by Kirstie Ganobsik Hepatitis C is a viral infection of the liver no one wants to catch, so knowing how that can happen can be critical. The American Liver Foundation estimates that it affects about 2.7 million people in the United States today. To help you protect yourself against this virus, liver experts describe how you get hepatitis C,...
TOKYO MEDICAL AND DENTAL UNIVERSITY IMAGE: (A) MULTI-RECEPTOR MODEL OF THE INITIAL PHASE OF HTLV-1 ENTRY INTO TARGET CELLS. (B) SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF INTERACTIONS BETWEEN VEGF165, HSPG, AND NRP-1. HTLV-1: HUMAN T-CELL LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS TYPE 1; SU: SURFACE SUBUNIT; HSPG: HEPARAN SULFATE PROTEOGLYCAN; NRP-1: NEUROPILIN-1. CREDIT: DEPARTMENT OF OPHTHALMOLOGY AND VISUAL SCIENCE, TMDU Tokyo, Japan...
Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc. Nov 28 2022 Just as bricks are key components in constructing a building, molecules known as amino acids are essential components in constructing proteins in the body. Recently, researchers in Japan investigated the role of a particular group of amino acids, known as D-amino acids, in the progression of viruses...
New research from an international collaboration, including researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has identified a rare genetic mutation in people of Polynesian descent, which increases their risk of severe viral infection or death. Researchers studied the highly unusual cases of seven Polynesian previously healthy children. Still, they developed severe or fatal reactions...
by University of Montreal Processing of S peptides by furin and TMPRSS2. (A) Schematic representation of the primary structure of preproS, including its domains, the predicted furin-like S1/S2 site generating the S1 and S2 subunits, and the S2′ site preceding the fusion peptide (FP). The signal peptide (SP), N-terminal domain (NTD), receptor binding domain (RBD)...
by Julia Evangelou Strait, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis A new study from Washington University School of Medicine implicates a type of immune cell — called a dendritic cell — in the development of chronic lung diseases that can follow after a respiratory viral infection. Shown is a stained section of mouse lung....
By Dr. Liji Thomas, MD The global pandemic of COVID-19 continues to cause thousands of deaths and many hundreds of thousands of new infections every day. New methods are urgently needed to identify severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and manage them better, including developing criteria for hospitalization. A new study by a...
by Children’s National Hospital With many questions remaining around how children spread COVID-19, Children’s National Hospital researchers set out to improve the understanding of how long it takes pediatric patients with the virus to clear it from their systems, and at what point they start to make antibodies that work against the coronavirus. The study, published Sept. 3...
by Emily Ayshford, University of Chicago More than 1.7 million Americans develop sepsis each year, and more than 270,000 die from it. The condition—which happens when the body has an extreme response to a bacterial or viral infection, causing a chain reaction that can lead to organ failure and death—has few strategies for treatment. That’s...
Research begins to pick apart the mechanisms behind a deadly COVID-19 complication. Purple rashes, swollen legs, clogged catheters and sudden death — blood clots, large and small, are a frequent complication of COVID-19, and researchers are just beginning to untangle why. For weeks, reports have poured in of the disease’s effects throughout the body, many...
