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New approach provides potential vaccine and treatment for Alzheimer’s

LifeArc scientists, in collaboration with researchers in the UK and Germany, have developed a promising new approach to potentially treat Alzheimer’s disease – and also vaccinate against it.

Both the antibody-based treatment and the protein-based vaccine developed by the team reduced Alzheimer’s symptoms in mouse models of the disease. The research is published today in Molecular Psychiatry.


LifeArc and researchers in the UK & Germany have developed a promising new approach to potentially treat Alzheimer’s.

Why We Have No Way to Fight Against North Korean Hackers

The new form of war is already here and most don’t realize it.


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We Love mRNA. Let’s Use It For The Flu Vaccine Too

The last year has been a story of triumph in the vaccine world, with the rapid development of two highly successful vaccines for Covid-19, one developed by Moderna and the other by Pfizer and BioNTech. Now that flu season is approaching, why are we still using 50-year-old technology for the flu vaccine?

The reason the Covid-19 vaccines were developed so quickly is that they used a new, much faster and easier-to-create type of vaccine technology, based on messenger RNA, or mRNA. What’s even more exciting is that we now have an overwhelming amount of evidence, from real-world experience, that these vaccines are remarkably safe and effective.

Now, anti-vaxxers and the “vaccine hesitant” are claiming they don’t trust the vaccine because it was developed too fast. That’s ridiculous: the real reason they don’t trust the vaccine is because they’re consuming a steady diet of anti-vaccine nonsense, promoted by a combination of right-wing media and the Disinformation Dozen (who include left-wing as well as right-wing zealots). But let’s not go down that rabbit hole today.

Effect of early treatment with fluvoxamine on risk of emergency care and hospitalisation among patients with COVID-19: the TOGETHER randomised, platform clinical trial

I may have already posted about this, but this is more data from The Lancet.

Background.

Recent evidence indicates a potential therapeutic role of fluvoxamine for COVID-19. In the TOGETHER trial for acutely symptomatic patients with COVID-19, we aimed to assess the efficacy of fluvoxamine versus placebo in preventing hospitalisation defined as either retention in a COVID-19 emergency setting or transfer to a tertiary hospital due to COVID-19.

Methods.

This placebo-controlled, randomised, adaptive platform trial done among high-risk symptomatic Brazilian adults confirmed positive for SARS-CoV-2 included eligible patients from 11 clinical sites in Brazil with a known risk factor for progression to severe disease. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to either fluvoxamine (100 mg twice daily for 10 days) or placebo (or other treatment groups not reported here). The trial team, site staff, and patients were masked to treatment allocation. Our primary outcome was a composite endpoint of hospitalisation defined as either retention in a COVID-19 emergency setting or transfer to tertiary hospital due to COVID-19 up to 28 days post-random assignment on the basis of intention to treat. Modified intention to treat explored patients receiving at least 24 h of treatment before a primary outcome event and per-protocol analysis explored patients with a high level adherence (80%). We used a Bayesian analytic framework to establish the effects along with probability of success of intervention compared with placebo. The trial is registered at ClinicalTrials dot gov (NCT04727424) and is ongoing.


Treatment with fluvoxamine (100 mg twice daily for 10 days) among high-risk outpatients with early diagnosed COVID-19 reduced the need for hospitalisation defined as retention in a COVID-19 emergency setting or transfer to a tertiary hospital.

Mr. Temitayo Erogbogbo, Global Advocacy Director, MSD for Mothers (Merck Sharp & Dohme)

Creating a world where no woman has to die giving life — temitayo erogbogbo, global advocacy director, MSD for mothers, merck sharp & dohme.


Mr. Temitayo (Tayo) Erogbogbo, is Global Advocacy Director of MSD for Mothers (https://www.msdformothers.com/), at Merck Sharp & Dohme.

Tayo has two decades of combined private sector and international development experience, 13 years of which was spent in the pharmaceutical industry in multiple roles across community relations, government affairs, marketing and sales.

As the Global Advocacy Director of MSD for Mothers, Tayo is responsible for global and national strategic partnerships and programs to bring about policies and practice changes to improve maternal health care, and strengthen health systems, particularly where private sector approaches can be leveraged for greater impact.

Prior to MSD for Mothers, Tayo led the establishment of an adolescents and youth constituency at The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), a multi-constituency partnership hosted by the World Health Organization, to advocate for better sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health policies and services at global, regional, and national levels. Additionally, he contributed to the development of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health 2016–2030.

Illuminating Dark Matter in Human DNA — Unprecedented Atlas of the “Book of Life”

In an unprecedented atlas, researchers begin to map how genes are turned on or off in different cells, a step toward better understanding the connections between genetics and disease.

Researchers at University of California San Diego have produced a single-cell chromatin atlas for the human genome. Chromatin is a complex of DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

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