Credit: Earlham Institute
Respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (causing COVID-19) can often catalyse an overactive immune response that leads to a life-threatening cycle, known as a cytokine storm. Analysing cytokine responses from patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 and similar common respiratory viruses has unearthed glaringly important differences in how SARS-CoV-2 affects cytokines compared to other common respiratory viruses.
The comprehensive data resource aims to help specialists identify better treatments and diagnosis of underlying causes that can cause the deadly cytokine storm.
Scientists at the Earlham Institute (EI) and the Quadram Institute study how the immune system responds to infection with SARS-CoV-2 and other similar respiratory viruses, in particular to identifying unique features in severely ill COVID-19 patients.
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IMAGE: L. Keoki Williams, M.D., MPH, the study s senior author and co-Director of Henry Ford Health System s Center for Individualized and Genomic Medicine Research. view more
Credit: Henry Ford Health System
DETROIT (February 25, 2021) - Researchers at Henry Ford Health System, as part of a national asthma collaborative, have identified a gene variant associated with childhood asthma that underscores the importance of including diverse patient populations in research studies.
The study is published in the print version of the
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
For 14 years researchers have known that a casual variant for early onset asthma resides on chromosome 17, which holds one of the most highly replicated and significant genetic associations with asthma. Henry Ford researchers acknowledged they would not have identified it in this study without a diverse patient population that included African Americans, many from the metro D
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IMAGE: A structure of an antibody, called Z004 (shown in purple), bound to the envelope domain III protein of Zika virus (shown in gold). view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Shannon Esswein.
ROCKVILLE, MD - The Zika outbreak of 2015 and 2016 is having lasting impacts on children whose mothers became infected with the virus while they were pregnant. Though the numbers of Zika virus infections have dropped, which scientists speculate may be due to herd immunity in some areas, there is still potential for future outbreaks. To prevent such outbreaks, scientists want to understand how the immune system recognizes Zika virus, in hopes of developing vaccines against it. Shannon Esswein, a graduate student, and Pamela Bjorkman, a professor, at the California Institute of Technology, have new insights on how the body s antibodies attach to Zika virus. Esswein will present the work, which was published in PNAS, on Thursday, February 25 at the 65th Biophysical Society Ann
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IMAGE: Pittsburgh Steelers Chair in Transplantation and professor of surgery, medicine and immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine view more
Credit: Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 24, 2021 - Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have discovered a blood biomarker that predicts kidney transplant rejection with a lead time of about eight months, which could give doctors an opportunity to intervene and prevent permanent damage.
These results, published today in
Science Translational Medicine, not only identify a warning signal that something is going wrong, but also suggest an existing medication that could be given to these patients to right the course of their long-term recovery.