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Tag: research

Topic: researchView all posts for the topic: research

COVID ages women’s blood vessels, according to a study

Published October 2, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Radio-Canada
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By Marie-Pier Mercier

COVID-19 causes women’s blood vessels to age prematurely, according to an international study involving two researchers from Université Laval. The disease should therefore be considered an additional risk factor in cardiovascular health analyses. Specifically, in those who have developed severe symptoms, they warn.

The aging of blood vessels results in greater rigidity, which can increase the risk of certain cardiovascular diseases.

“The heart must work a little harder to propel blood through the arterial system, and this causes variations in pressure that can damage sensitive organs, including the brain and kidneys,” explains Catherine Fortier, a kinesiologist and researcher in vascular aging at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Uncovering the Molecular Basis of Long COVID Brain Fog

Published October 1, 2025

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Published by: Yokohama City University
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Researchers use a specialized brain imaging technique to identify a potential biomarker and therapeutic target of Long COVID

Long COVID is a chronic condition that causes cognitive problems known as “brain fog,” but its biological mechanisms remain largely unclear. Now, researchers from Japan used a novel imaging technique to visualize AMPA receptors—key molecules for memory and learning—in the living brain. They discovered that higher AMPA receptor density in patients with Long COVID was closely tied to the severity of their symptoms, highlighting these molecules as potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Long Covid Risk for Children Doubles After a Second Infection, Study Finds

Published September 30, 2025

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Published by: The New York Times
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By Pam Belluck

Children and teenagers are twice as likely to develop long Covid after a second coronavirus infection as after an initial infection, a large new study has found.

The study, of nearly a half-million people under 21, published Tuesday in Lancet Infectious Diseases, provides evidence that Covid reinfections can increase the risk of long-term health consequences and contradicts the idea that being infected a second time might lead to a milder outcome, medical experts said.

Dr. Laura Malone, director of the Pediatric Post-Covid-19 Rehabilitation Clinic at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study, said the findings echo the experience of patients in her clinic.

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

COVID vaccines may have averted thousands of hospital stays in infants, pregnant women over 18 months

Published September 30, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CIDRAP
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By Mary Van Beusekom

A US modeling study published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics estimates that vaccinating pregnant women against COVID-19 prevented 7,000 hospitalizations in infants and 3,000 in pregnant women from January 2024 to May 2025.

The Stanford University–led research team analyzed COVID-NET surveillance data on COVID-19 hospitalization rates in infants younger than 6 months and incidence data on pregnant women aged 18 to 49 years under a relative risk of 2.65. The aim was to estimate the health impact of vaccination during pregnancy, mainly during the second or third trimester.

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Topic: researchView all posts for the topic: research

Kids with COVID had a 50% to 60% higher risk of depression, anxiety in 2021, researchers say

Published September 10, 2025

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Published by: CIDRAP
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By Mary Van Beusekom

Relative to uninfected children, COVID-19 patients aged 8 to 17 years were at a 49% higher risk for new-onset depression or anxiety in 2021, rising to 59% in those with severe illness, according to a University of Utah study published this week in PLOS One.

The researchers mined the Utah All Payers Claims Database to explore the link between COVID-19 infection, illness severity, and risk of depression and anxiety among 154,565 school-aged youth who had private insurance or Medicaid coverage. The average participant age was 10.8 years in 2019, when the study period began, and 48% were girls.

Key contributors to mental illness among children include the pandemic’s direct impacts on daily life, such as school closures, isolation from peers, and disrupted family routines, the authors noted.

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Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Smoke from Canada’s wildfires killed nine-year-old Carter Vigh – and 82,000 others around the world

Published September 10, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Guardian
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By Ajit Niranjan

Amber Vigh had taken the usual precautions when bringing her nine-year-old son, Carter, to summer camp in July 2023. There were no fires near their home in British Columbia, Canada. Her air quality app showed low levels of pollution. She could not smell any smoke.

Carter, a music-loving Lego enthusiast who had asthma, brought along his smiling shark tooth-patterned emergency kit that held an inhaler, allergy pill and EpiPen. When smoke did roll in from the north, Vigh took him indoors.

But at home that evening, Carter began to cough uncontrollably. Vigh and her husband, James, followed the doctors’ checklist – emergency inhaler, drink of water, steroid inhaler – and gave him a bath to cool down. Then, “all of a sudden, he started coughing again like crazy”, said Vigh.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Six Nobel laureates speak out against Trump: ‘The closest analogy is with the Hitler regime’

Published September 7, 2025

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Published by: El País
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By Nuño Domínguez

In recent weeks, EL PAÍS contacted most of the Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine from the United States over the past 20 years with a questionnaire about Donald Trump’s policies on science, research, and health. The vast majority are established researchers — some even retired — who should not fear retaliation; but only a handful of them agreed to respond.

“Why am I sad?” writes Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “We came to the U.S. when I was 11. Even as my parents could not work making full use of their training and talents, the country gave their child, me (and my sister, born here), a chance to get an education and to do wonderful research with talented coworkers from all over the world. If the Trump policies are carried through, the full flow of what I experienced will be very unlikely in the generation of my scientific grandchildren.”

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Topic: researchView all posts for the topic: research

Antihistamine nasal spray prevents COVID-19, study finds

Published September 3, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CIDRAP
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By Stephanie Soucheray

Results from a single-center randomized controlled trial published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine show that azelastine, an antihistamine nasal spray used as a preventive measure, was associated with a 69% reduction of COVID-19 infection.

Azelastine is a widely available over-the-counter treatment for seasonal allergies (hay fever).

“This clinical trial is the first to demonstrate a protective effect in a real-world setting,” said Robert Bals, MD, PhD, a professor at Saarland University in Germany and senior author of the study, in a university press release.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Kennedy Sought to Fire C.D.C. Director Over Vaccine Policy

Published August 28, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The New York Times
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By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Apoorva Mandavilli, Christina Jewett

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. summoned Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to his office in Washington earlier this week to deliver an ultimatum.

She needed to fire career agency officials and commit to backing his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines — or risk being fired herself, according to people familiar with the events.

Dr. Monarez’s refusal to do so led to an extraordinary standoff on Thursday that paralyzed the nation’s health agency, which is still reeling from mass layoffs and a shooting this month that killed a police officer and terrified employees.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

CDC director fired after she ‘refused to rubber-stamp’ Kennedy’s vaccine directives

Published August 28, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CIDRAP
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By Stephanie Soucheray

Susan Monarez, PhD, was fired late yesterday as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after clashing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.

The White House fired her after Monarez refused to resign, and the action kicked off a mass resignation wave of three of the CDC’s top officials: Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Earlier this week Jennifer Layden, MD, PhD, who led the Office of Public Health Data, also stepped down.

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Topic: climate crisisView all posts for the topic: climate crisis

Wildfires are reversing Canada’s progress on improving air quality

Published August 28, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CBC News
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By Nicole Mortillaro

It’s hard not to forget the 2023 Canadian wildfire season, when more than 16 million hectares of forest were lost, thousands were displaced and smoke suffocated cities across both Canada and the U.S.

And it turns out Canada experienced its worst air pollution levels that year since 1998, according to a new report released today by the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI). At the same time, the report found that pollution levels didn’t change much for the rest of the world in 2023.

If those levels continued for a person’s lifetime, the average Canadian would lose roughly two years of their life expectancy, according to the report.

Efforts have been made around the world, including in Canada, to curb harmful emissions of fine particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, also known as PM 2.5. But wildfires are reversing those advances — with serious health consequences.

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Topic: wildfiresView all posts for the topic: wildfires

Wildfire smoke far more dangerous to health than thought, say scientists

Published August 19, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Guardian
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By Ajit Niranjan

Choking smoke spewed by wildfires is far more dangerous than previously thought, a new study has found, with death tolls from short-term exposure to fine particulates underestimated by 93%.

Researchers found that 535 people in Europe died on average each year between 2004 and 2022 as a result of breathing in the tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 that are released when wildfires rage.

Under standard methods, which assume PM2.5 from wildfires is as deadly as from other sources, such as traffic, they would have expected just 38 deaths a year.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Do you have long COVID? Here’s how to tell, and what we know about the condition so far

Published August 16, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Toronto Star
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By Kevin Jiang

It has been more than five years since the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet innumerable Canadians are still living with the consequences months or even years after their initial infection.

Much remains unknown about long COVID, or Post COVID Condition (PCC), despite the ailment affecting millions of Canadians and leaving thousands out of work. But as research continues to develop, scientists have gleaned some pieces of the puzzle.

Here’s what we know so far about what long COVID is, why it happens and how to tell if you have it.

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Topic: kakistocracyView all posts for the topic: kakistocracy

‘Distracting the public’: group of health professionals call for RFK Jr to be removed

Published August 13, 2025

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Published by: The Guardian
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By Melody Schreiber

A grassroots organization of health professionals have released a report outlining major health challenges in the US and calling for the removal of Robert F Kennedy Jr from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The report from Defend Public Health, a new organization of about 3,000 health professionals and allies, is an attempt to get ahead of misinformation and lack of information from health officials.

In an effort to keep making progress in public health, Defend Public Health’s report was slated to coincide with that of the anticipated second US report to “make America healthy again” (Maha). The first Maha report was released in May, and a second report was expected this week – but amid turmoil at the health agencies, it has reportedly been delayed for several weeks.

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Topic: researchView all posts for the topic: research

Lab-made sugar-coated particle blocks Covid-19 infection — Possible new treatment on the horizon

Published August 11, 2025

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Published by: Swansea University
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Groundbreaking research led by a Swansea University academic has revealed a synthetic glycosystem — a sugar-coated polymer nanoparticle — that can block Covid-19 from infecting human cells, reducing infection rates by nearly 99%.

The glycosystem is a specially designed particle that mimics natural sugars found on human cells. These sugars, known as polysialosides, are made of repeating units of sialic acid — structures that viruses often target to begin infection. By copying this structure, the synthetic molecule acts as a decoy, binding to the virus’s spike protein and preventing it from attaching to real cells.

Unlike vaccines, which trigger immune responses, this molecule acts as a physical shield, offering a novel approach to infection prevention.

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Topic: pro-virus policiesView all posts for the topic: pro-virus policies

HHS scraps further work on life-saving mRNA vaccine platform

Published August 6, 2025

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Published by: CIDRAP
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By Mary Van Beusekom

In what experts say will hobble pandemic preparedness, US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday announced the dismantling of the country’s mRNA vaccine-development programs—the same innovation that allowed rapid scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines during the public health emergency.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine-development contracts totaling just under $500 million, including an award to Moderna/University of Texas Medical Branch for a vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu now sweeping the world. That grant was terminated in late May.

Contracts awarded to Emory University and Tiba Biotech were cancelled, and agreements with Luminary Labs, ModeX, and Seqirus have been scaled back.

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Topic: wildfiresView all posts for the topic: wildfires

What’s all this wildfire smoke doing to your health? Here’s what experts have to say

Published August 6, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CBC News
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By Heather Kitching

People who breathe air polluted with large amounts of wildfire smoke visit hospital emergency rooms more often for respiratory symptoms, according to a Canadian emergency room physician and chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

Rates of heart attack and cardiac arrest also increase after a couple of days of exposure, Dr. Courtney Howard said.

“So don’t just attribute that feeling of heaviness in your chest to asthma,” said Howard, who works in Yellowknife and is president of the Northwest Territories Medical Association.

“If you have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease especially, go see your friendly local emergency department.”

Continue readingWhat’s all this wildfire smoke doing to your health? Here’s what experts have to say
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