Findings seen for recipients across solid organ transplant types
By Lori Solomon
(HealthDay News) — Maintenance immunosuppressive drugs are associated with an increased risk for COVID-19 hospitalization in solid organ transplant recipients, according to a study published online Nov. 7 in JAMA Network Open. Read the article in HealthDay.
By Stuart Katz, MD, Alice Perlowski, MD, MA, and Brittany Taylor, MPH
This year marks the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over time, as the virus morphed and continued to disrupt our daily lives, people around the world grew tired of COVID restrictions. As a result, we saw mask mandates lift, social distancing practices fade, and vaccination rates decline as more shots became available. Understandably, people were — and still are — longing for pre-pandemic normalcy. Nonetheless, a looming reality remains: With hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalizations each week in the U.S. alone, the pandemic is neither over nor behind us. Read more in MedPage Today.
by Stuart Katz, MD, Alice Perlowski, MD, MA, and Brittany Taylor, MPH
This year marks the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over time, as the virus morphed and continued to disrupt our daily lives, people around the world grew tired of COVID restrictions. As a result, we saw mask mandates lift, social distancing practices fade, and vaccination rates decline as more shots became available. Understandably, people were — and still are — longing for pre-pandemic normalcy.
Read the full article in MedPage Today.
By Scott Buzby
Following SARS-CoV-2 infection, mitochondrial function remained impaired in the heart, liver and kidneys, despite observed recovery in the lungs, according to a human autopsy and animal tissue study.
“Upon SARS-CoV-2 infection of host cells, the viral copy number increases unchecked until the innate immune system is engaged, after which the viral copies progressively decline until the virus is eliminated,” Joseph Guarnieri, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues wrote. Read the full article in Healio.
By Rose Weldon
The medical world has to overcome the perception that children are not susceptible to long COVID, physicians said during a U.S. News and World Report webinar on the topic.
Approximately one in eight patients with COVID-19 experiences long COVID, according to data published last year. Among pediatric patients, adolescents are overrepresented.
Read more from Healio News.
Monica Karas • Isabel Bernal • Oscar Diaz • Ola Alshammari • David Baggett • Thomas Bronk • Siam Chawdhury • Adi Eylon • Evelyn Garcia • Kyiana Haughton • Breanne Kothe • Andrew M. Joseph • Robin J. Jacobs
SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is a highly infectious virus that quickly became and continues to be a public health emergency, given the severe international implications. Immunocompromised patients, such as those undergoing kidney transplantation, are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 and require hospitalization for more aggressive treatment to ensure survival. COVID-19 has been infecting kidney transplant recipients (KTRs), affecting their treatment protocols, and threatening their survival.
Read the complete abstract on Cureus.com.
Among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, men were more likely than women to have CV complications, but the difference was not explained by lower rates of past CVD in women, researchers reported in BMJ Medicine. Read more in Healio.
As the world continues to grapple with effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals around the globe are still dealing with symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection for months, even years, after their initial infection.
Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, more commonly referred to as long COVID, are defined by the CDC as a wide range of new, returning or ongoing health issues that people experience after being infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Read more from Healio.
Report on 1st transplant in scleroderma patient predicts future success
The case of a person with scleroderma who successfully received a lung transplant from a donor who had tested positive for COVID-19 may predict positive outcomes for other patients, according to a recent report.
“To our knowledge this represents the first successful case of lung transplantation of donor lungs positive for COVID-19,” the researchers wrote. Read more in Scleroderma News.
Changes in gene expression patterns in the brain associated with natural aging also were observed in the brains of those with severe COVID-19, prompting researchers to emphasize the need for neurological follow-up in recovered individuals.
Read the full story in Healio.