Studies corner

[Branster]

There are so many snippets of information regarding small tests, case studies and even research from all over the world, some interesting, some surprising, some hopeful. Too many and too small or sometimes obscure to make the main news

If you’d like to share you are welcome to join the thread.

I’ll make a start with these findings from Canada about a potential inhibitor drug

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200402144526.htm

"Coughing, sneezing" - I forgot masks of course

@BigChocFrenzy of course. Also, many studies have suggested that two meters is not far enough. Further many have posited that as it ha ha in the air for hours, a person could expel the aerosols, someone else could enter the room afterwards thinking everything is fine and breathe in said particles and contract t the virus. The scenarios are endless and very worrying. It does appear a very realistic mode of transmission that many are not aware of because it is not being publisised and has been dismissed by the WHO

Hangs not ha ha. Stupid phone

The WHO have mentioned it, but when told to keep quiet by influential members, then they haven't much choice if they want to continue in existence

I don't know much about the issue of corruption. Frankly I am afraid and have spent my time researching transmission mostly in what many would think a silly way of protecting my family. Knowledge is power and all that.

I read a paper that explained that in a supermarket for example the public will unlikely be affected by aerosols due to the short period of time they are there and the air dilution due to the large space. On the other hand this is not the case for supermarket staff who are there for hours of which my oldest child who has left home is one.

studies on aerosols pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32356927/

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

Lab studies are not a good guide to what happens outside labs.

The whole family is not usually infected according to China it would be if aerolisation was a significant problem

www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/218769/coronavirus-updates/covid-19-update-transmission-5-or-less-among-close

Taiwanese study - few contacts acquired an infection

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2765641

Not really a study - but if you are concerned about aerosols worth watching

Did anyone just see Dr rank on ITV? At the end he essentially inferred there would be a vaccine bi the end of the year. I that wishful thinking? Is it likely one of the vaccines will work?

Ranj not rank. Bloody phone

Do you mean implied?

No. I meant inferred

I'm pretty sure he said something at the end like 'so we will haveabe to wait until December for a vaccine'

So no-one else sees to be putting these two studies together - explanation of why vitamin D is so important.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100307215534.htm
and
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52754280

So T cells are critical and they wont activate without enough vitamin D.

APOE e4 genotype predicts severe COVID-19 in the UK Biobank community cohort

The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, glaa131, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glaa131
Published: 26 May 2020

https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gerona/glaa131/5843454

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-on-covid-19-and-a-faulty-gene-linked-to-dementia/

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, UK Dementia Research Institute Group Leader and Deputy Director, Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences, The University of Edinburgh

“Using data from over 300,000 people in the UK BioBank, Prof Melzer and colleagues observe
an association between the APOE4 gene and risk of testing positive for COVID-19.

“This study is robustly conducted, and the observation is important and will lead to future research into how APOE4 may influence the risk of contracting COVID-19
or having severe symptoms requiring hospitalisation, where most tests are performed.

This is interesting because recent research into why APOE4 also increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease indicate that APOE4 is involved in the immune system.

“An important limitation of the current paper is that this type of observational study cannot prove that the APOE4 gene is the cause of the observed increased risk of COVID-19.
The scientists did a thorough job of trying to control for other things associated with APOE4 that could account for the risk,
but it is still possible that there is an unknown related factor causing the increased risk.”
...
Prof Clive Ballard, Medical School Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Exeter, said:

“The E4 gene is a major risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease – people with one copy are at 3-4 fold increased risk and people with two copies have at least a 10 fold increased risk.

The current findings may partly explain why people with dementia are more at risk of severe COVID, and we should be taking more care of this vulnerable group of individuals at this challenging time”

“The implications of the study are well beyond the significant implications for people with dementia.
25% of people in the population carry one E4 gene, and this is clearly an important risk factor for developing severe COVID.

ApoE4 plays a major role in lipid and cholesterol metabolism and also has some role in immune response.
This may give us important clues in helping to develop new approaches to reduce risk.”

alreadytaken Very interesting link you found between Vit D and T-cells^:

"The researchers found that the T cells rely on vitamin D in order to activate and they would remain dormant, 'naïve' to the possibility of threat if vitamin D is lacking in the blood."

Oxford university professor explains when and why we will get a second wave. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/28/coronavirus-infection-rate-too-high-second-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I didnt actually find the link - simply put together two studies reported on other threads that no-one had yet connected. It's also been known for a while that vitamin D levels drop during an infection. I think the explanation for greater severity in some patients is going to be at least partly that those with low vitamin D levels have fewer T cells activate.

It's criminal that supplementation of vitamin D has never been mentioned in daily briefings. If the news today about the government ignoring scientific advice on care homes is correct this is looking like a deliberate policy.

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-ive-never-seen-such-sticky-blood-says-thrombosis-expert?fbclid=IwAR2Q9IMnFhruvgca-xPPysMlWapNEikM0BWuFapqbz_kmuMXU6FqwU80zig#Stay-mobile-to-reduce-blood-clot-risk

Very good link on covid making blood sticky.

@alreadytaken on the vit d. I read a study that explained that the vit d needs to be from the sun not bottle to be effective against c19. If I find it I will post

doctors routinely express doubts about supplementing with vitamin D - however a couple of small studies have found it effective against respiratory disease. The only way to be sure if it helps with Covid-19 would be controlled trials. I doubt anyone will do them but I'm not going to wait. Get sunshine if you can but between October and March you cant make vitamin D in the skin so I took a supplement throughout the winter.

Italian doctor says covid is becoming less potent mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2370OQ?__twitter_impression=true

COVID has a low k (dispersion factor)
i.e. most infections are spread by a small number of infected people

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

SARS-CoV-2 .....Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three.
But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all.
.....
That’s why in addition to R, scientists use a value called the dispersion factor (k), which describes how much a disease clusters.
The lower k is, the more transmission comes from a small number of people
....
In the flu pandemic of 1918....the value was about one, indicating that clusters played less of a role.
.....
in a recent preprint, Adam Kucharski of LSHTM estimated that k for COVID-19 is as low as 0.1
“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

Superspreading and the effect of individual variation on disease emergence (pub. 2005)

www.nature.com/articles/nature04153

This doesnt really support the Italian doctor , says if there is any weakening it's minor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108506v1

It's likely that any second wave will be smaller for a number of reasons - some of the most susceptible dead and the rest taking precautions, many health care staff have been affected and therefore probably less hospital transmission, hopefully higher vitamin D levels reducing severity of infection.