Breakthrough: Arrival of COVID-19 Inactivated Vaccine

Antibody positive conversion rate 100%!
Good news for the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine!

Yesterday, when the people across the country to the capital outbreak pinch khan, major breakthroughs were made in Chinese scientists: biological wuhan research institute of China developed will be coronavirus inactivated vaccines, Ⅰ/Ⅱ jie blind clinical trial, the results a relief:

The vaccine was safe without any serious adverse reactions

High titer antibody was produced in the inoculated group after different procedure and different dose

The positive rate of neutralizing antibody reached 100% after inoculation of two doses on 28 days

Yes, you read that correctly, the world’s first coVID-19 inactivated vaccine developed by the Chinese has finally arrived, and all its subjects are producing antibodies!

Moreover, it is also the result of clinical study of coVID-19 vaccine with the longest time, the most comprehensive data and the most ideal effect.

On the road to the global fight against covid-19, Chinese scientists are racing against the clock to push forward the landing of the vaccine.
At the same time that the vaccine is moving forward, I think there are two other levels of significance, each of which is critical for China.

First, the time of global victory over the new crown may be advanced

First science under the inactivated vaccines for everyone, in general, clinical trials of vaccines are Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ period.

Ⅰ period, mainly to observe the safety of the vaccine, the tolerance of the human body with different dose.
The number of volunteers should not be much, generally less than 100.

Ⅱ period, main is to further confirm the effectiveness of the vaccine, security, and the number of volunteers also expanded to several hundred people.

Ⅲ period, also is the final stage, focuses on the effect and safety comprehensive assessment of the vaccine, the subjects of expanding into the tens of thousands of people.

Every step is so rigorous, the purpose is only one: before the official marketing, through various tests, to ensure that the vaccine is real and effective, and safe and reliable.
After all, it is a matter of life and death.

The inactivated vaccine has been underway to Ⅱ period, the researchers took 66 days and 1120 healthy subjects, 18 and 59 in accordance with the low, middle and high dose and different vaccination program.
According to the changes of cellular immunity after inoculation, the valuable result of “antibody positive conversion rate 100%” was obtained.

Ⅰ/Ⅱ period after the success of the clinical trials, the next step is to expand the sample last time.
In a word, now from the official birth of the coVID-19 inactivated vaccine, on the verge of a foot, really exciting!

Zhong said in early June that the COVID-19 vaccine could be used as an emergency as early as this autumn or the end of this year, and six vaccines have been tested in clinical trials on the Chinese mainland.
For now, it is highly likely that Zhong’s statement is anything but trump-like waffle.

When will the inactivated vaccine be mass produced?
This point we are very concerned about, in fact, with China’s crazy speed, the development of finished production is not a matter.

According to sinopharmaceuticals official microblog, Beijing Biological and Wuhan Biological have respectively been in the construction of vaccine production workshops.
The construction of Beijing Biological has been completed on April 15, and the workshop of Wuhan Biological is expected to be completed in late June or early July.
You see, China is doing research and development with one hand, and building workshops with the other. It is racing against the clock at a rate that western capitalism cannot match.

By then, the two plants combined could produce more than 200 million doses of vaccine a year, more than enough for emergency use, though not for nationwide use.

This means that in the near future, China will not only provide medical supplies to the world, but also take the lead in the development of coVID-19 vaccines, which will bring forward the time for all mankind to defeat COVID-19.

This is the way things are in the world. As long as we seize the opportunity, our international reputation will be further enhanced after this battle.

And two: Trump, who’s been a total slap in the face

After the outbreak of the epidemic in Beijing, the foreign media, especially the Americans, have long wanted to make a big fight.

As for the epidemic situation in Beijing, I have already made an analysis. With more than 10 years of experience in fighting the epidemic in The capital and the quick response, I am sure that we will be able to eliminate the virus.

And notice how suddenly and passively the epidemic in Wuhan was brought under control.
Now the nucleic acid testing and medical system are much more mature than then, and Beijing’s strong community management capacity cannot be out of control.

But Mr Trump is so intent on cooking the pot that even if he does his calculations well, life is not going to work out the way he wants it to.
First of all, by comparing China’s response to the EPIDEMIC with that of the US, the US is completely defeated:

After the outbreak of coVID-19 in China, more than 80,000 people have been confirmed.
In the United States, people from top to bottom are stupid and put freedom above life, leading to more than 2 million confirmed cases and 110,000 deaths, blinding the whole world.

Up to now, When Chinese people go out, they use masks to measure their temperature and health. When Americans go out, they use parades and rallies, smashing and looting.

According to the American urine, the coVID-19 will continue to spread in the Continental United States, not to rule out the eventual death of more than 200,000 people.
At this level, why the pot?

Another example is nucleic acid test. Trump has a big mouth. Two days ago, he said that American scientists are all the smartest wherever they are.
The scientist of this cow force blow all aghast, we did not come out AIDS vaccine, you quick stop blabbing…

Recently, he also mentioned the NUCLEic acid test of the United States, saying that the reason why the United States has more confirmed cases is because it has the highest detection capacity in the world. It has tested 14 million people. If it had not been tested, there would not have been so many confirmed cases.

Listen to this, also god, the number of confirmed and the number of tests hairy relationship?
Some time ago in Wuhan, more than 10 million people were tested, but not a single case was confirmed.
More than 2 million people in the United States have been diagnosed after testing 14 million. That means there are many more people infected in the United States.

After all, twitter is the web celebrity of governance, and a life shot around the world does not require common sense or logic.

This time, China has taken the lead in promoting the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, which is a complete slap in the face to Donald Trump.

Conclusion:

‘Don’t let a crisis pass,’ Churchill said.
Every crisis hides a huge opportunity.

The epidemic has had a far-reaching impact on the whole world. The entire world structure and order is changing at an accelerating pace. Power, center and economy are shifting.

At this moment, China should step up research and development of a vaccine and maintain its reputation on the home front. On the one hand, China should avoid getting involved in disputes outside the United States and focus on restoring its economic strength.

Only in this way can we seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a truly great Renaissance!

Another “Seed” Contender Aims to Accelerate the Development of the COVID-19 Vaccine

On June 11, the number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally exceeded 150,000 in a single day.

The Americas are still suffering from the epidemic, while Europe and East Asia are struggling to get their feet out of the mud.

The world is waiting for the coVID-19 vaccine.

There are more than 160 vaccine candidates under development globally, according to the World Health Organization.
So far, 10 candidate vaccines have entered clinical trials, including 5 in China (1 adenovirus vaccine, 4 inactivated vaccines), 3 in the US (1 RNA vaccine, 1 protein subunit vaccine and 1 DNA vaccine), 1 in the UK (adenovirus vaccine) and 1 in Germany (RNA vaccine).

This means that China accounts for “half” of the vaccines going into clinical trials globally.

The latest cause attention to a domestic inactivated vaccine why highly anticipated?
How is the progress of Adenovirus vector vaccine led by Academician Chen Wei?
The health community will track the progress of vaccine research and development periodically and introduce the latest development of coVID-19 vaccine.

The fourth inactivated vaccine performed well in animal experiments

The so-called inactivated vaccine USES physical or chemical methods to inactivate the virus acquired in culture, making it lose its pathogenicity, while retaining the main antigenic characteristics of the virus and injecting it into the body to stimulate an immune response.

The research and development process of this type of vaccine is relatively traditional, but it is not easy, which requires screening the appropriate strain, culture substrate, culture mode, and selecting the appropriate virus inactivation method to complete the preparation of vaccine products.

An inactivated vaccine called BBIBP-CORV has been shown to be safe and effective in animal experiments, including in rhesus monkeys, according to an article published in cell on June 6 by Sinopharmacology China’s Beijing Institute of Biological Products, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

The person in charge of the inactivated vaccine is the Ministry of Science and Technology “863 plan” vaccine chief scientist Yang Xiaoming, Wang Hui, etc.
Notably, corresponding authors of the cell paper include Gao Fu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the China CDC.

It has attracted intense attention in and out of the industry because of its “high potency” -2 g/ agent induces high levels of neutralizing antibody titers, thus providing protection against SARS-COV-2 attacks.

According to the relevant person in charge of the introduction, it has started the 1/2 phase clinical trial at present.
This is the fourth inactivated vaccine reported to enter clinical trials in China.

As early as April 12, national medicine group China wuhan institute of biological products and the institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, wuhan virus joint application will be coronavirus inactivated vaccines approved to enter clinical trials, the first and second phase of the merger, become the second to enter clinical trials of new vaccines, is the world’s first into the new crown inactivated vaccine clinical trials.
At present, phase I clinical has been carried out in Henan Jiaozuo area.

In addition to Sinopharmacology, the inactivated vaccine developed by Beijing Kexingzhong Maintenance Biotechnology Co., Ltd. also entered the clinical trial on April 13, which was also carried out in combination with phase I and phase II: phase I clinical trial started on April 16 and phase II clinical trial started in early May.

Yin Weidong, head of the inactivated vaccine, was involved in the development of the SARS vaccine.
Preclinical results of the vaccine, published in the journal Science on 6 May, show that its inactivated vaccine proved safe and effective in animal models of rhesus monkeys.

In addition, the inactivated coVID-19 vaccine developed by the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences was approved for clinical trials on May 13.
The first batch of volunteers have been enrolled and vaccinated in the phase I clinical trial officially launched in the Second Hospital of West China Hospital of Sichuan University on Wednesday.

Adenovirus vector vaccine enters validation “expiration date” phase

However, the adenovirus vector vaccine developed by Chen wei’s team is still the fastest in China.

The so-called adenovirus vector vaccine is to package the gene of a specific virus (such as novel Coronavirus) into the common viral shell that has been removed (such as adenovirus, measles virus, influenza virus, etc.), thus to send the gene of the target virus into the human cell and induce the human body to produce antibodies.

The adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) vector vaccine jointly developed by Academician Chen Wei of the Institute of Bioengineering, Academy of Military Medicine, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and Chinese company CanSino is the first COVID-19 vaccine in the world to enter phase I and II clinical trials.
A second phase of clinical trial was approved on 13 April

The first group of 108 volunteers will be admitted to wuhan Special Nursing Center for quarantine and observation. They will take blood samples 28 days, 3 months and 6 months after the vaccination to evaluate the effect of the test.

On May 22, the results of a phase I clinical trial of adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) vector vaccine were announced: 108 healthy adults were vaccinated, rapid specific T-cell responses were observed on day 14, and humoral immune responses to SARS-COV-2 peaked on day 28, with no serious adverse events.

However, the ability to trigger the immune response does not necessarily mean that the vaccine will protect against a novel Coronavirus.
A randomized, double-blind, controlled phase II trial with 500 volunteers is currently underway in Wuhan to see if the phase I results can be replicated and if adverse events occur within six months of vaccination.
People over 60 also participated as subjects for the first time.

Outside China, the world there are 5 kinds of vaccine candidates in clinical trials, respectively, as Britain’s Oxford University cooperation with astrazeneca adenovirus vaccine, the U.S. national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, and biotechnology company Moderna cooperation of RNA vaccine, developed by American Novavax protein subunit vaccine, Germany BioNTech and Renaissance medicine and joint research and development of RNA Pfizer vaccine, DNA vaccine developed by American Inovio company.

Are there any signs of a shorter development cycle?

Although 10 teams from around the world won the preclinical study and entered the clinical trial phase, the fastest progress is currently in the phase II clinical trial phase.

Previous reports in the health sector have mentioned that the clinical phase II is mainly to test whether the human body will produce antibodies after vaccination, which needs to expand the sample size and target population, at least 200-300 people, and it will take more than half a year.
In the third phase, it is necessary to compare the infection rate of the population after vaccination with that of the population without vaccination to see whether the incidence rate is significantly reduced, which requires a larger sample size, generally thousands of people, and the minimum time is no less than 3 months.

Moreover, infectious diseases need to be observed for at least one epidemic cycle to obtain data on the rate of protection among susceptible populations.

There is no doubt that the development of coVID-19 vaccine is still a long and uncertain process.
Experts have their own predictions for the problem.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, said that if one of the more than 100 vaccines under development is effective, the first successful vaccine may be available from March to June next year.
Zhong Nanshan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said the vaccine could be used as an emergency as early as this autumn or the end of this year.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also predicted that the vaccine could be given to some special groups before the end of the year.

WHO Officials Say Novel Coronavirus Infection Rate Remains Unknown

(11 June) According to the World Health Organization (WHO), on 9 June, it is unclear how likely a person will catch a novel Coronavirus and then transmit it to another person without symptoms.

It is estimated that at least 6 percent — and up to 41 percent — of people infected with the virus have no symptoms, said Maria Van Kerkhoff, technical director of who’s Emergency planning department.
There is no consensus on how many of these people then spread the virus to others.

“This is a big open question,” she told reporters. “The jury is still out.
This is a new disease.
We’re learning a lot about it.”

From the early weeks of the outbreak, health experts suspected that many people who did not feel or appear sick might have inadvertently passed the virus on to others, the report said.

If only people who are clearly ill can spread the virus, it would be easier to control the disease and allow businesses and schools to reopen with greater confidence that simple measures such as thermometers can prevent transmission, the report said.
So-called “silent transmission” makes the disease harder to track and requires people, even healthy ones, to maintain a safe physical distance, making measures such as airport screenings much less effective.

“I am absolutely convinced that this is happening, the question is how much,” Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergency Planning department, said Tuesday.

How Does Coronavirus Kill a Patient? Clinicians Trace the Virus’s Aggressive Path from Brain to Toes

June 1, 2020 / BIOON / — in a 20-bed intensive care unit (ICU) recently, Joshua Denson, a pulmonary and intensive care physician at tulane university school of medicine, evaluated two patients with epilepsy, many with respiratory failure, and others with dangerous kidney slides.
A few days ago, his rounds were interrupted when his team tried and failed to save a young woman whose heart had stopped beating.
All of these people have one thing in common, Denson says.
“They are all covid-19 positive.”

With more than six million confirmed cases of covid-19 and more than 360,000 deaths worldwide, clinicians and pathologists are working to understand the damage caused to humans by novel coronavirussars-cov-2.
They realized that although the lungs were ground zero, their effects could extend to many organs, including the heart and blood vessels, the kidneys, the intestines and the brain.

“[the disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating results,” says Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale university school of medicine’s new haven hospital.
Its ferocity was shocking and suffocating.”
Krumholz is leading efforts to collect clinical data on covid-19.

Understanding this rampant condition could help doctors on the front lines treat those who are desperately and sometimes mysteriously ill.
Could a dangerous, newly observed tendency to clot turn some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies?
Does the excessive immune response that leads to severe cases mean that treatment with immunosuppressive drugs may be helpful?
What causes some doctors to report patients with alarmingly low oxygen levels but no asthma?
“When we start thinking about treatments, it may be helpful to take a systematic approach,” says Nilam Mangalmurti, a pulmonary icu physician at the university of Pennsylvania hospital in the United States.

Here’s an understanding of how the virus attacks cells throughout the body at a rapid rate, especially in about 5 percent of severely ill patients.
Although more than 1,000 papers are published each week in journals and on preprint servers, we still don’t have a clear understanding because the virus ACTS like a pathogen that humans have never seen before.
Without the larger prospective controlled studies that are only now beginning, scientists would have to get information from small studies and case reports, which are often published with astonishing speed and without peer review.
“We need to keep a very open mind as this phenomenon evolves,” says Nancy Reau, a liver transplant physician who treats covid-19 patients at rush university medical center in the United States.
We’re still learning.”

Infection began

The sars-cov-2 virus enters the nose and throat when an infected person expels virus-bearing droplets and others inhale them.
The virus has found a welcome home in the lining of the nasal cavity, according to a paper published on a preprint server by scientists at the wellcome trust sanger institute and elsewhere.
They found that the cells there were rich in a cell-surface receptor called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).
Throughout the body, ACE2’s presence — which often helps regulate blood pressure — means that tissues are susceptible to infection, because the virus needs this receptor to get into cells.
Once inside the cell, the virus hijacks the molecular machinery in the cell, making countless copies of itself and invading the new cell.

As the virus multiplies, infected people can shed large amounts of the virus, especially in the first week or so.
You may not have any symptoms.
Or new victims of the virus may experience fever, dry cough, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, and head and body pain.

If the immune system fails to fight off sars-cov-2 at this initial stage, the virus travels down the windpipe and attacks the lungs, where it can become lethal.
The thinner, more distant branches of the respiratory tree are small air sacs called alveoli, each containing a layer of ACE2 receptor rich cells.

Normally, oxygen passes through the alveoli into the capillaries, the small blood vessels next to the air sacs, which carry it to the rest of the body.
But when the immune system engages an invader, the battle itself can disrupt this healthy delivery of oxygen.
Frontline white blood cells release inflammatory molecules called chemokines, which in turn call on more immune cells to target and kill infected cells, leaving behind a mixture of fluid and dead cells called pus.
This is the basic pathology of pneumonia, with its associated symptoms: cough, fever, and rapid, shallow breathing.
Some patients with covid-19 can recover, sometimes simply by inhaling oxygen through the nasal cannulas.

But some patients get worse, often suddenly, and develop a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
Their blood oxygen levels plummet and breathing becomes more difficult.
During X-ray and computed tomography (CT) scans, their lungs were filled with white shadows that should have been black.
Often, these patients end up on a ventilator.
Many people died.
Autopsy results showed that their alveoli were stuffed with fluid, white blood cells, mucus and the remnants of damaged lung cells.

The influence of intruders

In severe cases, sars-cov-2 can land in the lungs and cause profound damage.
But the virus, or the body’s response to it, can harm many other organs.
Scientists are just beginning to explore the scope and nature of the damage.

For the brain, some patients with covid-19 have strokes, seizures, confusion and encephalitis, and doctors are trying to understand which symptoms are directly caused by the virus.
To the eye, conjunctivitis sees the patient with the most serious disease more.
With the nose, some patients lose their sense of smell.
The scientists speculate that the virus may move up the nerve endings in the nose, damaging cells.
In the lungs, a cross section shows immune cells packed with inflamed alveoli, or air sacs, whose walls can break under the virus’s attack, reducing the absorption of oxygen.
The sufferer may cough, have a fever, and have difficulty breathing.
In the case of the heart and blood vessels, the virus enters cells (possibly including those located in the lining of blood vessels) by binding to ACE2 receptors on the cell surface.
The infection can also promote blood clots, heart attacks and heart inflammation.
In the liver, enzyme levels in up to half of hospitalized patients indicate liver dysfunction.
The overdrive of the immune system, combined with antiviral drugs, may be to blame for liver damage.
In severe cases, kidney damage is common and makes death more likely.
The virus may attack the kidneys directly, or kidney failure may be part of a systemic event, such as a drop in blood pressure.
In the gut, patient reports and biopsy data suggest that the virus infects the lower digestive tract, which is rich in ACE2 receptors.
More than 20 percent of patients have diarrhea.

Some clinicians suspect that the deterioration of many critically ill patients is driven by a catastrophic overreaction of the immune system, known as cytokine storms, triggered by other viral infections.
Cytokines are chemical signaling molecules that guide a healthy immune response, but during a cytokine storm, levels of certain cytokines soar far beyond what is needed, and immune cells begin to attack healthy tissue.
Blood vessels leak, blood pressure drops, blood clots form, and catastrophic organ failure can ensue.

Some studies have shown elevated levels of these inflammation-induced cytokines in the blood of hospitalized covid-19 patients.
“The true morbidity and mortality of the disease may be due to an excessive inflammatory response to the virus,” said Jamie Garfield, a pulmonologist who CARES for covid-19 patients at temple university hospital in the United States.

But others are not convinced.
Joseph Levitt, a pulmonary intensive care physician at Stanford university school of medicine in the United States, said, “it seems that someone has been quick to associate covid-19 with these highly inflammatory states.
I have yet to see convincing data that this is the case.”

He also worries that efforts to suppress the cytokine response could backfire.
Several drugs that target specific cytokines are being tested in patients with covid-19.
But Levitt worries that the drugs may suppress the body’s immune response to the virus.
“We are at risk of allowing more virus replication,” Levitt said.

At the same time, other scientists are targeting an entirely different organ system – the heart and blood vessels – that they say is responsible for the rapid deterioration of some patients.

Touches the heart

In brescia, Italy, a 53-year-old woman walked into the emergency room of a local hospital with all the hallmarks of a heart attack on her electrocardiogram, including the tell-all signs of a heart attack. High levels of a marker in her blood indicate damage to her heart muscle.
Further tests revealed swelling and scarring in the heart, and the left ventricle – usually the heart’s power room – was so fragile that it could only pump out a third of its normal blood volume.
But when doctors injected dye into coronary arteries, looking for blockages that signal a heart attack, they found none.
Another test showed why: this woman had covid-19.

How the virus attacks the heart and blood vessels is a mystery, but dozens of preprinted articles and papers have shown that such damage is common.
A paper published March 25 in the journal JAMA Cardiology records that of 416 patients hospitalized with covid-19 in wuhan, China, nearly 20% developed heart injuries.
In another study conducted in wuhan, 44 percent of 36 hospitalized ICU patients developed arrhythmias.

The damage to the heart also seems to extend to the blood itself.
Among 184 covid-19 patients in an intensive care unit in the Netherlands, 38 percent had abnormal blood clots, and nearly a third had blood clots, according to an April 10 paper published in the journal runners Research.
Blood clots can rupture and stay in the lungs, blocking vital arteries, a condition known as pulmonary embolism, which has been reported to kill covid-19 patients.
Blood clots in arteries can also build up in the brain, leading to strokes.
Behnood Bikdeli, a cardiovascular medicine researcher at Columbia University medical center in the United States, said many patients had “significantly” high levels of d-dimer, a byproduct of blood clots.

“The more we look, the more likely we are to conclude that blood clots play an important role in the severity and mortality of covid-19,” Bikdeli said.

Infections can also cause blood vessels to constrict.
Ischemia of the fingers and toes – a loss of blood flow – has been reported to cause swelling, pain and tissue death in the fingers.

In the lungs, vasoconstriction may help explain a puzzling phenomenon in pneumonia caused by covid-19: some patients have extremely low blood oxygen levels but no wheezing.
It is possible that at some stage of the disease, the virus alters the delicate balance of hormones that help regulate blood pressure, causing the blood vessels leading to the lungs to constrict.
Thus, oxygen uptake is blocked by constricted blood vessels, not by alveolar blockages.
“One theory is that the virus affects vascular biology, and that’s why we’re seeing these very low levels of blood oxygen,” Levitt said.

If sars-cov-2 targets blood vessels, it may also help explain why patients with pre-existing vascular damage, such as those with diabetes and hypertension, are at higher risk for serious disease.
A recent analysis by the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) of inpatient data from 14 states found that about a third of people have chronic lung disease – almost as many have diabetes, and half have pre-existing high blood pressure.

Mangalmurti said she was “shocked” that the intensive care unit at the university of Pennsylvania hospital did not have a large number of patients with asthma or other respiratory problems.
“We were very surprised that the risk factors seemed to be related to blood vessels: diabetes, obesity, age and high blood pressure.”

Scientists are trying to understand what causes cardiovascular damage.
Like the nose and alveoli, the virus may directly attack the lining of the heart and blood vessels, which are rich in ACE2 receptors.
Or it could be a lack of oxygen caused by a lung disorder that destroys blood vessels.
Or cytokine storms can damage the heart as well as other organs.

“We’re still in the early stages,” Krumholz said.
We really don’t understand who the susceptible group is, why some people are so affected, why it comes so quickly…
And why it’s so difficult [for some people] to recover.”

Multiple battlefield

Worldwide, concerns about a shortage of ventilators for patients with lung failure have drawn widespread attention.
The scramble for another device, the dialyzer, is different.
“If these people were dying not of lung failure, but of kidney failure,” says Jennifer Frontera, a neurologist at New York university langone medical center.
Her hospital has treated thousands of covid-19 patients and is developing a dialysis program that USES different machines to support more patients.
Dialysis may be required because the kidney, which is rich in ACE2 receptors, is another viral target.

Of the 85 hospitalized patients in wuhan, 27 percent developed kidney failure, according to a preprint article.
Another report said that of nearly 200 hospitalized covid-19 patients in China’s hubei and sichuan provinces, 59 percent had protein in their urine and 44 percent had blood in their urine.
This is indicative of kidney damage.
As reported in this preprint article, covid-19 patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) are more than five times more likely to die than covid-19 patients without acute kidney injury.

‘the lungs are the main combat area,’ says Hongbo Jia, a neuroscientist at the Chinese academy of sciences’ suzhou institute of biomedical engineering and technology.
However, a small number of viruses may attack the kidneys.
“Just like in a real battlefield, if two places are attacked at the same time, each place gets worse.”

In one study, sars-cov-2 virus particles were found in electron micrographs of the kidney from an autopsy, suggesting that the virus directly attacked the kidney.
However, kidney damage can also be collateral damage.
Respiratory opportunities increase the risk of kidney damage, as do antiviral compounds including redesivir, which is currently being used experimentally in patients with covid-19.
Cytokine storms also dramatically reduce blood flow to the kidneys, causing often fatal damage.
Pre-existing conditions such as diabetes also increase the risk of kidney damage.
“There are a lot of people who already have chronic kidney disease, and they are at higher risk for acute kidney injury,” said Suzanne Watnick, chief medical officer at northwestern kidney center.

Impact on the brain

Another striking set of symptoms in covid-19 patients centers on the brain and central nervous system.
Frontera says neurologists at her hospital need to assess 5 to 10 percent of patients with coronavirus.
But she says this may significantly underestimate the number of people with brain problems, especially since many are on sedatives and ventilators.

Frontera seen encephalitis, epilepsy and “sympathetic storm (sympathetic storm) – an overreaction of the sympathetic nervous system, causing symptoms epilepsy samples, after traumatic brain injury is the most common”.
Some people with covid-19 may lose consciousness briefly.
Others had strokes.
Many patients report losing their sense of smell.
Frontera and others wondered whether viral infections, in some cases, inhibit the brainstem reflex that senses lack of oxygen.
This is another explanation for patients who are not panting despite dangerously low blood oxygen levels.

ACE2 receptors are found in the neural cortex and brain stem, says Robert Stevens, an intensive-care physician at Johns Hopkins university school of medicine.
But it is not known under what circumstances sars-cov-2 may enter the brain and interact with these receptors.
The coronavirus sars-cov, which caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 — and is closely related to sars-cov-2 — can invade neurons, sometimes causing encephalitis.
In a case study published April 3 in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, a team in Japan reported that traces of the novel coronavirus were found in the cerebrospinal fluid of a covid-19 patient with meningitis and encephalitis, suggesting that it can also invade the central nervous system.

But other factors may also be causing brain damage.
For example, cytokine storms can cause brain swelling, and the tendency of blood to overclot can lead to strokes.
The challenge now is to move from guesswork to confidence as workers focus on saving lives, and risk spreading the virus when inducing an vomiting reflex or transporting patients for brain scans to assess the nervous system.

Last month, Sherry Chou, a neurologist at the university of Pittsburgh medical center, began assembling a global consortium of 50 centers to gather neurological data from patients who have received care.
The early goal was simple: determine the prevalence of neurological complications in hospitalized patients and document their condition.
In the long run, Chou and her colleagues hope to collect scans, lab tests and other data to better understand the virus’s effects on the nervous system, including the brain.

Chou speculated on a possible route of invasion: through the nose, then up, through the olfactory bulb — which explains reports of patients losing their sense of smell — and to the brain.
“It’s a theory that sounds good,” she said.
We have to prove it.”

Chou added that most neurological symptoms “are reported through word of mouth among colleagues.
I don’t think anyone can say we are experts, nor can I.

Arrived in the intestinal tract

In early march, a 71-year-old Michigan woman returned from a Nile river cruise with bloody diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain.
At first, doctors suspected she had a common stomach infection, like salmonella.
But after she developed a cough, doctors took a nasal swab and found she was novel coronavirus positive.
According to a paper published online in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, her stool sample was positive for viral RNA and she saw signs of colon damage on an endoscopy, suggesting a novel coronavirus infection in the gastrointestinal tract.

As in her case, there is growing evidence that novel coronavirussars-cov-2, like sars-cov, can infect the lining of the lower digestive tract rich in ACE2 receptors.
Viral RNA was found in stool samples from as many as 53% of patients.
And in a paper published in the journal Gastroenterology, a Chinese team reports finding viral protein capsids in stomach, duodenal and rectal cells in biopsy samples from a covid-19 patient.
“I think it’s very likely that it does replicate in the gastrointestinal tract,” said Mary Estes, a virologist at baylor college of medicine in the United States.

Recent reports suggest that in an average of about 20 percent of studies, as many as half of patients experience diarrhea, says Brennan Spiegel of cedars-sinai medical center in the United States.
Spiegel and others say that gastrointestinal symptoms are not on the U.S. CDC’s list of covid-19 symptoms, which could lead to some cases of covid-19 going undetected.
“If your primary symptoms are fever and diarrhea, you’re not going to get a covid-test,” says Douglas Corley of Kaiser bear healthcare in the United States.

The presence of the virus in the gastrointestinal tract raises the disturbing possibility that it could be transmitted through faeces.
But it is not clear whether the feces contained the full, infectious sars-cov-2 virus, or just viral RNA and proteins.
So far, “we have no evidence” that fecal transmission is important, explains Stanley Perlman, a coronavirus expert at the university of Iowa.
Based on experience with sars-cov and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, another coronavirus closely associated with sars-cov-2, the risk of fecal transmission is likely to be low, the CDC said.

The gut is not the end of the disease’s spread through the body.
For example, as many as a third of hospitalized patients develop conjunctivitis, though it is not clear whether the virus directly enters the eye.
Other reports suggest liver damage.
More than half of covid-19 patients hospitalized at two Chinese centers had elevated enzyme levels, indicating damage to their livers or bile ducts.
But several experts told the journal Science that a direct virus attack is unlikely to be the culprit.
Other events in a failing body, such as drugs or the immune system going into overdrive, are more likely to cause liver damage, they say.

This map of the damage caused to the body by covid-19 is only a sketch at this time.
It will take years of painstaking research to get a clearer picture of the extent of its effects and the range of cardiovascular and immune effects it could trigger.
As science continues to advance rapidly, from detecting tissues under microscopes to testing drugs on patients, the hope is that more ingenious treatments than the virus will be found to put the world back on track.

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