterson and others as a pre-print looked at 817 companion animals living in Northern Italy who were sampled at the same time there was frequent human infection....

Why does the SARS-CoV-2 virus seem to affect Black and South Asian Ethnic Groups more in the UK? An interesting correspondence by Marion Cook in The Lancet July 17 suggests that this could be related to sickle cell and thalassaemia. Sickle cell anaemia is an inherited...

COVID 19 in Children and How it Occurs or Does Not Occur in Families An interesting article published in Paediatrics by Klara, M. and others looked at the dynamics of family infection. It is known that children have been less affected than adults in terms of severity...

Diabetes and COVID-19 Disease; Why do Diabetics have Worse Outcomes? This is carefully looked at in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology by Matteo Apicella and others and they suggest that the reason for worse prognosis in people with diabetes is likely to be...

SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine An interesting update from Professor Justin Stebbing provids his own insight into the current vaccine progress.  Professor Stebbing feels that there is a 75% probability that there will be enough vaccine for the entire United States population...

Coronavirus Disease Exposure and Spread from Nightclubs An interesting article in the emerging infectious diseases Journal of the CDC showed that 246 cases of COVID-19 were linked to nightclubs in Seoul, South Korea.  During the April 30 to May 5 bank holiday,...

Diarrhoea as a Feature of COVID-19 Disease A study in China published as a letter in the BMJ suggests that the most common symptoms in patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 are fever and cough.  They suggested that the incidence of other clinical features was often...

What is the Actual Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in any population and country? An interesting study published in The Lancet by Marina Pollán, Beatriz Pérez-Gómez and others performed a nationwide population-based study to estimate the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2...

How to Boost your Immunity During This Pandemic A review article in the Scientific American looked at the myths and facts around immunity boosting.  They suggested that there were no revolutionary ideas. However, there are some evidence-based steps in order to...

The Fear of COVID-19 for Those Patients Living with Obesity This is reviewed by Le Brocq and others in The Lancet published July 9.  Data from France and The United Kingdom show a disproportionately high prevalence of obesity in patients with COVID-19 admitted to...

The Immune Responses and Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 involve both the cell-mediated immunity and antibody production and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control discussed the following. Cell-Mediated Immune Response T-cell...

A Few Statistics Comparing SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV and Influenza Pandemics An interesting personal view by Professor Eskild Petersen and others in The Lancet published July 3 has some interesting characteristics when comparing the four different viral...

SARS-CoV-2 Virus - where did it come from and where did it evolve? The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control discusses that a meta-analysis of different estimates of the time to the last common ancestor of the virus indicate that the pandemic started...

Can You Go Back to The Gym?  Should Gyms Be Re-Opened? An interesting pre-print by the TRAiN study group in Norway investigated SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission and COVID-19 disease attributable to training facilities. They randomised 18 to 64 years old with no...

SARS-CoV-2 Testing, How Frequent and How Specific? An interesting article from a group in Harvard tried to gauge the importance of test sensitivity and frequency, looking at viral spread in a large group of people.  They found that weekly surveillance testing,...

Face Masks, What Type Should You Wear? According to Scientific American, the Indiana Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering have developed a material which renders infectious particles harmless when passed by hands to the front of masks.  The team have...

COVID-19, Is There Going to be a Second Wave? An editorial by Richard Horton in The Lancet 27 June discusses the spectre of a second wave of COVID-19.  Some infectious disease specialists believe that SARS-CoV-2 might be losing virulence.  However, some are...

What are the Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Complications of COVID-19? These were evaluated in 153 patients within a UK-wide surveillance study by Varatharaj and others published in The Lancet Psychiatry June 25, 2020.  There is increased concern regarding...

Alcohol, COVID-19 and Lockdown Data from the Office for National Statistics has shown that sales in alcohol stores during March increased on a month-on-month volume by 31.4%. Alcohol consumption patterns also altered.  According to a survey by the charity Alcohol...

The antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with COVID19 An interesting article by Quan-Xin Long and others looked at the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in 285 patients with COVID-19.  They found that within 19 days following symptom onset, 100% of patients...

Who shows evidence of past SARS-CoV-2 infection? An interesting article by Silvia Stringhini and others published in The Lancet June 2020 assessed the burden of COVID-19 within a population of Geneva.  They found that children between the age of 5 and 9 and those...

Advance in Treatment as Confirmed by Boris Johnson for COVID-19 Infection Last Week Dexamethasone This is a cheap, accessible steroid which has been available for many years.  The real breakthrough was that the recovery trial undertaken by the University of...