More than one-third of kids who have COVID-19 are asymptomatic, according to a University of Alberta study that suggests youngsters diagnosed with the disease may represent just a fraction of those infected.
For the study, McAlister’s team analyzed results for 2,463 children who were tested during the first wave of the pandemic—March to September—for COVID-19 infection.
All told, 1,987 children had a positive test result for COVID-19 and 476 had a negative result. Of children who tested positive, 714—35.9 per cent—reported being asymptomatic.
We can do all the COVID-19 questionnaires we want, but if one-third of the kids are asymptomatic, the answer is going to be no to all the questions—yet they’re still infected.
Because of the asymptomatic nature of the disease in up to one-third of children, McAlister said the province was right to close schools for a longer period over Christmas.
As far as we know, kids are less likely to spread disease than adults, but the risk is not zero. Presumably asymptomatic spreaders are less contagious than the person sitting nearby who is sneezing all over you, but we don’t know that for sure.
The researchers also found that although cough, runny nose and sore throat were three of the most common symptoms among children with COVID-19 infection—showing up in 25, 19 and 16 per cent of cases respectively—they were actually slightly more common among those with negative COVID-19 test results, and therefore not predictive of a positive test.
Kids are at risk of contracting many different viruses, so the COVID-specific symptoms are actually more things like loss of taste and smell, headache, fever, and nausea and vomiting, not runny nose, a cough and sore throat.
Release date: 27 November 2020
Source: University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Glucosamine may reduce overall death rates as effectively as regular exercise
Assessed data from 16,686 adults who completed the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010. All of the participants were at least 40 years old. Researchers merged these data with 2015 mortality figures.
After controlling for various factors—such as participants’ age, sex, smoking status and activity level—the researchers found that taking glucosamine/chondroitin every day for a year or longer was associated with a 39 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.
It was also linked to a 65 percent reduction in cardiovascular-related deaths. That’s a category that includes deaths from stroke, coronary artery disease and heart disease, the United States’ biggest killer.
“Once we took everything into account, the impact was pretty significant,” Researchers said.
The results appear in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Release date: 01 December 2020
Source: West Virginia University
More than one-third of children with COVID-19 show no symptoms
More than one-third of kids who have COVID-19 are asymptomatic, according to a University of Alberta study that suggests youngsters diagnosed with the disease may represent just a fraction of those infected.
For the study, McAlister’s team analyzed results for 2,463 children who were tested during the first wave of the pandemic—March to September—for COVID-19 infection.
All told, 1,987 children had a positive test result for COVID-19 and 476 had a negative result. Of children who tested positive, 714—35.9 per cent—reported being asymptomatic.
We can do all the COVID-19 questionnaires we want, but if one-third of the kids are asymptomatic, the answer is going to be no to all the questions—yet they’re still infected.
Because of the asymptomatic nature of the disease in up to one-third of children, McAlister said the province was right to close schools for a longer period over Christmas.
As far as we know, kids are less likely to spread disease than adults, but the risk is not zero. Presumably asymptomatic spreaders are less contagious than the person sitting nearby who is sneezing all over you, but we don’t know that for sure.
The researchers also found that although cough, runny nose and sore throat were three of the most common symptoms among children with COVID-19 infection—showing up in 25, 19 and 16 per cent of cases respectively—they were actually slightly more common among those with negative COVID-19 test results, and therefore not predictive of a positive test.
Kids are at risk of contracting many different viruses, so the COVID-specific symptoms are actually more things like loss of taste and smell, headache, fever, and nausea and vomiting, not runny nose, a cough and sore throat.
Release date: 27 November 2020
Source: University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Low risk of pregnancy complications from COVID-19
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that 95 percent of women who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy had no adverse outcomes. Additionally, the study found that the virus was transmitted to the fetus in just 3 percent of the cases.
The researchers set out to measure how COVID-19 infection impacts pregnancy outcomes, how severely ill a pregnant woman gets, placental pathology, and neonatal infections by studying women at Parkland Health and Hospital System – a high-volume prenatal clinic system and public hospital affiliated with UT Southwestern. The team followed 3,374 mothers, 252 of whom tested positive for the virus during pregnancy, from March through August. The group was predominantly Hispanic (75 percent), followed by Black (18 percent) and white (4 percent). There were no significant differences between the expectant mothers in age, number of previous births, BMI, or diabetes.
Release date: 19 November 2020
Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center
Age is no barrier to successful weight loss
Study of patients attending a hospital-based obesity service shows no difference in weight loss between those under 60 years old and those from 60 to 78 years old
The University of Warwick-led study conducted at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) concludes that lifestyle changes to manage weight loss are effective in reducing obesity regardless of age
Aims to dispel myths about effectiveness of weight loss in older people
Obese patients over the age of 60 can lose an equivalent amount of weight as younger people using only lifestyle changes, according to a new study from the University of Warwick and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust that demonstrates that age is no barrier to losing weight.
The researchers hope that their findings will help to correct prevailing societal misconceptions about the effectiveness of weight loss programmes in older people, as well dispel myths about the potential benefits of older people trying to reduce their weight.
The findings are based on analysis of patient records from a hospital-based obesity service and are reported in the journal Clinical Endocrinology.
Release date: 20 November 2020
Source: University of Warwick
MMR Vaccine Could Protect Against COVID-19
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine has been theorized to provide protection against COVID-19. In a new study published in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers provide further proof of this by showing that mumps IgG titers, or levels of IgG antibody, are inversely correlated with severity in recovered COVID-19 patients previously vaccinated with the MMR II vaccine produced by Merck.
Release date: 20 November 2020
Source: American Society for Microbiology
Social isolation during COVID-19 pandemic linked with high blood pressure
Lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with an increase in high blood pressure among patients admitted to emergency. That’s the finding of a study presented at the 46th Argentine Congress of Cardiology (SAC).
Admission to the emergency department during the mandatory social isolation period was linked with a 37% increase in the odds of having high blood pressure – even after taking into account age, gender, month, day and time of consultation, and whether or not the patient arrived by ambulance
Release date: 19 November 2020
Source: European Society of Cardiology
Web searches for insomnia surged at height of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
A study found a significant increase in the number of online search queries for “insomnia” between April and May 2020, when governments across the U.S. and around the world implemented stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results show there were 2.77 million Google searches for insomnia in the U.S. for the first five months of 2020, an increase of 58% compared with the same period from the previous three years. While searches for insomnia trended downward from January through March 2020, consistent with prior years, they surged upward in April and May 2020. This increase also was associated with the cumulative number of COVID-19-related deaths in the spring.
The study is published online as an accepted paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
Release date: 18 November 2020
Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine
In a Pandemic, Migration Away from Dense Cities More Effective than Closing Borders
Pandemics are fueled, in part, by dense populations in large cities where networks of buildings, crowded sidewalks, and public transportation force people into tighter conditions. This contrasts with conditions in rural areas, where there is more space available per person.
In a paper published in Chaos, by AIP Publishing, two researchers decided to put this hypothesis to the test and discover if confinement and travels bans are really effective ways to limit the spread of a pandemic disease. Specifically, they focused on the movement of people from larger cities to smaller ones and tested the results of this one-way migration.
“Instead of taking mobility, or the lack of mobility, for granted, we decided to explore how an altered mobility would affect the spreading,” author Massimiliano Zanin said. “The real answer lies in the sign of the result. People always assume that closing borders is good. We found that it is almost always bad.”
Release date: 17 November 2020
Source: American Institute of Physics
Common SARS-CoV-2 mutation may make coronavirus more susceptible to a vaccine
A new study published in Science confirms that SARS-CoV-2 has mutated in a way that’s enabled it to spread quickly around the world, but the spike mutation may also make the virus more susceptible to a vaccine.
The new strain of coronavirus, called D614G, emerged in Europe and has become the most common in the world. Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows the D614G strain replicates faster and is more transmissible than the virus, originating in China, that spread in the beginning of the pandemic.
Release date: 12 November 2020
Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Smell and taste changes provide early indication of COVID-19 community spread
Self-reports of smell and taste changes provide earlier markers of the spread of infection of COVID-19 than current governmental indicators, according to an international team of researchers. The researchers also observed a decline in self-reports of smell and taste changes as early as five days after lockdown enforcement, with faster declines reported in countries that adopted the most stringent lockdown measures.
Release date: 11 November 2020
Source: Penn State