Health & Fitness

The coronavirus zombifies human cells and causes them to sprout tentacles in order to spread around the body, scientists have discovered. A study led by the University of California saw researchers take microscopic images of this process, which they have described as 'so sinister'. Images show infected cells growing tentacle-like spikes, known as filopodia, which appear to be littered with viral particles. The researchers believe the disease uses the tentacles to 'surf' to healthy cells, where it injects its viral venom into them and creates more zombie cells.   Until now, researchers believed Covid infected like most other viruses - by latching onto healthy cells and turning them into copying machines. But, in people with healthy immune systems, the body can fight off the majority of the...

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Wyandotte County issues order requiring people to wear face masks Mandate starts Tuesday at 5 p.m. Updated: 1:00 PM CDT Jun 27, 2020 Wyandotte County health officials issued a new order Saturday that will require residents to wear face masks in public spaces in order to slow and contain the spread of COVID-19.The mandate starts Tuesday at 5 p.m."We're seeing dramatically increased cases. We're seeing dramatically increased numbers of individuals seeking testing. The positivity rate of the testing is going up on the Kansas side of the state line in the last two weeks, which is extremely concerning to us," said county health officer Dr. Allen Greiner ...

The total number of Covid-19 infections may be six to 24 times greater than reported, according to a survey of blood samples in six areas across the country conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey looked for Covid-19 antibodies in blood samples from commercial laboratories – which were collected for reasons unrelated to Covid-19, between March 23 and May 3 – in Connecticut, South Florida, the New York City metro area, Missouri, Utah and western Washington State. In Connecticut, the survey estimated that 5% of people had antibodies to Covid-19 between April 26 and May 3, which meant there were six times more cases than reported. In the New York City metro area, that number was 7% of people around late March – 12 times higher than the number of cases repor...

The claim: Doctors warn COVID-19 may trigger diabetes in otherwise healthy people  ScienceAlert, an independent online site covering scientific research, posted an essay that Julian Hamilton-Shield, of the University of Bristol, wrote for The Conversation, exploring the possibility that "COVID-19 is not just a risk for people with diabetes — it may actually cause diabetes." People with diabetes — a disease of the pancreas that limits the body’s ability to process blood glucose — run an increased risk of dying from COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes. But COVID-19 also could be causing diabetes, wrote Hamilton-Shield, a professor of diabetes and metabolic endocrinology. What are scientists finding? Hamilton-Shield in his essay pointed to a new case report about a young man in ...

“It’s a lot more critical to identify where that drug is working, because ultimately you don't want to go blindly into a human trial or even an animal experiment,” says Jason Kindrachuk, a microbiologist at the University of Alberta who isn’t involved in the research. The approach is by no means a guarantee, but it’s a good way to generate leads that researchers can study more deeply. “All of this information is amazingly useful,” he says. The new UCSF-led research takes a slightly different approach. This time, they measured changes in an activity called phosphorylation, which plays a role in flicking cellular processes on and off: everything from how the cell grows and divides and dies to, yes, how it develops filopodia. The activity is managed by a type of protein called kinases. The ...

How, exactly, does the coronavirus hijack and reprogram human cells to sicken and kill? This question has obsessed Nevan Krogan since February, when the UCSF virus expert and his colleagues realized, before many did, that things in America would get very bad very fast. Since then, the question has only grown more urgent, and for the past four months, Krogan and an ever-expanding team of scientific collaborators in San Francisco and around the world have turned their labs upside down, prying out secrets of the virus that might point to a cure. ...

Maxwell Posner/NPR YouTube I like to run. And bike. And go for walks. Especially during the pandemic. It's a time I can almost forget about the novel coronavirus. But some people are trying to make me feel guilty about outdoor exercise. My own nephew said, "Uncle Marc, if you're infected and don't know it, you could be huffing and puffing out virus." Does he have a point? I talked to a half-dozen experts to see about the risks of outdoor exercise for the exerciser and for others — and whether masks are helpful. And let me clarify: I mean solo exercise. Going out shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of pals is not a good idea d...

Then he spends most of the next 14 hours leading dozens of fellow researchers and volunteers in a systematic review of all the drugs that physicians and researchers have used so far to treat Covid-19. His team has already pored over more than 8,000 papers on how to treat coronavirus patients. The 35-year-old associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine leads the school's Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory. For the last few years, he has dedicated his life to studying Castleman disease, a rare condition that nearly claimed his life. But after seeing how the same types of flares of immune-signaling cells, called cytokine storms, kill both Castleman and Covid-19 patients alike, his lab has devoted nearly all of its resources to aiding doc...

At least five states reported their highest single day record of COVID-19 cases Friday, adding to the growing concern of case increases that has sent many states backpedaling on their reopening plans. Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah all reported record daily cases, according to their state’s health departments. And for Florida, which has been eyed as the possible next epicenter, that number reached 8,938 new cases in just one day. And it is not just those states seeing rising numbers. The national number of daily coronavirus case reports reached a new high Friday as well at almost 40,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and 33 states are currently seeing the number of new cases grow from the week before. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told re...