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A New England Journal of Medicine study yesterday of cancer patients with COVID-19 demonstrated viral RNA shedding for up to 78 days and live virus for up to 61 days, suggesting extended infectiousness in patients whose immune system is suppressed. Live-virus shedding in patients who are not immunocompromised is well-documented, but little is known about how long immunocompromised patients—including those receiving cancer treatments—are contagious. The presence of viral RNA does not always correlate with transmissibility, and previous studies have demonstrated lengthy periods of viral RNA shedding after patients are no longer infectious. (12/2)

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the obesity epidemic once again into the spotlight, revealing that obesity is no longer a disease that harms just in the long run but one that can have acutely devastating effects. New studies and information confirm doctors’ suspicion that this virus takes advantage of a disease that our current U.S. health care system is unable to get under control. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 73% of nurses who have been hospitalized from COVID-19 had obesity. In addition, a recent study found that obesity could interfere with the effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine. (Varney, 12/3)

A case report from a New Jersey hospital highlights how drug-resistant pathogens can take advantage of COVID-related disruptions to standard infection and prevention control (IPC) practices. In a paper published yesterday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH), and Rutgers University report on an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) at an unnamed 500-bed hospital that occurred during the spring surge of coronavirus infections in the state. (Dall, 12/2)

Symptoms of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, can range from mild to severe. The most common include fever, a dry cough or shortness of breath, but there are other indications you could need to be tested or have a conversation with your doctor. Not everyone experiences the same symptoms, and the order in which they appear can vary. Some people don’t show any symptoms — what health experts call “asymptomatic” cases — but still could spread the virus to others. (Fritz, 12/2)

The recurrence of cancer months or even years after successful treatment is an all too common phenomenon, and scientists have been chipping away at understanding how undetectable cells can once again unleash disease on the body — often more aggressively than the first time around. In a new study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, one group of researchers describes how a cascade of events set off by high levels of a stress hormone could cause dormant tumor cells to reawaken to once again cause cancer. (Chakradhar, 12/2)

For years now, biologists have been practicing a kind of time travel. You can take a speck of human skin, and with the right genetic tweaking, turn back its inner clock until it becomes its embryonic self, stripped of its identity and ready to become just about any human body part at all. Since the method was published in 2006, transforming adult cells into stem cells has allowed all sorts of advances. (Boodman, 12/2)