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COVID-19 Mortality Risk Factors in Kidney Transplant Recipients Identified

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Investigators have identified risk factors for COVID-19-related mortality among kidney transplant recipients, including intubation and mechanical ventilation.

Among 218 kidney transplant recipients diagnosed with COVID-19 at a single center in India from April 2020 to July 2021, 30 died. Investigators matched and compared the 30 deceased patients with 188 survivors by age, sex, blood group, living or deceased donor transplant type, transplant duration, comorbidities, immunosuppression, hospitalization vs home care, and history of graft function, infections, acute kidney injury, and related therapies. Read more in Renal & Urology News.

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Prevalence of anxiety, depression in U.S. adults elevated in first year of pandemic

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Prevalence of clinically significant anxiety and depression among adults in the United States increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with prior years, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

“Concerns about adverse mental health effects of COVID-19 have been raised since the beginning of the pandemic,” Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, of the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote. “Many empirical papers subsequently investigated the association of the pandemic with mental health, and most concluded that the pandemic cause dramatic increases in anxiety and depression.”
Read more in Healio.

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COVID-19 not linked to increased long-term risk for CVD or diabetes

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People infected with COVID-19 do not have increased long-term risks for developing cardiovascular disease or diabetes, according to a study published in PLOS Medicine.

In findings from a population-based cohort study conducted in the U.K., the increased risk for CVD in people who contract COVID-19 begins to decline 5 weeks after infection, whereas the risk for diabetes remains elevated up to 23 weeks after infection before dropping back to preinfection levels. Read more in Healio.

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COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 20M lives in first year, study finds

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COVID-19 vaccination “fundamentally altered” the pandemic by saving nearly 20 million lives in the first year that vaccines were available, researchers found using a mathematical model.

“We wanted to conduct this study to understand how much worse the pandemic could have been without vaccination and, in doing so, demonstrate how many lives have been saved by generating and distributing vaccines as quickly as we did,” Oliver J. Watson, PhD, Schmidt Science Fellow at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis of the Imperial College London, told Healio. “From an investment angle, these types of estimates will also underpin how we will evaluate the global vaccination campaign.” Read the full story in Healio.

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Prevalence of anxiety, depression in U.S. adults elevated in first year of pandemic

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Prevalence of clinically significant anxiety and depression among adults in the United States increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with prior years, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

“Concerns about adverse mental health effects of COVID-19 have been raised since the beginning of the pandemic,” Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, of the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote. “Many empirical papers subsequently investigated the association of the pandemic with mental health, and most concluded that the pandemic cause dramatic increases in anxiety and depression.”
Read more in Healio.

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Kidney Failure May Drive COVID Deaths in People With Sickle Cell Trait

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— COVID-19 severity strongly linked with sickle cell anemia as well

COVID-19 patients with sickle cell trait (SCT) were prone to poor outcomes that appeared to be driven in part by kidney dysfunction, a genetic association study suggested.

Among U.S. veterans of African ancestry, SCT was tied to a higher chance of COVID-related mortality versus those without the trait (OR 1.77, 95% CI 1.13-2.77). The presence of either sickle cell anemia or another SCT-related condition was linked with more than 93-times higher odds of severe COVID-19 illness (OR 93.17, 95% CI 78.60-110.44), according to Shiuh-Wen Luoh, MD, PhD, of the VA Portland Health Care System in Oregon, and colleagues. Read more in MedPage Today.

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Liver transplantation linked to lower antibody, T-cell response to COVID-19 vaccine

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LONDON — Patients who received a liver transplant had significantly reduced antibody and T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination compared with healthy controls, according to research presented at the International Liver Congress.

“Emerging data have demonstrated suboptimal immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in immunosuppressed cohorts,” Thomas Marjot, a clinical research training fellow at the Oxford Liver Unit at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and colleagues wrote. Read more in Healio.

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Insights on Long COVID Care

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— Fernando Carnavali, MD, discusses helping patients adjust to being chronically ill

In this video, Fernando Carnavali, MD, of Mount Sinai’s Center for Post-COVID Care in New York City, discusses the strategies for managing long COVID and what we still don’t know about this often debilitating condition.

The following is a transcript of his remarks:

The population of post-COVID, long COVID, has changed over time. I think that one of the most significant changes is that the population is more aware of these chronic conditions, and I think that the uncertainties are still there.
Watch the video and read the transcript on MedPage Today here.

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Study explores antibody responses following three COVID vaccine doses in kidney transplant recipients

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In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, Canadian researchers evaluated antibody responses in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) before and one and three months after receiving the third dose of a messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine.
Read the full story in News Medical Life Sciences.

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CV complications of COVID-19 vary widely; patients with HF at high risk

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PHILADELPHIA — The CV complications of COVID-19 are wide-ranging, and the consequences can be especially serious in patients with HF, a speaker said at the Heart in Diabetes CME conference.

The presentation by Lee R. Goldberg, MD, MPH, FACC, section chief of advanced cardiac failure and heart transplant, vice chair for medicine informatics and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, covered a number of topics related to cardiac complications of COVID-19. Read the full article in Healio.

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