CoolSculpting is the brand name for a fat-freezing method that aims to get rid of stubborn fat in certain parts of your body. The method is called cryolipolysis. The U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration approved it in 2010.
Scientists came up with the idea for cryolipolysis by studying what happens to fat during frostbite. Fat freezes at a higher temperature than skin. The cryolipolysis device cools your fat to a temperature that destroys it while leaving your skin and other tissues unharmed.
Most SARS-CoV-2 virus strains feature a specific mutation that makes them more transmissible, to the point that these strains now predominate globally, new evidence shows.
In contrast to a greater variety of strains early in the pandemic, now 99.9% of circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains in the study feature the D614G mutation on the spike protein. In addition, people infected with a D614G strain have higher nasopharynx viral loads at diagnosis.
It’s not all bad news. This single-point mutation was not associated with worse clinical COVID-19 severity. Also, the mutation isn’t expected to interfere with the efficacy any of the antibody cocktails, small molecule therapies or vaccines in development.
Furthermore, “as bad as SARS-CoV-2 is, we may have dodged a bullet in terms of how quickly it mutates,” study author Ilya Finkelstein, PhD, told Medscape Medical News. This virus mutates much slower than HIV, for example, giving researchers a greater chance to stay one step ahead, he said.
The study was published online October 30 in the journal mBio.