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Adults and children with COVID-19 who have a history of malnutrition may have an increased likelihood of death and the need for mechanical ventilation, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 40 percent of nurses and other health care workers had risks associated with an increased likelihood of burnout, reports a survey study in the August issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

A computational analysis of COVID-19 tests suggests that, in order to minimize the number of infections in a population, the amount of testing matters more than the sensitivity of the tests that are used. Philip Cherian and Gautam Menon of Ashoka University in Sonipat, India, and Sandeep Krishna of the National Centre for Biological Sciences TIFR, Bangalore, India, present their findings in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology.

What The Study Did: This study included 647 patients with untreated nonmetastatic prostate cancer (269 patients during the pandemic and 378 from before the pandemic). During the initial COVID-19 lockdown, only 1% of Black men underwent prostatectomy, while 26% of white patients did.

Of the nearly 100 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines currently undergoing clinical trials, only seven are delivered intranasally - despite this vaccine type's long success in providing protection from influenza.

Reduced mobility induced by the COVID-19 restrictions had only minor influence on particulate pollution levels according to atmosphere studies in the Po Valley region of northern Italy. Eventually computer simulations indicated that the change in air quality led to an increase in secondary aerosol formation.

The rapid spread of the Alpha variant of COVID-19 in the UK resulted from biological changes in the virus and was enhanced by large numbers of infected people 'exporting' the variant around the country, in what the researchers call a 'super-seeding' event.

Replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, depends on a series of interactions between viral proteins and different cellular partners such as nucleic acids (DNA or RNA). Characterizing these interactions is crucial to elucidate the process of viral replication and identify new drugs for treating COVID-19.

Research led by Queen Mary University of London provides new insight into the mechanisms that lead to uncontrolled inflammation in COVID-19 patients.

During the height of the pandemic, some hospitals were overwhelmed with patients seeking treatment for COVID-19. This situation could happen again during future outbreaks, especially with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern on the rise. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Analytical Chemistry have developed a blood test to predict which people infected with COVID-19 are most likely to experience serious symptoms, which could help health care workers prioritize patients for hospitalization and intensive care.

Safe and effective vaccines offer hope for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the possible emergence of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as novel coronaviruses, make finding treatments that work against all coronaviruses as important as ever. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research have analyzed viral proteins across 27 coronavirus species and thousands of samples from COVID-19 patients, identifying highly conserved sequences that could make the best drug targets.

Older people appear to have fewer antibodies against the novel coronavirus, a new laboratory study from Oregon Health & Science University suggests. With vaccine uptake slowing in Oregon and across United States, researchers say their findings underscore the importance of promoting vaccinations in local communities.

A new University of Chicago study has found that the drug masitinib may be effective in treating COVID-19.