Month: January 2022

An employee prepares vials for analysis at a LabQuest laboratory, a clinic that does antibody testing and processing, in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) (NEXSTAR) — Sore throat, runny nose and a headache — the symptoms could mean your body is fighting through a cold, the flu or a COVID-19 infection. You might not have had access to a COVID-19 test, or maybe your symptoms went away before you had the chance. There’s also the possibility you tested too early in the infection, so you got a false negative. Is there a way to tell if that sickness you had a month ago, or even last year, was COVID-19 or something else? The short answer is yes. In practice, however, the answer is more complicated...

(Getty Images) NEW YORK (StudyFinds.org) – Could COVID-19 actually be doing more harm to the human brain than Alzheimer’s disease? A new study reveals older patients contracting COVID have more signs of brain damage than people who develop the neurodegenerative disease. Specifically, a team from NYU Grossman School of Medicine found significantly higher levels of certain blood proteins which typically rise when someone suffers neurological damage among COVID patients. Researchers say, over the short-term course of their infections, seven markers of brain damage were noticeably higher among COVID patients than non-COVID patients with Alzheimer’s. One of these markers was more than twice as high among coronavirus patients. “Our findings su...

“I said, ‘I am an RNA scientist. I can do anything with RNA,’” Dr. Karikó recalled telling Dr. Weissman. He asked her: Could you make an H.I.V. vaccine? “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I can do it,” Dr. Karikó said. Up to that point, commercial vaccines had carried modified viruses or pieces of them into the body to train the immune system to attack invading microbes. An mRNA vaccine would instead carry instructions — encoded in mRNA — that would allow the body’s cells to pump out their own viral proteins. This approach, Dr. Weissman thought, would better mimic a real infection and prompt a more robust immune response than traditional vaccines did. It was a fringe idea that few scientists thought would work. A molecule as fragile as mRNA seemed an unlikely vaccine candidate. Grant reviewers were not i...

An employee prepares vials for analysis at a LabQuest laboratory, a clinic that does antibody testing and processing, in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) (NEXSTAR) – Sore throat, runny nose and a headache – the symptoms could mean your body is fighting through a cold, the flu or a COVID infection. You might not have had access to a COVID-19 test, or maybe your symptoms went away before you had the chance. There’s also the possibility you tested too early in the infection, so you got a false negative. Is there a way to tell if that sickness you had a month ago, or even last year, was COVID or something else? The short answer is yes. In practice, however, the answer is more complicated. The ...

As the omicron variant continues to drive COVID case numbers upward, some individuals may be faced with the prospect of testing positive for coronavirus for the first time, and may not know what to do if that diagnosis comes. In the state of Illinois, there have been nearly 2.6 million cases of COVID-19 reported in the last two years, and the last month has seen the highest case numbers of the entire pandemic in the state. Fortunately, most cases of COVID-19 end up producing mild symptoms, and there are a series of steps that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you take if you test positive for the virus. For a full list of tips, you can visit the CDC's website. Stay at Home as Much as Possible The first tip is the most obviou...