Month: August 2020

As the world waits for a vaccine to help bring about the end of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists in Northern California have been at work on a different approach — one that takes cues from llamas and their unique antibodies. Llamas, like all mammals, have antibodies that protect them from viruses. But llama antibodies are different — they're tiny. Their diminutive stature gives them the unique ability to bind to proteins on the outside of the coronavirus that are crucial to its spread. Now, scientists say they hope to harness the power of these llama antibodies to stop the coronavirus from infecting humans. At the University of California, San Francisco, researchers created a lab-made molecule inspired by llama antibodies that they say is surprisingly effective at neutralizing the c...

An unexpectedly positive turn for Brazilian cities once plagued with the coronavirus pandemic is raising fresh questions about herd immunity. A new report in the Washington Post described how the impoverished city of Manaus saw hospitalizations plummet even though it had never imposed a lockdown or taken the other drastic containment measures imposed in Asia and Europe. It’s also testing far more residents than it once did. Initially, medical experts believed that between 60 percent and 70 percent of the population needed to develop antibodies to reach collective immunity, but Manaus never got past 20 percent. And the Amazonian city of 2 million suffered three times as many deaths as normal in the spring. There are too many unknown variables to be sure, however, in the broad...

A woman who was infected with H.I.V. in 1992 may be the first person cured of the virus without a risky bone-marrow transplant or even medications, researchers reported on Wednesday. In an additional 63 people in their study who controlled the infection without drugs, H.I.V. apparently was sequestered in the body in such a way that it could not reproduce, the scientists also reported. The finding suggested that these people may have achieved a “functional cure.” The research, published in the journal Nature, outlines a new mechanism by which the body may suppress H.I.V., visible only now because of advances in genetics. The study also offers hope that some small number of infected people who have taken antiretroviral therapy for many years may similarly be able to suppress the virus and ...

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