As the COVID-19 pandemic moves into its third year, new treatment options to combat the coronavirus disease are being authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In December, 2021, the FDA issued emergency use authorization (EUA) for two oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19, Molnupiravir and Paxlovid.(1,2)This comes at a crucial time in the pandemic…
How dangerous are the BA.2 and BA.3 sub-variants compared to the Omicron BA.1 that we already know? South Africa has one of the most robust public health systems in the world, carefully monitoring their SARS-CoV-2 case load, which has been dominated these last few months by the Delta variant. In recent months, however, South Africa’s case…
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Are More Variants Coming?” »
Probiotics found to assist in restoring normal immune function… COVID-19 disrupts normal bowel flora SARS-CoV-2 infection induces an aggressive inflammatory response which is strongly implicated in the cause of multi-organ dysfunction in some patients.(3) As a result, disease severity is likely caused not only by viral infection, but also an extreme host immune reaction. Patients…
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Is a New and Better Vaccine Coming Soon? A new player in the field of COVID vaccines could be arriving soon. The trials so far are encouraging for both safety and efficacy. It even has some advantages over the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines that have become so familiar to us. Novavax, headquartered in Maryland,…
Is there a correlation between the end of mask mandates and the rise in cases of the common cold and influenza? The start of the summer is aligning with another new beginning, one in which many around the world make a return to the “New Normal” and relearn what life was like before COVID-19. While…
Although of great concern, vaccination will help When will the pandemic end? How many more COVID-19 waves will the U.S. go through? Will we go back to “normal” in the fall? All these questions depend largely on one factor: the epidemiology of the variants. As the virus spreads around the world, variant strains have emerged….
How far do we have to go to reach herd immunity? First of all we must know that herd immunity is defined as a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, either through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection…
Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of molecules for large-scale manufacturing purposes. It is a broad field of science, which combines chemistry, physics, energy storage, microfabrication, and molecular engineering. Recently, it has been popularized by its role in nanomedicine for the COVID-19 vaccine. (1) Currently, with the introduction of mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, the importance of…
Could this explain why some are more susceptible to COVID-19? The SARS-CoV-2 virus gains entry to the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract by way of the ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor. This is the protein to which the viral spike proteins attach in order to gain entry into the cell. If we knew more…
Information on messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines is frequently in the news due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, since mRNA technology is used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Long before the start of the pandemic, however, researchers have been trying to use this technology to treat cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third leading…
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