COVID-19: The Scientific Progress Thread

[ktgrok]

5 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re Oxford Vaccine Group efforts:

 

Mmmm, that would be *fantastic* ... and may derive from this sentence in the BBC article

 

But in context it sounds more like that would be for the equivalent of what would be, here in the US, a "phase 3 trial," not general availability...

...and if so, vaccine for clinical trial would unlikely for several reasons to be available here in the US.  

 

I am DEFINITELY not a scientist, but the process for making this vaccine, which involves removing a different virus from chimpanzees and modifying it, sounds sufficiently complex that ramping it to massive scale, globally, would be quite challenging.

 If immunity holds, which is the baseline premise of both vaccine hopes and natural "herd immunity" hopes; and if this particular vaccine provides immunity. Two major IFs.

(Which is not to be pessimistic -- I hold pretty high hopes for a vaccine.  I'd be cautious about counting on it by fall, though.

 

I could be wrong, but the description of the type of vaccine sounds like it is a recombinant DNA vaccine which is common in animal vaccines. So not new technology, at least. I've been out of veterinary medicine for a decade, and we had recombinant vaccines for a while before I left. 

https://www.aaha.org/aaha-guidelines/vaccination-canine-configuration/vaccine-types/

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Ktgrok

[ElizabethB]

New vitamin D study.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484#.XqNy-JjBiB0.twitter

D level mild outcome was 31.2 ng/ml

27.4 ng/ml for ordinary

21.2 ng/ml for severe

17.1 ng/ml for critical

Vitamin D status is significantly associated with clinical outcomes (p<0.001). 

[ktgrok]

20 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

New vitamin D study.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484#.XqNy-JjBiB0.twitter

D level mild outcome was 31.2 ng/ml

27.4 ng/ml for ordinary

21.2 ng/ml for severe

17.1 ng/ml for critical

Vitamin D status is significantly associated with clinical outcomes (p<0.001). 

The problem is that low D can be caused by preexisting kidney disease, liver disease, etc and is also associated with age - the elderly have lower levels.....so it is hard to say that supplementing D would fix the issue if D is just a marker for those other risk factors. 

[ElizabethB]

2 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

The problem is that low D can be caused by preexisting kidney disease, liver disease, etc and is also associated with age - the elderly have lower levels.....so it is hard to say that supplementing D would fix the issue if D is just a marker for those other risk factors. 

But it is healthy and cheap and may help! (Free from the sun for many right now, even cheaper.) So, big upside, almost no downside.  

[ktgrok]

5 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

But it is healthy and cheap and may help! (Free from the sun for many right now, even cheaper.) So, big upside, almost no downside.  

Oh, sure, but I'm not going to get my hopes up that it will protect me. I already supplement D, and I'm making sure the kids get it, but i'm not overly sure of what that study is really showing. that said, if your D is as low as that low group, forget Covid, you need to be supplementing just to not be miserable! In general, I think it is standard now to say people should supplement to keep levels over 30. 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Ktgrok

[ElizabethB]

11 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

The problem is that low D can be caused by preexisting kidney disease, liver disease, etc and is also associated with age - the elderly have lower levels.....so it is hard to say that supplementing D would fix the issue if D is just a marker for those other risk factors. 

Also, there was a huge study, 11,000 people, showing that vitamin D supplementation reduced both the likelihood of getting and the severity if you got it of other respiratory diseases.

https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583

Edited April 25, 2020 by ElizabethB

[ElizabethB]

1 minute ago, Ktgrok said:

Oh, sure, but I'm not going to get my hopes up that it will protect me. I already supplement D, and I'm making sure the kids get it, but i'm not overly sure of what that study is really showing. that said, if your D is as low as that low group, forget Covid, you need to be supplementing just to not be miserable! In general, I think it is standard now to say people should supplement to keep levels over 30. 

Yes, it is the standard, but 75% of black Americans and 40% of all Americans are below 30.  So, vitamin D may also account for some of the racial death differences.

[ktgrok]

20 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

Also, there was a huge study, 11,000 people, showing that vitamin D supplementation reduced both the likelihood of getting and the severity if you got it of other respiratory diseases.

https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583

Wasn't it mostly that people who were deficient benefited, versus "extra" for those getting enough?

[ktgrok]

19 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

Yes, it is the standard, but 75% of black Americans and 40% of all Americans are below 30.  So, vitamin D may also account for some of the racial death differences.

Oh. 

Ok, I actually didn't realize that at all! I feel like garbage when I get down to 30! I'm good at 40-50! DH did get down to 19 and I was freaking out and had him on major supplements! 

Wow. Off to go make sure he is taking his!

[ElizabethB]

9 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

Oh. 

Ok, I actually didn't realize that at all! I feel like garbage when I get down to 30! I'm good at 40-50! DH did get down to 19 and I was freaking out and had him on major supplements! 

Wow. Off to go make sure he is taking his!

I moved from Texas to the north and my allergies made me stay inside more or pay consequences, I got down to 7, I felt terrible, very fatigued, just horrible.  I feel OK at 30 but much better at 50.  My current allergy doctor says 80 might be even better for me, allergy wise.  We hadn't lived that far north for an extended time, I don't realize we needed to supplement at first.  I was already making the immediate family supplement, when I figured out it might help with Covid, I pushed vitamin D with all my friends and family!

[ElizabethB]

14 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

Wasn't it mostly that people who were deficient benefited, versus "extra" for those getting enough?

Yes, those who were deficient benefitted the most, but those that were in the lowish but not deficient range still had slightly milder courses of sickness and a bit less likely to get the illnesses than those who were lowish but got a placebo instead of vitamin D.

[Terabith]

Wow, 7 is pretty bad.  Had a psychiatrist say they saw psychosis below 12 or so.  

[ElizabethB]

3 hours ago, Terabith said:

Wow, 7 is pretty bad.  Had a psychiatrist say they saw psychosis below 12 or so.  

My doctor tried to convince me I was depressed.  I told her, I'm not depressed, I'm just really fatigued.  A black lady in the UK whose levels were as low as mine said the same thing, her doctor tried to tell her she was depressed and put her on antidepressants.  She said the same thing, that it was physical, figure it out. (Her doctor did tests and figured it out, she never took the antidepressants, but her doctor did prescribe some, she just ignored the prescription.)

At my instance, my doctor did a bunch of blood tests for a variety of things, everything else was normal, the D was very, very low.

I don't think mine were that low for very long.  The black lady in the UK had very low levels for almost 2 years, she had a bunch of weird symptoms by the time she figured it out.

Edited April 25, 2020 by ElizabethB

[Ausmumof3]

18 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re protocol for formal studies with "control groups" in cases like this one where no treatment at all would be unethical --

 

This is speaking of a vaccine, not a treatment, but the principle is the same.  The control group doesn't have not get NO treatment (i.e. what we typically think of as "placebo").  The control group gets "standard treatment" (i.e., the existing, already-approved drug or protocol).  But the trial group and the control group don't know which they're in.

From the article (about a new vaccine that Oxford University is beginning to trial):

(As an aside, the gold-standard for US Phase 3 drug trials, for normal drugs in non-emergency situations, is that the doctors ALSO do not know who's in the control and who's in the experiment group... because that too can be a confounding factor.  But there are all sorts of things that necessarily go differently in circumstances like these.)

I just realised if the control group get standard and the test group get standard plus new treatment how do you rule out interactions between the drugs?  Or do the second group only get the new treatment? 

[ktgrok]

5 hours ago, ElizabethB said:

My doctor tried to convince me I was depressed.  I told her, I'm not depressed, I'm just really fatigued.  A black lady in the UK whose levels were as low as mine said the same thing, her doctor tried to tell her she was depressed and put her on antidepressants.  She said the same thing, that it was physical, figure it out. (Her doctor did tests and figured it out, she never took the antidepressants, but her doctor did prescribe some, she just ignored the prescription.)

At my instance, my doctor did a bunch of blood tests for a variety of things, everything else was normal, the D was very, very low.

I don't think mine were that low for very long.  The black lady in the UK had very low levels for almost 2 years, she had a bunch of weird symptoms by the time she figured it out.

My husband went in with depression, fatigue, leg pains, sleep issues, muscle aches. I asked them to check D, and voila. My husband was shocked that so many things could be related!

[Pam in CT]

re clinical trials for new drugs/treatments/protocols, and controlling for efficacy of new treatment 

5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I just realised if the control group get standard and the test group get standard plus new treatment how do you rule out interactions between the drugs?  Or do the second group only get the new treatment? 

So, first: this is my husband's field, not my own, so anything I've learned is only through osmosis, not through actual training like maize or Katie or others on this thread.

Second, the drug approval process in the US is different than in Australia or Europe. Here, for most drugs, it's three stages of increasingly large-sized trials. The first two stages focus principally on safety, that the side effects of the new treatment aren't worse than no-treatment. The third phase is the one that drills down to efficacy, that the treatment works as well or better than anything else currently approved.  So the work of double-blind or placebo controls or (in the event of ghastly diseases for which controlling by a placebo would be unethical) control group given "existing treatment" typically only is happening in the third phase trial.  Trial size for the first two phases are typically quite small; only third phase has wide scale participation.

Third, in the case of drugs for which no-treatment/placebo controls would be unethical (typically: potentially imminently life threatening diseases such as cancer), there necessarily has to be a huge focus on consent -- participants signing on to the trial have to have very extensive detailed review of what, exactly, they are signing onto in that particular trial.  Which varies a lot -- all trial design is an art as much as a science.  The guidelines for how large the trials need to be for approval are also, typically, smaller for drugs in that context than for, say, yet another cholesterol drug, in recognition of the ethical issues.

Fourth and to your point about drug interaction, while trial design is art as much as science, and for emergent drugs in these ethical-issues circumstances even more so, there is even more flexibility.  For the most part -- here, these are guidelines negotiated case-by-case with the FDA -- the trials are not organized as Experiment Group = New Drug / Control Group = Existing Treatment + New Drug. Rather, they are Experiment Group = New Drug / Control Group = Existing Treatment (only). 

[Ausmumof3]

18 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re clinical trials for new drugs/treatments/protocols, and controlling for efficacy of new treatment 

So, first: this is my husband's field, not my own, so anything I've learned is only through osmosis, not through actual training like maize or Katie or others on this thread.

Second, the drug approval process in the US is different than in Australia or Europe. Here, for most drugs, it's three stages of increasingly large-sized trials. The first two stages focus principally on safety, that the side effects of the new treatment aren't worse than no-treatment. The third phase is the one that drills down to efficacy, that the treatment works as well or better than anything else currently approved.  So the work of double-blind or placebo controls or (in the event of ghastly diseases for which controlling by a placebo would be unethical) control group given "existing treatment" typically only is happening in the third phase trial.  Trial size for the first two phases are typically quite small; only third phase has wide scale participation.

Third, in the case of drugs for which no-treatment/placebo controls would be unethical (typically: potentially imminently life threatening diseases such as cancer), there necessarily has to be a huge focus on consent -- participants signing on to the trial have to have very extensive detailed review of what, exactly, they are signing onto in that particular trial.  Which varies a lot -- all trial design is an art as much as a science.  The guidelines for how large the trials need to be for approval are also, typically, smaller for drugs in that context than for, say, yet another cholesterol drug, in recognition of the ethical issues.

Fourth and to your point about drug interaction, while trial design is art as much as science, and for emergent drugs in these ethical-issues circumstances even more so, there is even more flexibility.  For the most part -- here, these are guidelines negotiated case-by-case with the FDA -- the trials are not organized as Experiment Group = New Drug / Control Group = Existing Treatment + New Drug. Rather, they are Experiment Group = New Drug / Control Group = Existing Treatment (only). 

That makes sense.  Thanks.

[ElizabethB]

5 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

My husband went in with depression, fatigue, leg pains, sleep issues, muscle aches. I asked them to check D, and voila. My husband was shocked that so many things could be related!

The black lady had leg pains, too!  A bunch of weird symptoms her doctor didn't realize were all vitamin D related.

[Liz CA]

Here is something I found interesting. More conflicting opinions, naturally but worth looking at other ways to handle things:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866

[ElizabethB]

New Indonesia Vitamin D study: 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561#.XqWc-1XHXpM.twitter

[Kanin]

NYT update about the Oxford vaccine: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

[Pam in CT]

13 minutes ago, Mainer said:

NYT update about the Oxford vaccine: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

That is indeed promising.  While it's not *clear* from the article how the effort is proceeding through the UK / rest of Europe / US / rest of world regulatory agencies, or how the early manufactured vaccine would be distributed, there is at least indication that US researchers are included in the overall effort and that, therefore, there are parallel efforts to move through the different agencies simultaneously rather than serially.

From the article:

Quote

...Most other teams have had to start with small clinical trials of a few hundred participants to demonstrate safety. But scientists at the university’s Jenner Institute had a running start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations — including one last year against an earlier coronavirus — were harmless to humans.
That has enabled them to leap ahead and schedule tests of their new coronavirus vaccine involving more than 6,000 people by the end of next month, hoping to show not only that it is safe, but also that it works...

...Scientists at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month inoculated six rhesus macaque monkeys with single doses of the Oxford vaccine. The animals were then exposed to heavy quantities of the virus that is causing the pandemic — exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later all six were healthy, said Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test.

“The rhesus macaque is pretty much the closest thing we have to humans,” Dr. Munster said, noting that scientists were still analyzing the result. He said he expected to share it with other scientists next week and then submit it to a peer-reviewed journal...

...“It is a very, very fast clinical program,” said Emilio Emini, a director of the vaccine program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is providing financial support to many competing efforts.

Which potential vaccine will emerge from the scramble as the most successful is impossible to know until clinical trial data becomes available.
More than one vaccine would be needed in any case, Dr. Emini argued. Some may work more effectively than others in groups like children or older people, or at different costs and dosages. Having more than one variety of vaccine in production will also help avoid bottlenecks in manufacturing, he said.

 

[Corraleno]

17 minutes ago, Mainer said:

NYT update about the Oxford vaccine: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

"...scientists involved in the project are working with a half dozen drug manufacturing companies across Europe and Asia to prepare to churn out billions of doses as quickly as possible if the vaccine is approved. None have been granted exclusive marketing rights, and one is the giant Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest supplier of vaccines.
.........
But the team has not yet reached an agreement with a North American manufacturer, in part because the major pharmaceutical companies there typically demand exclusive worldwide rights before investing in a potential medicine.“I personally don’t believe that in a time of pandemic there should be exclusive licenses,” Professor Hill said. ”

 

So in addition to the US being behind the curve in controlling the virus, we may also be behind the curve in getting a vaccine, if pharmaceutical companies here can't be guaranteed large profits. The article goes on to say that two US companies are working on their own proprietary vaccines, which presumably they will have exclusive rights to and can charge whatever they want. I wonder if we'll also have access to cheaper vaccines manufactured abroad, or if we'll be stuck waiting longer, and paying much more, for vaccines from US companies? 

[Kanin]

10 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

That is indeed promising.  While it's not *clear* from the article how the effort is proceeding through the UK / rest of Europe / US / rest of world regulatory agencies, or how the early manufactured vaccine would be distributed, there is at least indication that US researchers are included in the overall effort and that, therefore, there are parallel efforts to move through the different agencies simultaneously rather than serially.

 

6 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

So in addition to the US being behind the curve in controlling the virus, we may also be behind the curve in getting a vaccine, if pharmaceutical companies here can't be guaranteed large profits. The article goes on to say that two US companies are working on their own proprietary vaccines, which presumably they will have exclusive rights to and can charge whatever they want. I wonder if we'll also have access to cheaper vaccines manufactured abroad, or if we'll be stuck waiting longer, and paying much more, for vaccines from US companies? 

 

Ugh, no kidding. Especially since Trump has declined to join the world-wide effort to speed vaccine research. Not the time to go it alone! It's maddening.

[Pam in CT]

4 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

"...scientists involved in the project are working with a half dozen drug manufacturing companies across Europe and Asia to prepare to churn out billions of doses as quickly as possible if the vaccine is approved. None have been granted exclusive marketing rights, and one is the giant Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest supplier of vaccines.
.........
But the team has not yet reached an agreement with a North American manufacturer, in part because the major pharmaceutical companies there typically demand exclusive worldwide rights before investing in a potential medicine.“I personally don’t believe that in a time of pandemic there should be exclusive licenses,” Professor Hill said. ”

 

So in addition to the US being behind the curve in controlling the virus, we may also be behind the curve in getting a vaccine, if pharmaceutical companies here can't be guaranteed large profits. The article goes on to say that two US companies are working on their own proprietary vaccines, which presumably they will have exclusive rights to and can charge whatever they want. I wonder if we'll also have access to cheaper vaccines manufactured abroad, or if we'll be stuck waiting longer, and paying much more, for vaccines from US companies? 

It's not clear in the Oxford vaccine article, but my understanding from others and from Gates' own  writing (linked over in the Politics thread) is that part of the terms of the B&M Gates foundation's support for vaccine efforts is that no one manufacturer has exclusive license to any vaccines that come out of funded efforts.  That does of course suppress profitability to private companies but it also enables wider and faster deployment across the world.

So many topnotch US universities and research labs are involved in the quest to a vaccine that I genuinely believe a solution to finding a manufacturer can be found.

Less sanguine about a solution to *funding* the vaccine's widespread deployment to all residents (not insured people,  not citizens, residents) necessary for herd immunity.

 

[JennyD]

This interview with Bill Gates is very illuminating about the current state of research (and includes some good links).  

[PrincessMommy]

On 4/25/2020 at 12:17 AM, ElizabethB said:

I moved from Texas to the north and my allergies made me stay inside more or pay consequences, I got down to 7, I felt terrible, very fatigued, just horrible.  I feel OK at 30 but much better at 50.  My current allergy doctor says 80 might be even better for me, allergy wise.  We hadn't lived that far north for an extended time, I don't realize we needed to supplement at first.  I was already making the immediate family supplement, when I figured out it might help with Covid, I pushed vitamin D with all my friends and family!

how do you know your levels?  Are you getting bloodwork often?  I haven't had mine D levels checked in a couple of years - and they were low then.  (inside a lot and allergy sufferer too)> 

[ElizabethB]

18 minutes ago, PrincessMommy said:

how do you know your levels?  Are you getting bloodwork often?  I haven't had mine D levels checked in a couple of years - and they were low then.  (inside a lot and allergy sufferer too)> 

I get mine checked fairly often now.  If you don't want to go in to get your levels checked right now, you can get some D from the sun, your body adjusts naturally when you get it from the sun.  You need a sun angle of above 50 degrees, no sunscreen, cover your face, expose as much of the rest of the body as possible.

You could also supplement for a few weeks safely if you're naturally low without worry of OD, D3 or cod liver oil are best.  Levels of 2,000 a day keep your summer levels stable, 4,000 a day or more to build up.

Edited April 27, 2020 by ElizabethB

[TCB]

53 minutes ago, Plum said:

Not sure where I should put this. I'm questioning the validity of this, but it is something that could be helpful. Dh questioned taking employees temps when the owners manuals say people must be inside for 20 minutes before taking their temp to get an accurate reading. It's going to hit 100 degrees here in a few weeks. How are those things going to be able to take accurate temps of employees? Should there be a waiting room to get your temp checked? Anyway, the company says this will scan someone in 5 seconds and can check their temperature, oxygen levels, heart rate, lung congestion and other systems that might want to get monitored. It can connect with other systems to alert for hot spots. 

 

Do you know how it works, how it checks all those things? I'm wondering how it checks O2 sats with someone just standing there like that? I wonder how accurate it is? If it is accurate I wish we had that technology in the ICU! Getting finger probes to pick up on some people is a pain!

[ElizabethB]

"Of those requiring mechanical ventilation fewer patients died in the ivermectin group (7.3% versus 21.3%) and overall death rates were lower with ivermectin (1.4% versus 8.5%; HR 0.20 CI 95% 0.11-0.37, p<0.0001)."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3580524

It would be ironic (but nice, I'm not voting against it!) if a common pet/horse/cow medicine turned out to be the solution!!

[TCB]

9 hours ago, Plum said:

That’s what I was wondering. I’ve heard some hospitals are using facial scans with AI to check visitors. 

Early Sense which is a monitor that goes under the mattress and transmits data wirelessly and uses AI to predict problems before they happen. Perhaps this is a spinoff from that? 
https://webreprints.djreprints.com/57205.html

Wow that is so interesting! It’s making me wonder about all the things that will come out of this crisis that we will adopt as part of our normal practice!

[Laura Corin]

Covid symptoms and genetics - twin data

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.22.20072124v2

 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Laura Corin

[mathnerd]

Gilead China's trials using Remedisvir have not shown that it works as a treatment for Covid19 while their US trials show the opposite effect.

The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a “potential benefit.”

Apparently, the study was accidentally released by the WHO.

There are a few reports about it, but I can only find one link that is not behind a paywall:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23/data-on-gileads-remdesivir-released-by-accident-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/

 

[ElizabethB]

New study, New Orleans

"Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe COVID-19"

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075838v1

I would make a graph but their data is kind of confusing, and low patient numbers.

[RootAnn]

Re: Abidium Lab's new antibody test

Are they citing the tests' sensitivity and specificity with their 'positive coincidence rate' and 'negative coincidence rate'? If so, does that mean no false positives but some false negatives (meaning they miss some truly currently or previously infected)? 

Avidium Labs’ international partners conducted a comparative study of the rapid IgG/IgM antibody test kit for SARS-CoV-2 against other commercially available SARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM detection test kits that show a positive coincidence rate of 97.92% and a negative coincidence rate of 100%.

[Laura Corin]

https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazeneca-and-oxford-university-announce-landmark-agreement-for-covid-19-vaccine.html

[Pam in CT]

re Oxford vaccine effort aligns with a major global manufacturer

6 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazeneca-and-oxford-university-announce-landmark-agreement-for-covid-19-vaccine.html

If you're inclined to do such things, now is a good time to call your Senators and urge that this effort (once approved for safety and efficacy) be permitted to manufacture here/ find a partner with whom to manufacture here.  Even though that would mean that there will not be a US manufacturer with global monopoly rights.

[JennyD]

I think I might have posted something along these same lines before, but I find the possibility that old vaccines might grant some protection to the coronavirus incredibly exciting.  

 

[ElizabethB]

In Italy, only 20 out of 65,000 Lupus patients got Covid-19.

https://internetprotocol.co/hype-news/2020/04/30/covid19-explanation-hcq-works/

[ElizabethB]

For people wanting info from a more mainstream site, Daily Mail, "People with low levels of Vitamin D may be more likely to catch coronavirus and die from COVID-19 infection, study suggests" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8277775/People-low-levels-Vitamin-D-likely-die-COVID-19-infection.html

[ElizabethB]

New vitamin D paper, lots of interesting graphs.  Vitamin D vs. outcome and age especially interesting, Vitamin D status overcame age in correlation graph, so older patients with good vitamin D levels were better off than younger patients [relative older, they were all old] with lower levels of vitamin D.

India Study

Vitamin D Level of Mild and Severe Elderly Cases of COVID-19: A Preliminary Report

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3593258#.XrE0oF1wSjU.twitter

 “Majority (84.6%) of COVID-19 critical patients had Vitamin D insufficiency and 100% of critical patients less than 75 years old had Vitamin D insufficiency.”

[JennyD]

Possibility of using concentrated antibodies from plasma of recovered patients as a 'passive vaccine' for high-risk people.

 

[Ausmumof3]

https://m.jpost.com/health-science/iibr-completes-development-phase-of-covid-19-vaccine-626913/amp?__twitter_impression=true

this might be promising

[ElizabethB]

Evidence Linking Ultraviolet-B (UVB) Radiation to Deaths Attributed to COVID-19
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3586555#.XrK4CC3Jebh.twitter
“we find that a (permanent) one-unit increase in UVI leads to a 2.2% [p-value is less than 0.01] decrease in COVID-19 deaths (per day) as well as a 1.9% [p-value is less than 0.05] decrease in case fatality rate (per day).”
 

They also discuss a possible link to vitamin D. UVI is UV Index.

[ElizabethB]

Another very interesting Vitamin D Covid article, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20087965v1

Evidence Supports a Causal Model for Vitamin D in COVID-19 Outcomes

Very different than the other articles, looks at latitude, other factors, very technical.  They bring together a lot of different figures and factors to build their causal model.

@lewelmaWhat do you think? This one seems more up your alley.  Or @regentrudeOne of the authors has a background in physics.

The biology is sound but the math/modeling is not my area of expertise.  It seems plausible but I didn't understand it well enough to spot any errors.

Edited May 7, 2020 by ElizabethB

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200504165651.htm
 

according to Korean researchers 2 drugs are showing promise as potential Covid treatments.  One is niclosamide (a tape worm medication that costs 24c per dose) and the other is ciclesonide a corticosteroid

 

[Laura Corin]

This is interesting on the changing nature of scientific publishing in general:

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/06/scientific-research-on-the-coronavirus-is-being-released-in-a-torrent?fsrc=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-05-06&utm_content=article-link-1

[cintinative]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2765654?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=050720

The new coronavirus has been found in the semen of infected individuals, according to Chinese researchers, raising the prospect that the virus could be sexually transmitted.

“These are intriguing results,” said John Brooks, chief medical officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 response. But it doesn’t mean that semen is infectious, he noted. “When we’re looking everywhere for this virus, we’re finding its footprints in different places in the body—whether that’s a trace or if it’s a big foot is very hard to say.”

Edited May 7, 2020 by cintinative

[Matryoshka]

10 minutes ago, cintinative said:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2765654?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=050720

The new coronavirus has been found in the semen of infected individuals, according to Chinese researchers, raising the prospect that the virus could be sexually transmitted.

“These are intriguing results,” said John Brooks, chief medical officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 response. But it doesn’t mean that semen is infectious, he noted. “When we’re looking everywhere for this virus, we’re finding its footprints in different places in the body—whether that’s a trace or if it’s a big foot is very hard to say.”

Interesting but here's what I think... if you're close enough to someone infected with Coronavirus to be having sex with them, you're going to get it from them in a zillion other ways before you have to worry about this pathway...  (that is, unless you're going at it in full hazmat with convenient access panels...)

[ktgrok]

So, this says what I had read elsewhere...that antibody tests may cross react to the coronaviruses  that cause the common cold. And that a positive is, depending on the prevalence of the disease in a given area, possibly more likely to be a false positive than a true positive. https://www.idsociety.org/globalassets/idsa/public-health/covid-19/idsa-covid-19-antibody-testing-primer.pdf