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If researchers could find the most effective antibody against coronavirus, it could act as both a cure and temporary vaccine. Image credit - NIH Image Gallery, Public Domain Mark 1.0
coronavirus outbreak | health | frontier research
14 May 2020

‘The aim is to find the monoclonal’: the hunt for the antibody to treat Covid-19

Transfusing antibodies from Covid-19 survivors into seriously ill patients could provide a quick treatment win, but a more selective approach may both treat and prevent the disease. A single, highly-effective antibody that is mass-produced like a drug could combine the benefits of antivirals and a vaccine for at-risk individuals such as health workers.

How you respond to a sensation such as tickling depends on whether it is created by you or someone else. Image credit - Pxhere/ licenced under CC BY 2.0
health
11 May 2020

The science of tickling: why the brain won’t let us tickle ourselves

Ever tried tickling yourself? Next time you have a private moment, give it a go – you’ll find it next to impossible. With a few well-placed wiggles of the fingers, most of us could send children, friends and even some animals like rats into fits of giggles. The reason we can’t do the same to ourselves has long been a puzzle, but one that we may now be closer than ever to solving. Understanding it requires a deep dive into the workings of the brain; for such a playful activity, the science of tickling is surprisingly sophisticated.

Scientists are reducing the size and costs of microscopes, which could make this equipment more widely accessible and facilitate faster diagnosis of diseases such as cancer. Image credit - Ed Uthman/Flickr, licenced under CC0 1.0
health | ict | industry
07 May 2020

‘Microscope on a chip’ could bring medical expertise to distant patients

Scientists are reducing the size and costs of medical microscopes to make it possible to use them more widely, and hook them up to experts able to diagnose an illness even from far away.

Professor Cecilia Mascolo at the University of Cambridge, UK, hopes her coronavirus sounds app could provide the data needed to build a quick and cheap Covid-19 screening test in the future. Image credit - Salvatore Scellato
interview | health | coronavirus outbreak | ict | frontier research
30 April 2020

Q&A: The sound of your voice could help fight Covid-19

A recording of a cough, the noise of a person’s breathing or even the sound of their voice could be used to help diagnose patients with Covid-19 in the future, according to Professor Cecilia Mascolo, an expert in mobile health at data analysis at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Coronavirus lockdowns have caused air pollution to drop. Science is probing whether air pollution worsens the effects of coronavirus, with recent studies including in Italy suggesting there’s a link between polluted areas and higher fatality risk. Image credit - European Space Agency/ licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
interview | health | coronavirus outbreak
22 April 2020

Q&A: China and Europe likely to see different effect of coronavirus-related air pollution drop

In March, a study revealed that between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths could be avoided this year in China if air pollution stayed at the same level as during the coronavirus lockdown. While other parts of the world have also seen improvements in air quality, the impact in Europe is likely to be less dramatic than for China, according to Dr Kristin Aunan from the Centre for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Norway, who conducted the study.

Researchers have found two different virus populations in the throat and lungs of coronavirus patients, a whole new type of virus behaviour. Image credit - pixnio.com/Darko Stojanovic, licenced under CC0
health | coronavirus outbreak
20 April 2020

‘I don’t see any other way out’: Diagnostic testing and smartphone contact tracing to beat pandemic

What makes the Covid-19 pandemic so difficult to contain? Silent transmission by asymptomatic patients is partly responsible, but research emerging from Germany suggests the SARS-CoV-2 virus has developed a second impressive strategy for ensuring its success: the ability to establish two separate communities within a host – the first in the throat, the second in the lungs. Early colonisation of the throat is responsible for the dangerous lag between a person being infectious and the onset of symptoms.

The average drug takes 12 years before it’s approved for widespread use. Researchers are using supercomputers to screen abandoned drugs that are safe to use to see if they can work for coronavirus. Image credit - Rawpixel/licenced under CC0
coronavirus outbreak | health
14 April 2020

Repurposing drugs and networks can help find outbreak treatments against the clock

A vaccine is likely to take at least a year. A new drug could be a decade away. Even with the world’s resources focused, treatments against a new disease are difficult to create from scratch. However, repurposing existing drugs for other conditions could provide a much-needed shortcut.

Scientists hope a new pipeline will be able to churn out remedies for any newly emerging virus. Image credit - Unsplash/ Maksym Kaharlytskyi, licenced under CC0
coronavirus outbreak | health
07 April 2020

Studying animal coronavirus defences is opening route to human treatments

A team that has spent the last five years developing a pipeline of technologies that can churn out a remedy for almost any newly emerging virus may have treatments ready for safety trials on Covid-19 patients by the end of the year. 

Habitat loss such as forest clearing or mining operations can increase the chance of a disease jumping from animals to humans, says Prof. Koopmans. Image credit - M.P.G. Koopmans, Erasmus MC 2020
coronavirus outbreak | interview | health
02 April 2020

Q&A: We have to rethink disease detection to get ahead of the outbreak after coronavirus

We know that outbreaks like coronavirus will become more common in the future and tackling them is the Apollo programme of our time, according to Professor Marion Koopmans, head of the viroscience department at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. 

According to Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding, an approved mRNA coronavirus vaccine would be easier and faster to produce and thus deploy worldwide than a conventional vaccine. Image credit - Unsplash/Liliya Lisa
coronavirus outbreak | interview | health
01 April 2020

Five things you need to know about: mRNA vaccines

The race for a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, is on, with 54 different vaccines under development, two of which are already being tested in humans, according to the World Health Organization. And among the different candidates is a new player on the scene – mRNA vaccines.

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