Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: research

COVID-19 boosters help avoid breakthrough infections in immunocompromised people, McGill-led study finds

Researchers focused on those with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and other immune-mediated inflammatory diseases

New research findings provide solid evidence that annual COVID-19 vaccine booster doses continue to be advisable for certain immunocompromised people, researchers at McGill University say.

The researchers looked at how often people with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) got COVID-19 despite having received at least three doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. IMIDs – including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis – affect more than seven million Canadians. The medications they take often weaken their vaccine responses, increasing their vulnerability to infection.

Comments closed

‘Something was wrong with my brain’: How covid leaves its mark on cognition

In March 2020, Hannah Davis fell ill, and everything changed. Her respiratory symptoms were mild, but the neurological and cognitive fallout was frightening.

“I could tell very early on that something was wrong with my brain,” she said after getting sick with covid-19.

And Davis had quantitative proof — her score for processing speed on a cognitive test dropped from the 96th percentile right before the pandemic to the 14th percentile after her coronavirus infection.

Comments closed

Measles ‘inevitable’ in Ottawa, expert warns as Ontario outbreak spreads

Ottawa Public Health has begun monitoring wastewater for evidence of measles in the city as the highly infectious disease continues to surge throughout Ontario.

That makes Ottawa one of the only communities in the province and across Canada using wastewater as a possible early warning signal for measles. Ottawa Public Health says the tool is promising for detecting measles, but the research is limited and “many unknowns remain”.

There have been no cases in Ottawa so far this year but Dr. Gregory Rose, who is director of infection prevention and control at Queensway Carleton Hospital, warns that it is only a matter of time.

Comments closed

Amid Canada’s largest measles outbreak in more than a decade, experts say this COVID-era tool could help

As Canada deals with its largest measles outbreak in more than a decade, health experts say a COVID-era tool could help tame the spread.

Wastewater surveillance, which involves testing sewage samples for viral pathogens, became essential during the pandemic. The data helped overwhelmed health officials map out COVID-19’s path and better predict the trajectory of cases.

At the time, it was praised as a critical public health tool that could serve as a warning system to keep Canadians safe from future harmful infections. And as the current measles outbreak surpasses 500 cases in Canada, experts say this is the moment where leaning into regional wastewater surveillance would be most helpful.

Comments closed

CDC is pulling back $11B in Covid funding sent to health departments across the U.S.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and international recipients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Tuesday.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”

HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s health. Notices began going out Monday, and awardees have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures. Figures are subject to change.

Comments closed

COVID-19 vaccination reduces risk of ‘long COVID’ in adults

COVID-19 vaccination reduced the risk of developing ‘long COVID’ by approximately 27% in adults fully vaccinated before infection, according to a literature review carried out…

Comments closed

Long Covid office ‘will be closing,’ Trump administration announces

The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO.

The email was sent Monday by Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice. It said the closing is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ reorganization.

Comments closed

Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long-term organ damage

COVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues.

“There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,” says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.

Comments closed

Smartwatch Data: Study Finds Early Health Differences in Long COVID Patients

People who later experienced persistent shortness of breath or fatigue after a COVID infection were already taking significantly fewer steps per day and had a higher resting heart rate before contracting the virus, according to a CSH study published in npj Digital Medicine. This may indicate lower fitness levels or pre-existing conditions as potential risk factors

Between April 2020 and December 2022, over 535,000 people in Germany downloaded and activated the Corona Data Donation App (CDA). Of these, more than 120,000 voluntarily shared daily data from their smartwatches and fitness trackers with researchers, providing insights into vital functions such as resting heart rate and step count.

“These high-resolution data served as the starting point for our study,” explains CSH researcher Katharina Ledebur. “We were able to compare vital signs in 15-minute intervals before, during, and after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Comments closed

3 vaccine doses cut long-COVID risk by over 60%, analysis suggests

In a Swedish cohort, the risk of long COVID was much lower for vaccinated than unvaccinated participants in the year after infection, even when restricting the analyses to subgroups based on variant, age, sex, and previous infection status, estimates a study published last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Karolinska Institutet researchers in Stockholm analyzed data from five registries to compare rates of persistent COVID-19 symptoms, or post-COVID condition [PCC], in adults infected from January 2021 to February 2022 by vaccination status in the 14 days before infection. Follow-up was 365 to 660 days.

Comments closed

Trump’s staggering offensive against science

The blitzkrieg launched against science by the Trump administration is unprecedented, and all the more shocking as it comes from a democratic country. The brutality of the layoffs of civil servants, the halting of funding and the blocking of research programs is astounding. The Orwellian dimension of the move came to light with the publication of a list of terms that must no longer be used in research and working papers – climate, pollution, injustice, reference to gender or race… So much so that some scientists are beginning to devise different phrases to pass Trump’s censors.

Comments closed

Radio | The silent, long-term effects of COVID, and more…

Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long term organ damage

It’s now been five years since the COVID pandemic stopped the world in its tracks. The virus is still with us, and continues to make people sick. As many as 1 in 5 Canadians have experienced symptoms of long COVID, but scientists are finding that beyond that, each infection can also lead to long term silent cellular and organ damage. David Putrino, who’s been studying COVID’s long term effects at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, says even mild or asymptomatic COVID infections can lead to a wide range of silent long term heath impacts — compromising our immune, vascular, circulatory, renal, metabolic, gastrointestinal systems and even cognitive function.

Comments closed

Made-at-McMaster inhaled COVID-19 vaccine begins phase-2 human trial

Researchers at McMaster University have started a phase-2 clinical trial on a next-generation, inhaled COVID-19 vaccine.

The AeroVax study, supported by $8M in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), will test needle-free vaccines developed to provide protection from SARS-CoV-2.

Led by Fiona Smaill and Zhou Xing, members of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR) at McMaster, the multi-centre trial will evaluate the new vaccine in a broad study group, while also confirming safety.

Comments closed

‘Get in Dorks’: Stand Up for Science rallies spread to 32 U.S. cities

Since Donald Trump took office in January, researchers across the U.S. have been waiting for scientific leaders to forcefully speak out against the administration’s grant freezes, research funding cuts, and targeting of diversity in their field. Frustrated that there seemed to be no large-scale movement coalescing, Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in clinical psychology, took matters into her own hands.

She posted on Bluesky, now the social media of choice for many scientists, “Get in Dorks, we are going protesting.” At the time, “I really thought 500 people might show up to D.C., that’s where I was in my head,” she said.

But little more than three weeks later, what began as an effort by five early-career researchers has exploded into a global movement called Stand Up for Science — with 32 coordinated rallies planned across the country on Friday, and affiliated walkouts and protests across the globe. The largest events are slated for Washington D.C., New York City, and Boston.

Comments closed

‘We’re losing decades of our life to this illness’: long Covid patients on the fear of being forgotten

Five years on from March 2020, millions of people still face debilitating symptoms, with huge repercussions on public health and productivity. But politicians are starting to pretend the pandemic never happened

On 20 March 2020, Rowan Brown started to feel a tickle at the back of her throat. Over the next few days, new symptoms began to emerge: difficulty breathing, some tiredness. By the following week, the UK had been put under lockdown in a last-minute attempt to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19. No one else she knew had yet been infected, so she posted updates on Facebook to keep people informed: “Oh, guys, it feels like a mild flu. Tonsillitis was definitely worse.”

Brown didn’t know then she was at the beginning of a condition that did not yet have a name, but which has since become known as long Covid. After two weeks, she had a Zoom with a friend, and at the end of the conversation it was as if all life force had drained out of her body. Her doctor advised her to stay in bed for two weeks. Those two weeks turned into three and a half months of extended Covid symptoms: nausea, fevers, night sweats, intense muscle and joint pain, allodynia (a heightened sensitivity to pain), hallucinations, visual disturbances. By the end of the three months, she had noted 32 different symptoms. “I didn’t recognise the way my body felt at all: my skin, my hair,” she remembers now. “It was like being taken over by a weird alien virus, which I guess is what happened.”

Comments closed

Increased mortality and serious health issues for those hospitalised with COVID, study reveals

In short

International research has shown an increased risk of further hospitalisation and death among those who were hospitalised for COVID-19.

The first six months following infection showed the largest difference, with the excess risk of death almost tripling.

The study showed risk decreased over time, but remained elevated more than two years after infection.

Comments closed

The Trump years will be grim for long Covid sufferers

In December 2020, the U.S. government’s involvement in addressing the pandemic of long Covid officially began when Congress allocated $1.15 billion to the National Institutes of Health for research into the lasting health consequences of Covid-19. For people suffering from long Covid, the move offered hope.

Just over four years later, on Feb. 19, President Trump disbanded the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID, as part of an executive order titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” After the Biden administration’s tepid involvement and fitful progress in long Covid policy and practice, this decision may signal the end of meaningful federal involvement in mitigating the plight of millions of long Covid sufferers.

Comments closed

Imaging shows significant lung injury in kids with long COVID

Children and teens with long COVID have significant lung abnormalities detected with an advanced form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), called free-breathing phase-resolved functional lung (PREFUL) MRI. The findings were published yesterday in Radiology.

Though chest scans are used to diagnose and monitor lung function of adults with long COVID, they are less commonly used on children with persistent symptoms after COVID-19, which is also called post-COVID condition (PCC). Lung perfusion, or how blood flows in and out of the lungs, can thus be hard to detect in pediatric patients.

Comments closed