Lifeboat Foundation

A 75-year-old man from Northern Israel died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, the Health Ministry has confirmed. The man had pre-existing conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, the ministry said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” Levy said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. Levy noted that the initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination. Recall that when Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration back in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine.

A 75-year-old man from Beit She’an died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus on Monday morning, the Health Ministry reported. The man had preexisting conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, it said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” he said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit Health Services clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. The initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination, Levy said. When Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine. One of the deceased was immunocompromised, meaning the person’s immune defenses were low. In response to the report of those deaths, Israel’s Midaat Association said when vaccines are administered to at-risk populations, “there may be unfortunate cases. One should not infer from this about the safety of the vaccine, but welcome the transparency required from the pharma companies in the drug approval process.”

The prospect would effectively double the number of vaccine doses available and allow more people to be vaccinated quickly. But the idea has set off a debate, with experts saying there isn’t enough evidence yet to justify a single dose and people should plan to get two doses.

The push in favor of exploring the idea of a single-dose vaccine crystallized with a recent New York Times op-ed from Michael Mina, an immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Zeynep Tufecki, a sociologist who has written extensively on the pandemic.

They called for immediately starting a new clinical trial to study whether one dose of the vaccine is sufficient. They cited data from the trials already conducted for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that showed protection began after the first dose, with as much as around 90 percent efficacy, compared to around 95 percent efficacy after two doses.

Doses of monoclonal antibodies—Covid-19 therapies authorized for emergency use last month—are sitting unused in hospital pharmacies, even as cases surge across the country.

Hospitals say the rollout of the therapies has been stunted by a lukewarm response from infectious-disease specialists, who say they want more clinical trial data before using them on a regular basis. Medical centers are also grappling with a lack of awareness and interest from both the primary-care doctors who would normally prescribe the drug and patients who are offered it. And some places are dealing with a shortage of space and staff to administer the therapies.

When monoclonal antibody therapies from Eli Lilly & Co. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. were approved for emergency use in November, health agencies were worried there wouldn’t be enough supply to meet demand. Now, health-care providers are administering just 20% of the doses they receive each week, according to officials with Operation Warp Speed, the federal initiative to support development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for Covid-19.

NASA scientists and their colleagues are now proposing corporate financing for a human mission to Mars. This raises the prospect that a spaceship named the Microsoft Explorer or the Google Search Engine could one day go down in history as the first spaceship to bring humans to the Red Planet.

The proposal suggests that companies could drum up $160 billion for a human mission to Mars and a colony there, rather than having governments fund such a mission with tax dollars.

Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, was quoted in a release in the Journal of Cosmology by Dr. Rhawn Joseph. The plan covers “every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet — the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars,” said Levine.

Severe allergy-like reactions in at least eight people who received the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech (and Moderna now) over the past 2 weeks may be due to a compound in the packaging of the messenger RNA (mRNA) that forms the vaccine’s main ingredient, scientists say. A similar mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna, which was authorized for emergency use in the United States on Friday, also contains the compound, polyethylene glycol (PEG) PEG has never been used before in an approved vaccine, but it is found in many drugs that have occasionally triggered anaphylaxis—a potentially life-threatening reaction that can cause rashes, a plummeting blood pressure, shortness of breath, and a fast heartbeat. Some allergists and immunologists believe a small number of people previously exposed to PEG may have high levels of antibodies against PEG, putting them at risk of an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine.

Life-threatening responses seen in at least eight people could be linked to polyethylene glycol, known to trigger reactions to some drugs.

Federal officials are disappointed to find that the monoclonal antibody drugs they’ve shipped across the country aren’t being used rapidly.

These drugs are designed to prevent people recently diagnosed with COVID-19 from ending up in the hospital. But hospitals are finding it cumbersome to use these medicines, which must be given by IV infusion. And some patients and doctors are lukewarm about drugs that have an uncertain benefit.

Doctors hope that as word gets out, more people will end up trying these drugs. They are provided to health systems free by the federal government, but it costs money to administer the medication. At first, Medicare set a price that would require many patients to pay a $60 copay, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services later found a way to waive that fee.

Continue reading “Low Demand For Antibody Drugs Against COVID-19” »

Summary: Artificial intelligence technology redesigned a bacterial protein that helps researchers track serotonin in the brain in real-time.

Source: NIH

Serotonin is a neurochemical that plays a critical role in the way the brain controls our thoughts and feelings. For example, many antidepressants are designed to alter serotonin signals sent between neurons.

Continue reading “AI-Designed Serotonin Sensor May Help Scientists Study Sleep and Mental Health” »

“Once they are ingested, up to 90% of the plastic fragments that reach the intestine are excreted. However, one part is fragmented into nanoplastics which are capable, due to their small size and molecular properties, to penetrate the cells and cause harmful effects. The study establishes that alterations in food absorption have been described, as well as inflammatory reactions in the intestinal walls, changes in the composition and functioning of the gut microbiome, effects on the body’s metabolism and ability to produce, and lastly, alterations in immune responses. The article alerts about the possibility of a long-term exposure to plastic, accumulated throughout generations, could give way to unpredictable changes even in the very genome, as has been observed in some animal models.”

We live in a world invaded by plastic. Its role as a chemically stable, versatile and multi-purpose fostered its massive use, which has finally translated into our current situation of planetary pollution. Moreover, when plastic degrades it breaks into smaller micro and nanoparticles, becoming present in the water we drink, the air we breathe and almost everything we touch. That is how nanoplastics penetrate the organism and produce side effects.

A revised study led by the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), the CREAF and the Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) at the University of Aviero, Portugal, and published in the journal Science Bulletin, verifies that the nanoplastics affect the composition and diversity of our intestinal microbiome and that this can cause damage to our health. This effect can be seen in both vertebrates and invertebrates, and has been proved in situations in which the exposure is widespread and prolonged. Additionally, with alteration of the gut microbiome come alterations in the immune, endocrine and nervous system and therefore, although not enough is known about the specific physiological mechanisms, the study alerts that stress to the gut microbiome could alter the health of humans.

Continue reading “Nanoplastics alter intestinal microbiome and threaten human health” »

Preliminary results suggest anti-COVID19 nanobodies may be effective at preventing and diagnosing infections.

National Institutes of Health researchers have isolated a set of promising, tiny antibodies, or “nanobodies,” against SARS-CoV-2 that were produced by a llama named Cormac. Preliminary results published in Scientific Reports suggest that at least one of these nanobodies, called NIH-CoVnb-112, could prevent infections and detect virus particles by grabbing hold of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. In addition, the nanobody appeared to work equally well in either liquid or aerosol form, suggesting it could remain effective after inhalation. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.