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 as new variants emerge and COVID-19...

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...

In the United States, Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhea, affecting 1.5 million U.S. residents every year.(1) Approximately 30% of Campylobacter strains have decreased susceptibility to fluoroquinolones (e.g., ciprofloxacin) or macrolides (e.g., azithromycin), the antibiotics commonly used to treat infections, which poses a serious threat to public health.(2)
In August...

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...

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...

Many states are relaxing restrictions amid both vaccination efforts and slowly decreasing case numbers, however, scientists warn that this pandemic is far from over. Researchers are working to gather more information about the SARS CoV-2 and its variants while the virus continues to mutate.

So, what are variants?...

A novel test for T cells show great promise in detecting immune status

Antibodies often steal the spotlight when talking about immunity, but they are not the only protagonist in the immune system.

T cells are specialized defenders activated in the adaptive...

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pandemic on March 11, 2020. ¹ Since then—at the time of writing—63,098,003 cases and 1,465,111 deaths have been reported from 191 afflicted countries/regions across the globe. ² Along with its high transmissibility and...

As the number of global coronavirus cases continues to increase beyond 20 million, there is an urgent need for treatment for those infected with SARS CoV2. Internationally, biotech companies are working feverishly towards developing a vaccine to reduce infection rates. However, it is still unclear when a final product will be released and to what degree of immunity will be achieved. Until a permanent...

Below are quotes from numerous studies showing that Vitamin D can be useful in the battle against COVID-19 infections.

"Several groups of researchers from different countries have found that the sickest patients often have the lowest levels of vitamin D, and that countries with higher death rates had larger numbers of people...

One of the deadliest species known to man is Aedes aegypti, also known as the Yellow Fever mosquito. This species of mosquito is capable of carrying and spreading diseases such as chikungunya, zika, yellow fever, and dengue fever to more than half of the world's population. These diseases are the cause for millions of deaths every year and have increased substantially in the last 30 years.(1)...

Candida auris was first described in 2009 and was first reported in the United States in 2016.(1)  It is a member of a growing group of yeasts that can cause candidiasis, yeast infections that are normally of little consequence, and treatable through a number of anti-fungal...

COPAN announces a kit that pairs 3mL of UTM® universal viral transport medium and two FLOQSwabs™: one minitip and one regular flocked swab.

MURRIETA, Calif., Jan. 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On January 30...

For the medical community 2020 has arrived with a sinister start. In the midst of Flu season, a new and far more ominous virus has emerged, gripping the world’s attention. We are of course talking about the recent outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, China with multinational reports emerging. The virus, a “cousin” of the SARS virus that struck in 2003 that caused nearly 8,100 cases, and resulted in 77...

Chronic Wasting
Disease (CWD), is a fatal prion infection affecting free-ranging and captive
cervid herds. Cervids are hooved ruminant mammals that include deer, caribou,
elk, and moose. 

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