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By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – The following is a round-up of some of the latest scientific studies on the new coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Long-lasting effects of COVID-19 seen in children
“Long COVID” – a term that refers to the effects of the virus that persist for weeks or months – can also be a problem for children, suggests a small study. Doctors at a large Italian hospital followed 129 children and adolescents with COVID-19 who were generally in good health. On average, about five months after their diagnosis, only about 42% had made a full recovery. About one in three young people still had one or two symptoms and more than one in five had three or more, according to a report released Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of the peer review. The most common persistent problems were insomnia (reported by 18.6%), respiratory symptoms including chest pain and tightness (14.7%), nasal congestion (12.4%), fatigue (10.8%), muscle pain (10.1%), joint pain (6.9%) and difficulty concentrating (10.1%). Although these problems are more common in children who are obviously sick, they have also developed in young people who are infected with little or no symptoms to begin with. There is growing evidence that restrictive measures to curb the pandemic are having a significant impact on children’s mental health, the researchers agree. Yet their results suggest that the potential long-term effects of COVID-19 on children should be taken into account when developing measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic on their overall health. (https://bit.ly/3j8eITL)
Antibodies from patients target the virus from many angles
Most antibody treatments and vaccines targeting the coronavirus aim to stimulate an immune response against the spike protein it uses to break down in cells. Targeting other sites on the virus as well may be a better approach, the researchers say. Their study of COVID-19 survivors whose immune systems generated strong responses to the virus showed that more than half of these antibodies targeted components of the virus other than the spike protein. The most common non-spike targets for antibodies were the closed capsule in which the virus stored its genetic instructions and specific segments of those instructions, such as segments of its RNA code. This suggests that antibodies unrelated to the peaks may play an important role in clearing the virus, the research team said in an article published Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of the peer review. In terms of natural immunity, it also suggests that when faced with new spike protein variants, the immune system will have other sites on the virus that it can still remember and attack. A spokesperson for the researchers said their company, Immunome Inc., was developing a cocktail of antibodies targeting multiple sites on the virus. (https://bit.ly/3j73nDn)
COVID-19 can affect kidney filtering
COVID-19 impairs the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and toxic substances in some patients, a new report suggests. Kidney filters generally do not allow a lot of protein in the urine. Researchers who studied 103 patients with COVID-19 found that about 24% of them had high levels of protein albumin in their urine and 21% had high levels of protein cystatin C in their urine. About 25% of patients had a non-infectious lump of the coronavirus in their urine, but none of the samples contained infectious virus. This suggests that the viral particles the researchers saw were “a direct result of an abnormality in filtration rather than a viral infection of the kidney,” according to a report released on medRxiv Sunday ahead of peer review. None of the patients showed signs of renal dysfunction, except for filtration problems. “At this point, we don’t know whether or not these abnormalities are a sign of long-term consequences,” said co-author Choukri Ben Mamoun of the Yale School of Medicine. “It is for this reason that we are reporting these findings and stressing the need for a long-term review of the consequences of this infection. (https://bit.ly/3oDhHF4)
Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl in an external browser for a Reuters graphic on vaccines in development.
Graphic: Vaccine Race Tracking: http://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/VACCINE-TRACKER/xegpbqnlovq/
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Originally published
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