Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Living With Children Doesn't Raise Risk Of Getting COVID, Study Finds
If you live with children, you’re not at a greater risk of contracting Covid-19, according to a large study carried out in the U.K. In fact, living with children was associated with a lower risk of dying from the coronavirus compared to those that didn’t live with children, researchers from the University of Oxford and London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found. (Ellyatt, 11/4)
In other COVID developments —
A new study suggests doctors have found the culprit behind serious blood clotting in up to half of hospitalized coronavirus patients. Researchers at Michigan Medicine studied blood samples from 172 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in search of eight types of clot-causing autoimmune antibodies. Autoimmune disease refers to when the immune system attacks healthy cells by mistake, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. Findings were published Monday in Science Translational Medicine. (Rivas, 11/3)
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can infect cells in the mouth, which may spur the virus's spread both in the body and to other people, according to a preliminary study. In the new study, posted Oct. 27 to the preprint database medRxiv, researchers predicted which mouth tissues might be most vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. So the team examined RNA — a kind of genetic material that tells the cells' protein-making factories what to build — for different cell types in the mouth. They found that, compared with other oral tissues, cells of the salivary glands, tongue and tonsils carry the most RNA linked to proteins that the coronavirus needs to infect cells. Namely, these include the ACE2 receptor, which the virus plugs into, and an enzyme called TMPRSS, which allows the virus to fuse its membrane with that of the host cell and slip inside. (Lanese, 11/2)
People with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic can spread the disease without any outward signs that they're sick. But a newly developed AI, with a keen algorithmic ear, might be able to detect asymptomatic cases from the sounds of people's coughs, according to a new study. A group of researchers at MIT recently developed an artificial intelligence model that can detect asymptomatic COVID-19 cases by listening to subtle differences in coughs between healthy people and infected people. The researchers are now testing their AI in clinical trials and have already started the process of seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for it to be used as a screening tool. (Saplakoglu, 11/3)
If you think a negative test result means you don't have coronavirus, you could be wrong. It can take days before a new infection shows up on a Covid-19 test." We know that the incubation period for Covid-19 is up to 14 days. And before that, you can be testing negative, and have no symptoms," emergency medicine physician Dr. Leana Wen told CNN. "But you could actually be harboring the virus and be able to transmit it to others." (Yan, 11/3)
