A critical challenge during the early COVID-19 pandemic was determining whether a patient would survive the infection or die from it. And even though a host of lifesaving therapeutics now spares substantially more lives than four years ago, the art of predicting COVID outcomes remains a matter of scientific pursuit.
Data from an international team of researchers in Scotland and Brazil suggest that their prediction model defines specific characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infection that can be used to forecast disease outcomes and triage sick patients in hospitals.
The data in the new study are based on infections that occurred in 2020, and team members contend that their forecasting method is useful. But they worry that in 2024, patients' protection against COVID via vaccines could raise questions whether their method is a timely model. The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Medical interventions that range from vaccines and antivirals to monoclonal antibodies have dramatically curtailed fatalities from COVID compared with the early years of the pandemic. Yet, the novel strategy, based on research involving patients in Brazil, reveals specific "signatures" of COVID infection, which allowed the team to forecast patients' outcomes with a fair degree of accuracy.
João Da Silva Filho of the Wellcome Center for Integrative Parasitology and the School of Infection and Immunity at University of Glasgow in Scotland has characterized and defined these signatures as they relate to specific stages of disease severity.
Working with collaborators at the University of Amazonas State and Federal University of Amazonas, both in in Manaus, Brazil, Da Silva Filho describes these stages as early death, late death, and recovery. The model can predict a patient's group upon admission to a hospital. The signatures of patients' infection determine their disease trajectory and fate, Da Silva Filho and colleagues say.
"COVID-19 is characterized by a broad range of symptoms and disease trajectories," Da Silva Filho writes in the article. "Understanding the correlation between clinical biomarkers and lung pathology during acute COVID-19 is necessary to understand its diverse pathogenesis and inform more effective treatments."
The signatures that Da Silva Filho and colleagues uncovered and say can be used to forecast COVID outcomes were derived from clinical and peripheral blood data gathered prior to and after the deaths of 142 COVID patients in Brazil. With respect to postmortem analysis, researchers examined lung tissues down to the single cell level to uncover specific signatures with lung-specific changes that Da Silva and collaborators say drive disease progression. --->READ MORE HERE
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused a 29% increase in risk for developing dyslipidemia, a new study finds.
A new study led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine involving more than 200,000 adults found that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a 29% increase in risk for developing dyslipidemia, a condition involving abnormal lipid (fat) levels in the blood. Seniors and people with type 2 diabetes were even more strongly affected, experiencing an approximately two-fold increased risk for developing dyslipidemia, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. The research was published today in the print edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“Given the extent of the pandemic, this increase in dyslipidemia risk is a cause for concern around the world,” said study leader Gaetano Santulli, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine and of molecular pharmacology at Einstein. “Based on our findings, we would advise people to have their lipid levels monitored regularly and to consult with their healthcare providers about ways to treat dyslipidemia if detected, especially elderly individuals and patients with diabetes.” He noted that this advice would apply to all adults, not just those formally diagnosed with COVID-19, considering that many people have been infected without realizing it.
To put these findings into context, it has been estimated that 53% of U.S. adults had dyslipidemia before the pandemic; a 29% increase in dyslipidemia incidence due to COVID-19 would mean that 68% of Americans may now be at risk for having lipid abnormalities.
In two previous studies, Dr. Santulli and his team found that COVID-19 raised the incidence of new cases of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. “In those analyses, we demonstrated that the risk of developing these disorders was still high three years after the pandemic; moreover, we noticed a suspicious increase in total cholesterol levels, which warranted a closer look,” said Dr. Santulli. In the new study, the researchers first determined the incidence of dyslipidemia in a group of more than 200,000 adults living in Naples, Italy, during the three years prior to the start of the pandemic (2017-2019). They then assessed the incidence of dyslipidemia in the same group during the three-year COVID-19 period (2020-2022), excluding from the analysis those people earlier diagnosed with dyslipidemia or who had previously been taking lipid-lowering medications. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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