Latest healthcare news

How much of the World’s population is at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 disease? A study published by Andrew Clark and others in The Lancet tried to answer this question. The risk of severe COVID-19 disease is known to be higher in older individuals and those...

How does the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter the human body? Ludovico Cantuti-Castelvetri and others have identified a new possible pathway through which the SARS-CoV-2 enters into the central nervous system.  SARS-CoV-2 uses angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 as a host...

What is the dominant route for the spread of Covid-19? Zhang and others published a research article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS.  They analysed the trend and mitigation measures in three epicentres...

What is the Culprit in the COVID-19 Disease? The Lancet Infectious Disease Journal highlights a comment by Yi and others, which helps to identify a possible route for transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the human and its resultant effect.  The COVID-19...

Does high cholesterol lead to more severe COVID-19 infection? An abstract by Hao Wang & others revealed that when they loaded cells with cholesterol from blood serum using transport in apolipoprotein E this enhanced the endocytic entry of SARS-CoV-2.  High...

Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection: What is the next step after lockdown? An important challenge for returning to normality is the prevalence of asymptomatic infection and the question of whether such individuals could sustain community virus transmission.  Two...

Why have deaths from COVID-19 plateaued in Europe? Is this due to herd immunity? Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be in marked decline in many countries in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.  This follows unprecedented governmental interventions, which...

Physical distancing, face masks and eye protection, do they prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19? A review published in The Lancet by Derek Chu and others June 1, 2020. The authors aimed to investigate the effects of physical distance, face...

COVID-19 and Anti-inflammatories Initially, due to a French diplomat, it was suggested that anti-inflammatories such as Ibuprofen or Voltarol should not be taken by those patients who might be at risk of developing COVID-19 or being subject to coronavirus...

Blood Group and Severity of COVID-19  It has been found that having type A blood is linked to a 50% increase in the likelihood that a patient would need oxygen or have to go on a ventilator. This was from a pre-print and not peer reviewed article by Ellinghouse...

COVID-19 Vaccine Development, Where Are We? This is neatly discussed by Nelson Lean and Allison McGeer in a comment article in The Lancet dated May 28, 2020. Clearly, developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is a global priority. Researchers in China,...

Food insecurity.  Will this be the sting in the tail following the COVID-19 pandemic? An interesting editorial in The Lancet Global Health discusses the situation in poorer countries following COVID-19 infection.  UNICEF published a discussion documented on...

COVID-19 coagulopathy, the evolving story of the clotting disorders associated with COVID-19 COVID-19 has affected over 4 million people worldwide, spreading across the continents.  The substantial mortality in at-risk groups is noted and also the multiple...

COVID-19 Vaccines - Have we got the capacity to develop a vaccine at rapid speed? An interesting article by Nicole Lurie and others in the New England Journal of Medicine May 21, 2020 looks at the possibility of developing a COVID-19 vaccine at pandemic speed....

After COVID-19 is an Alternative Society Possible? This comes from an interesting editorial by Richard Horton published May 30 in The Lancet.  He asks how do we make sense of this pandemic?  He quotes the first interpretations from Slavoj Žižek a prolific...

Lockdown Easing - Is It Safer to Visit a Coffee Shop or a Gym? The New York times looked into this and using anonymised mobile phone location data from April 2019 they measured how crowded businesses get.  They found: Fast-food restaurants tended to be small and...

COVID-19 and a Sneeze How far can human sneeze droplets be ejected?  This was measured by Lydia Bourouiba and written in the New England Journal of Medicine in August 2016.  She videoed the human sneeze and measured the emission of a sneeze cloud produced by...

Vitamin D and COVID-19 As we are now just coming out of the lockdown and have been banished to our homes.  What might this lack of sunlight affect?  An article in The Lancet looked at whether being deficient in vitamin D resulted in a poorer outcome if...