Month: September 2020

Annie Beauregard/iStock/Getty Images Plus Since March, we’ve all been forced to rethink our handling of personal space. Dictating our distance from other humans is a rule of thumb that defines “close contact”: If you’re within 6 feet of someone for more than 15 minutes, it’s potentially dangerous. This is the rule that federal and state health departments use to determine whom needs to be contacted after someone tests positive for COVID-19, and it’s a rule (especially the 6 feet part) that many Americans are using to determine their risk when going shopping or seeing friends. Restaurant servers adhere to it by not lingering at tables; news anchors adhere to it on TV, their seats carefully spaced out. But as we move indoors in increasin...

Genes that some people have inherited from their Neanderthal ancestors may increase the likelihood of suffering severe forms of COVID-19, according to scientists. A study by European scientists published Wednesday by the journal Nature identifies a cluster of genes that are linked to a higher risk of hospitalization and respiratory failure in patients who are infected with the coronavirus.  Researchers Hugo Zeberg and Svante Paabo determined that the genes belong to a group, or haplotype, which likely came from Neanderthals. The haplotype is found in about 16% of the population in Europe and half the population in South Asia, while in Africa and East Asia it is non-existent. Modern humans and Neanderthals are known to have interbred at various points in history, resulting in an ex...

Traffic EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- El Paso police said a driver was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after a crash on the east side early Wednesday morning. Traffic investigators were looking into the cause of the collision at the intersection of Viscount and Hawkins. An emergency dispatcher told ABC-7 another person was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. El Paso police have not said how many vehicles were involved, or what may have caused the crash. No other information was immediately released by police. El Paso / News / Top Stories

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as "the Berlin patient," was 54. Brown was considered cured of his HIV infection in 2008. In the year prior, Brown received a bone marrow transplant in Berlin, Germany, to treat a separate disease he had been diagnosed with: acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The bone marrow he received came from a donor whose genes carried a rare mutation that made the donor naturally resistant to HIV, known as CCR5-delta 32, which was transferred on to Brown. Brown remained HIV free -- but for the past six months he had been living with a recurrence of the leukemia that had entered his spine and brain, according to the International AIDS Society (IAS). "On behalf of all its members and the Governing Council, the IAS sends its condolences to Timothy's partner, Tim, and his fa...