COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in pregnancy
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has already taken over 2.8 million lives worldwide while still continuing to cause tens of thousands of new cases every day. Many of these are pregnant women.
A new preprint research paper posted to the
medRxiv server shows that while pregnant women are seriously worried about their risk of contracting the infection caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), but are also hesitant to take the vaccine.
Pregnancy increases risk?
Some earlier reports suggest that pregnant women are more likely to develop severe COVID-19, with a higher risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit, being put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death.
A technical report recently published by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has summarized all available literature regarding the risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission from asymptomatic reinfected individuals with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination.
Antibodies produced from infection with SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 protect against other variants
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to claim thousands of lives daily around the world, the pathogen responsible for it, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to undergo mutational changes. A recent paper in the journal
Nature shows that while earlier lineages do not elicit antibodies capable of efficiently neutralizing the newly emerged South African variant, SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 (B.1.351), the converse does occur.
The SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 variant
The constant occurrence of mutations in the various regions of the viral genome has led to the emergence of a multitude of variants, some of which have become global variants of concern (VOCs).
Study estimates impact of amino acid changes on SARS-CoV-2 infection
New research led by Costas D. Maranas from The Pennsylvania State University predicts amino acid changes to the receptor-binding domain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein would negatively impact binding affinity and subsequent infection into human cells.
Their results were derived from a novel two-step procedure called neural network molecular mechanics/Poisson-Boltzmann surface area (NN MM-GBSA) that calculated binding energy from receptor-binding domain variants to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. The second step would construct a neural network from the findings to predict binding affinity. The team achieved an 82.2% accuracy rate for categorizing amino acid substitutions as helpful or unhelpful in a variant s binding affinity.
Discovery of cryptic pocket in SARS-CoV-2 may lead to pan-coronavirus therapies
Coronaviruses have been around for a long time and have caused several recent deadly outbreaks. The most recent is the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
A new research paper published in the
Biophysical Journal describes a novel binding pocket used by a viral non-structural protein (nsp) to form an activated complex with its partner nsp. In so doing, it may have revealed a common target that may be useful in the development of a broad-spectrum antiviral drug against all coronaviruses.