Lifeboat Foundation

Bulky, buzzing and beeping hospital rooms demonstrate that monitoring a patient’s health status is an invasive and uncomfortable process, at best, and a dangerous process, at worst. Penn State researchers want to change that and make biosensors that could make health monitoring less bulky, more accurate—and much safer.

The key would be making sensors that are so stretchable and flexible that they can easily integrate with the human body’s complex, changing contours, said Larry Cheng, the Dorothy Quiggle Professor in Engineering and an affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. His lab is making progress on designing sensors that can do just that.

If biosensors that are both energy efficient and stretchable can be achieved at scale, the researchers suggest that engineers can pursue—and, in some cases, are already pursuing—a range of options for sensors that can be worn on the body, or even placed inside the body. The payoff would be smarter, more effective and more personalized medical treatment and improved health decision-making—without a lot of bulky, buzzing and beeping pieces of monitoring equipment.

As of 29 February 2020 there were 79,394 confirmed cases and 2,838 deaths from COVID-19 in mainland China. Of these, 48,557 cases and 2,169 deaths occurred in the epicenter, Wuhan. A key public health priority during the emergence of a novel pathogen is estimating clinical severity, which requires properly adjusting for the case ascertainment rate and the delay between symptoms onset and death. Using public and published information, we estimate that the overall symptomatic case fatality risk (the probability of dying after developing symptoms) of COVID-19 in Wuhan was 1.4% (0.9–2.1%), which is substantially lower than both the corresponding crude or naïve confirmed case fatality risk (2,169/48,557 = 4.5%) and the approximator¹ of deaths/deaths + recoveries (2,169/2,169 + 17,572 = 11%) as of 29 February 2020. Compared to those aged 30–59 years, those aged below 30 and above 59 years were 0.6 (0.3–1.1) and 5.1 (4.2–6.1) times more likely to die after developing symptoms. The risk of symptomatic infection increased with age (for example, at ~4% per year among adults aged 30–60 years).

Four organizations representing the nation’s major research institutions and medical schools today wrote to congressional leaders, urging them to increase research spending at federal science agencies by some 15%, or $13 billion, in order to prevent students and researchers in all scientific disciplines from going broke, to help closed laboratories restart once the pandemic eases, and to cover other unanticipated costs to the academic research enterprise.

Academic scientists plead for help to both conquer COVID-19 and limit its damage.

Recently, we’ve encountered the following claim: “#Copper has antimicrobial effect that can help destroy #viruses (including #coronavirus) and #bacteria.” — If you think the message above is fishy, you’re not alone! At first, we’re suspicious as well. However, after a little digging, we found that there may be some truth in it. The following are some references supporting the claim: [Relevant Articles] https://bit.ly/2J2OEbt (Wikipedia: #Antimicrobial properties of #copper) https://bit.ly/3bg73NY (Fast Company) https://bit.ly/3didUs2 (Vice) [Scientific Papers — PDF] https://bit.ly/396UDqu https://bit.ly/3a43Xwt https://bit.ly/2wh8flF The biocidal effect of metals such as #copper is called “oligodynamic effect” (or to be more precise, such biocidal effect is carried out by the ions of these metals), and it can happen even when the ions are in low concentration. The effect may involve multiple mechanisms. For instance, #copper can inappropriately bind to some #proteins and accordingly cause these proteins to lose their functions, or #copper can decrease the integrity of the microbes’ membrane and cause important substances such as #potassium and #glutamate to leak out from the cell, etc. Note that this certainly does NOT mean that simply wearing ornaments made of copper can stop #COVID19 and other #pathogens from infecting your body, but it does help you to choose the material of the things you use (e.g., you may want to use copper fork or spoon while dining more often recently)!

Civilizations have recognized copper’s antimicrobial properties for centuries. It’s time to bring the material back.

[Source Images: ekimckim/Blendswap (toilet), blenderjunky/Blendswap (bathroom)].

Continue reading “Copper kills coronavirus. Why aren’t our surfaces covered in it?” »

A new study whose results were published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents has found early evidence that the combination of hydroxychloroquine, a popular anti-malaria drug known under the trade name Plaqenuil, and antibiotic azithromycin (aka Zithromax or Azithrocin) could be especially effective in treating the COVID-19 coronavirus and reducing the duration of the virus in patients.

The researchers performed a study on 30 confirmed COVID-19 patients, treating each with either hydroxychloroquine on its own, a combination of the medicine with the antibiotic, as well as a control group that received neither. The study was conducted after reports from treatment of Chinese patients indicated that this particular combo had efficacy in shortening the duration of infection in patients.

The patient mix included in the study included six who showed no symptoms whatsoever, as well as 22 who had symptoms in their upper respiratory tract (things like sneezing, headaches and sore throats, and eight who showed lower respiratory tract symptoms (mostly coughing). 20 of the 30 participants in the study received treatment, and the results showed that while hydroxycholoroquine was effective on its own as a treatment, when combined with azithromycin it was even more effective, and by a significant margin.

Circa 2018

Could CRISPR technology lead to the development of real-life superheroes like the X-Men? We think yes – and you may be shocked to learn that people with superhuman abilities already walk among us. Learn about how CRISPR could turn the next generation into superhumans who choose their abilities from a catalog.

It appears that there are some effective treatments for COVID-19 rising up. These could dramatically improve/weaken the effects of the virus.

There’s also some hope that things are better than they seem anyway. There’s growing evidence that a lot of people have COVID-19 but have such mild symptoms that they aren’t being tested and counted as confirmed cases — which means the death rate and statistics about severe cases are much better than they seem. Additionally, it’s possible a larger share of the population is immune to the virus than initially thought:

Continue reading “[UPDATED] Progress On COVID-19 Treatment? Looks Like It” »

The complicated secondary metabolism of plants has been the source of countless medicinal compounds and leads for drug discovery. It is little surprise then that plant products and their analogues have been employed as an early line of defence against COVID-19. On 17 February, the Chinese State Council announced that chloroquine phosphate — a structural analogue of quinine, originally extracted from the bark of cinchona trees — can be used for treating COVID-19 patients. This anti-malarial also has broad-spectrum antiviral activity and regulatory effects on the immune system. Clinical evaluation of chloroquine phosphate in more than ten hospitals across several provinces in China has shown that it alleviates the symptoms for most patients and expedites virus seroconversion.

Epidemic diseases are not a new phenomenon, but easy access to transport in the modern world has accelerated their spread. Perhaps some botanical understanding can help slow them down.

As of Thursday afternoon, there are 10,985 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and zero FDA-approved drugs to treat the infection.

While DARPA works on short-term “firebreak” countermeasures and computational scientists track sources of new cases of the virus, a host of drug discovery companies are putting their AI technologies to work predicting which existing drugs, or brand-new drug-like molecules, could treat the virus.