Virology News

New evidence suggests that the way brains work across the animal kingdom goes back to a common source, researchers report.

The ceiling price for the COVID vaccine is only for vaccines to be distributed to 92 countries under the Covax alliance (Gavi, CEPI & WHO)...

According to a New York Times analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there have been 200,700 excess deaths in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, much higher than the current total of 161,000 confirmed deaths.

Researchers have found that COVID-19 patients in the US have a far higher rate of abnormal liver tests than studies showed for patients in China.

MANILA - The Philippines is ready to work with Russia on clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine, Malacañang said Tuesday after Moscow offered to supply Manila with doses of the drug. Calling Russia a "friend," President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night said he was willing to volunteer to be inoculated in public to show that the foreign vaccine was safe. VIEW ORIGINAL

Countries across the Southern Hemisphere are reporting significantly lower cases of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and other seasonal respiratory viral infections this year. Health experts attribute the trend to such measures as mask use and restrictions on air travel amid the COVID-19...

Who will be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine...

Scientists need to show us the data. And that’s exactly what they’re working on.

Progress is being made though, its chief says, as he stresses the importance of preventive steps.

Operation Warp Speed is handing out cash at record velocity and this time, the two largest vaccine companies in the world are benefiting.

Note: Moderna said today that taxpayer money funds 100% of its work to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to licensure, yet…...

Human trials on a potential coronavirus vaccine are due to start in Indonesia next week as part of a collaboration between state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma and China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, a senior researcher said.

Both influenza virus M2, a proton-selective ion channel essential for efficient viral replication, and PB1-F2 protein, which localizes to the mitochondria and attenuates host antiviral immunity, are involved in the inflammatory response by stimulating NLRP3 inflammasome-dependent IL-1β secretion.

There won't be a flu season in SA this year - most likely due to Covid-19 prevention measures.

The three travelers start running for their lives long before the monsters appear to chase them. Having recently survived a shotgun-wielding militiaman in a pickup truck, they were racing to reach the county line before sunset with a bloodthirsty cop on their tail, eager to pounce if they didn’t...

The vaccine candidate developed by Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Centre and Russian defence ministry has been raising eyebrows ever since the announcement of it being the ‘world’s first COVID-19 vaccine’ started doing rounds.

Indonesia on Tuesday launched human trials of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine with some 1,600 volunteers slated to take part in the six-month study.

The development of an effective universal influenza vaccine is an urgent task. Traditional influenza vaccine approaches are not sufficient for preventing recurrent epidemics or occasional pandemics.Nanoparticles are compatible with different immunogens and immune stimulators and can overcome the ...

Pune, 3 August 2020: Scientists from all over the world are engaged in research and trials for a vaccine of the Coronavirus disease (COVID19). Meanwhile, the second and third phase of human trials of Oxford University's Corona vaccine, COVISHIELD, has been approved in India.

To determine whether policies to limit transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) hinder spread of other infectious diseases, we analyzed the National Health Insurance database in Taiwan.

While much of the world’s attention is focused on a vaccine for COVID-19, researchers out of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have found that people who get an annual vaccine for the regular flu have a dramatically reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.  To come to this conclusion, the researchers examined a database known as Cerner Health Facts. This database reaches back to the year 2000 and contains medical data on patients from over 600 hospitals. The data is not linked to identifiable patients, but it is still a valuable treasure trove of information to researchers. It contains, for example, information on over 158,300,000 patients and over 1.3 billion laboratory results. Big Data “Our role was to sort through enormous amounts of de-identified patient data in the Cerner Health Facts database to see whether there are drugs that could be repurposed to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” said UTHealth associate professor Xiaoqian Jiang. “Once we identified the flu vaccine as a candidate, we used machine learning to analyze more than 310,000 health records to study the relationship between flu vaccination and Alzheimer’s disease.” The analysis led to the conclusion that people who get the flu vaccine are 17% less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease. It was also determined that more frequent vaccinations and starting vaccinations at a younger age could provide even greater risk reduction.  The reason, say the researchers might be that the vaccine conditions the body to fight Alzheimer’s, although they admit that more investigation is needed to determine why the link exists.  “One of our theories of how the flu vaccine may work is that some of the proteins in the flu virus may train the body’s immune response to better protect against Alzheimer’s disease,” said first author Albert Amran. “Providing people with a flu vaccine may be a safe way to introduce those proteins that could help prepare the body to fight off the disease. Additional studies in large clinical trials are needed to explore whether the flu shot could serve as a valid public health strategy in the fight against this disease.”

“We are on the phone every day talking to people about fine-tuning how we do the study.It’s unprecedented how fast this has gone.”...

While the latest research suggests that antibodies against Covid-19 could be lost in just three months, a new hope has appeared on the horizon: the enigmatic T cell.