Category: COVID-19

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COVID-19 : HIV Does Not Appear to Worsen Outcomes

People living with HIV who are admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 are no more likely to die than those without HIV, an analysis conducted in New York City shows. This is despite the fact that comorbidities associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes were more common in the HIV group.

“We don’t see any signs that people with HIV should take extra precautions” to protect themselves from COVID-19, said Keith Sigel, MD, associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and the lead researcher on the study, published online June 28 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

“We still don’t have a great explanation for why we’re seeing what we’re seeing,” he added. “But we’re glad we’re seeing it.”

 

The findings have changed how Sigel talks to his patients with HIV about protecting themselves from COVID-19. Some patients have so curtailed their behavior for fear of acquiring COVID-19 that they aren’t buying groceries or attending needed medical appointments. With these data, Sigel said he’s comfortable telling his patients, “COVID-19 is bad all by itself, but you don’t need to go crazy. Wear a mask, practice appropriate social distancing and hygiene, but your risk doesn’t appear to be greater.”

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COVID-19 : People Are Dying of Septic Shock

GSA Executive Committee member Prof. Flavia Machado was interviewed by the JAMA Network  on “Coronavirus in Brazil – Report From The Front Lines”.

The interview provides a very insightful overview on how Brazil is tackling the pandemic, the efficiency of treatments, and solutions adopted by hospitals to respond to the crisis. Interestingly, Prof. Machado confirmed that in most cases people are dying from refractory septic shock rather than refractory hypoxemia.

Besides, she noted that the usual differences between high (HICs) – and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 85% of sepsis cases occur, are not so visible with COVID-19, in fact, the most affected countries are HICs. 

Prof. Machado is chair of the intensive care session of Anesthesiology, Pain and Intensive Care Department at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, and CEO of the Latin America Sepsis Institute (LASI).

Source : WSD

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COVID-19 : Wide Range of Neuropsychiatric Complications Can Occur Post-Recovery

A large study from the United Kingdom reveals the breadth of neurologic and neuropsychiatric complications of COVID-19 infection, including stroke, psychosis, altered mental state, and dementia-like syndrome.

“Clinicians should be alert to the possibility of patients with COVID-19 developing these complications and, conversely, of the possibility of COVID-19 in patients presenting with acute neurological and psychiatric syndromes,” the investigators, from the CoroNerve Study Group, write.

The report was published online June 25 in Lancet Psychiatry.

Altered Mental State, New-Onset Psychosis

During the exponential phase of the pandemic, Benedict Michael, PhD, from the University of Liverpool, and colleagues set up an online case reporting platform called CoroNerve to investigate the range of COVID-19 complications that affect the brain.

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Colchicine Treatment May Be Effective Aganist COVID-19, Study Says

Colchicine, an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat gout and rheumatic disease, may be a promising treatment for COVID-19, a randomized, open-label trial suggests.

In the Greek Study in the Effects of Colchicine in COVID-19 Complications Prevention (GRECCO-19), investigators randomly assigned 105 patients who had COVID-19 to receive either the standard of care or the standard of care plus colchicine for 3 weeks. They found that for patients in the colchicine group, the time to clinical deterioration improved, although there were no significant differences between the groups in cardiac and inflammatory biomarkers.

“Colchicine is an old drug utilized for its anti-inflammatory and antimitotic effects,” lead author Spyridon Deftereos, MD, PhD, professor of cardiology, Second Department of Cardiology, “Attikon” University Hospital National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

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COVID-19 : The Mysteries Still To Be Solved

In late December 2019, reports emerged of a mysterious pneumonia in Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million people in the southeastern province of Hubei. The cause, Chinese scientists quickly determined, was a new coronavirus distantly related to the SARS virus that had emerged in China in 2003, before spreading globally and killing nearly 800 people.

Six months and more than ten million confirmed cases later, the COVID-19 pandemic has become the worst public-health crisis in a century. More than 500,000 people have died worldwide. It has also catalysed a research revolution, as scientists, doctors and other scholars have worked at breakneck speed to understand COVID-19 and the virus that causes it: SARS-CoV-2.

How deadly is the coronavirus? Scientists are close to an answer

They have learnt how the virus enters and hijacks cells, how some people fight it off and how it eventually kills others. They have identified drugs that benefit the sickest patients, and many more potential treatments are in the works. They have developed nearly 200 potential vaccines — the first of which could be proved effective by the end of the year.

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