Covid19-Sources

This cohort study compares the risk of new-onset hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes before and after COVID-19 infection among patients who were vaccinated vs unvaccinated before infection.

This cohort study compares the risk of new-onset hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes before and after COVID-19 infection among patients who were vaccinated vs unvaccinated before infection.

A total of 536 individuals (mean age 45 years, 73% female, 89% white, 32% healthcare workers, 13% acute COVID-19 hospitalisation) completed baseline assessment (median: 6 months post COVID-19); 331 (62%) with organ impairment or incidental findings had follow-up, with reduced symptom burden from baseline (median number of symptoms 10 and 3, at 6 and 12 months, respectively). Extreme breathlessness (38% and 30%), cognitive dysfunction (48% and 38%) and poor health-related quality of life (EQ-5D-5L  0.7; 57% and 45%) were common at 6 and 12 months, and associated with female gender, younger age and single-organ impairment. Single- and multi-organ impairment were present in 69% and 23% at baseline, persisting in 59% and 27% at follow-up, respectively.

Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma - Family responses to crises such as COVID-19 are driven by parents’ experiences. Parental history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) might play...

Novel SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants, including BM.1.1.1, BQ.1.1, and XBB.1, continue to emerge at an unprecedented rate, evading pre-existing immunity from vaccination and previous infection. Quantifying the antigenic diversity of variants might assist in selecting future vaccine strains. To determine the antigenic relationships between emerging SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants, we and others1–4 used antigenic cartography, whereby multidimensional scaling is used to generate antigenic maps in which the positions of antigens and antiserum samples directly correspond to neutralising titres.

Cases of adolescents and young adults developing myocarditis after vaccination with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–targeted mRNA vaccines have been reported globally, but the underlying immunoprofiles of these individuals have not been described in detail. METHODS: From January 2021 through February 2022, we prospectively collected blood from 16 patients who were hospitalized at Massachusetts General for Children or Boston Children’s Hospital for myocarditis, presenting with chest pain with elevated cardiac troponin T after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. We performed extensive antibody profiling, including tests for SARS-CoV-2–specific humoral responses and assessment for autoantibodies or antibodies against the human-relevant virome, SARS-CoV-2–specific T-cell analysis, and cytokine and SARS-CoV-2 antigen profiling. Results were compared with those from 45 healthy, asymptomatic, age-matched vaccinated control subjects. RESULTS: Extensive antibody profiling and T-cell responses in the individuals who developed postvaccine myocarditis were essentially indistinguishable from those of vaccinated control subjects, despite a modest increase in cytokine production. A notable finding was that markedly elevated levels of full-length spike protein (33.9±22.4 pg/mL), unbound by antibodies, were detected in the plasma of individuals with postvaccine myocarditis, whereas no free spike was detected in asymptomatic vaccinated control subjects (unpaired t test; P0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Immunoprofiling of vaccinated adolescents and young adults revealed that the mRNA vaccine–induced immune responses did not differ between individuals who developed myocarditis and individuals who did not. However, free spike antigen was detected in the blood of adolescents and young adults who developed post-mRNA vaccine myocarditis, advancing insight into its potential underlying cause.

Boston – Die Ursache der impfstoffassoziierten Myokarditis, zu der es in sehr seltenen Fällen nach einer COVID-19-Impfung kommen kann, war bisher völlig unklar.... #COVID19 #Impfen #Studienzusammenfassung

Nature Cardiovascular Research - Through analysis of the electronic medical records of 284,592 vaccinated patients, using a sequence–symmetry analysis, Kwan et al. show that the risk of...

RNA vaccines are efficient preventive measures to combat the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. High levels of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are an important component of vaccine-induced immunity. Shortly after the initial two mRNA vaccine doses, the immunoglobulin G (IgG) response mainly consists of the proinflammatory subclasses IgG1 and IgG3. Here, we report that several months after the second vaccination, SARS-CoV-2–specific antibodies were increasingly composed of noninflammatory IgG4, which were further boosted by a third mRNA vaccination and/or SARS-CoV-2 variant breakthrough infections. IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose, on average, from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% late after the third vaccination. This induction of IgG4 antibodies was not observed after homologous or heterologous SARS-CoV-2 vaccination with adenoviral vectors. Single-cell sequencing and flow cytometry revealed substantial frequencies of IgG4-switched B cells within the spike-binding memory B cell population [median of 14.4%; interquartile range (IQR) of 6.7 to 18.1%] compared with the overall memory B cell repertoire (median of 1.3%; IQR of 0.9 to 2.2%) after three immunizations. This class switch was associated with a reduced capacity of the spike-specific antibodies to mediate antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis and complement deposition. Because Fc-mediated effector functions are critical for antiviral immunity, these findings may have consequences for the choice and timing of vaccination regimens using mRNA vaccines, including future booster immunizations against SARS-CoV-2.

Long Covid Support and Long Covid Kids publish the first data on the effect of COVID reinfections on adults and children living with Long Covid. Long Covid Kids recommends reading this article in combination with our child-specific infection analysis blog which runs from the beginning of the pandemic to 1st April 2022 when final protections in England were removed. Prof Daniel M Altmann, Professor of Immunology, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Imperial College, Faculty of Medicine and

A recent study found that heart attacks in people ages 25 to 44 increased by 30% compared to the expected number over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Forscher untersuchten Durchbruchinfektionen und Komplikationen nach einer COVID-19-Impfung bei Krebspatienten und Menschen ohne Krebserkrankung.

Background: Autoimmune encephalitis was very rare prior to the current pandemic. A sharp rise in cases has been observed from March to August of 2022 in Los Angeles. Such an increase, especially...

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What lessons can be learned from our experience with bivalent vaccines? Fortunately, SARS-CoV-2 variants haven’t evolved to resist the protection against severe disease offered by vaccination or previous infection. If that happens, we will need to create a variant-specific vaccine. Although boosting with a bivalent vaccine is likely to have a similar effect as boosting with a monovalent vaccine, booster dosing is probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease — specifically, older adults, people with multiple coexisting conditions that put them at high risk for serious illness, and those who are immunocompromised. In the meantime, I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later.

Since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, multiple severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants wi…

Nature - Convergent mutations in hotspots of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron receptor-binding domain can cause immune evasion and maintain sufficient ACE2-binding capability.

Auch wenn die Zahlen der Corona-Neuinfektionen derzeit relativ niedrig und die Verläufe mild sind: Die Folgen einer Erkrankung - Long und Post Covid - verschwinden nicht. Kann man sich davor schützen, beispielsweise durch die Corona-Impfung?

AbstractAims. This study aims to evaluate the short- and long-term associations between COVID-19 and development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes and mo

The CDC says 92% of reported side effects after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are mild.

Data from suicide registers page on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website

The COVID-19 pandemic has had damaging health, social and economic impacts across the world. In some countries the health impacts have been dominated by the large number of deaths as a direct result of COVID-19.1 In countries like Australia, where the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths have been fewer, the health impacts are likely to relate more to the consequences of social distancing and stay-at-home orders.2 There has been considerable concern about the mental health of populations during this time and in particular, concerns that suicides might increase as a consequence of the pandemic.3-5 To date, most international and Australian based research has found no overall increase in suicides in the initial months of the pandemic.6-8 However, experts have noted that we need to remain vigilant, and that increases in suicide may still occur.2,9 Recent findings from Japan suggest this caution is warranted; after an initial reduction in suicide in that country, there was a subsequent increase. 10,11 In addition to continuing to monitor overall trends in suicide as the pandemic continues, it is important to consider whether patterns may vary for different subgroups in the population.9 Monitoring suicide numbers for different demographic subgroups (e.g., males and females in different age groups) is important, but even this only tells part of the story. It is also important to track whether certain the social determinants of suicide are increasingly being implicated in suicides during the pandemic. Doing so will give us deeper insights into where to focus prevention efforts. The effects of economic damage from the pandemic such as financial problems and unemployment are a major concern given research following the global economic crisis of 2008 showed an increase in suicide in two thirds of the countries studied.12 Other risk factors for suicide that may be heightened by the pandemic include relationship breakdown and homelessness. Recent research from Queensland using the interim Queensland Suicide Register (iQSR), found no absolute or relative increases in four motives for suspected suicides, namely recent unemployment, financial problems, relationship breakdown, or domestic violence in the initial months of the pandemic. 7 The current study complements the Queensland study 7 by including data from the Victorian Suicide Register (VSR) and the Tasmanian Suicide Register (TSR). Pooling data from these three registers meant that we could include approximately half of all the suicides that occurred in Australia over the study period and allowed us to build on other research by stratifying the analyses by age group and sex of the deceased. The aims of this study were two-fold: (1) to determine whether there has been a change in the number of suicides occurring overall and in age and sex subgroups since the COVID-19 pandemic began and (2) to determine whether particular risk factors for suicide (namely relationship breakdown, financial stressors, 8 unemployment, and homelessness) have become more prominent as likely underlying contributing factors for suicide during the pandemic

Where are the country’s quite large numbers of deaths actually coming from?

Nature Reviews Immunology - Understanding of the role of T cells in SARS-CoV-2 infection is of great importance for the design of next-generation vaccines. In this Perspective, Davenport and...

Scientific Reports - Induction of interferon response by high viral loads at early stage infection may protect against severe outcomes in COVID-19 patients

Despite some inconsistent reporting of symptoms, studies have demonstrated that at least 20% of individuals infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) will remain asymptomatic. Although most global efforts have focused on understanding factors underlying severe illness in COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019), the examination of asymptomatic infection provides a unique opportunity to consider early disease and immunologic features promoting rapid viral clearance. Owing to its critical role in the immune response, we postulated that variation in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci may underly processes mediating asymptomatic infection. We enrolled 29,947 individuals registered in the National Marrow Donor Program for whom high-resolution HLA genotyping data were available in the UCSF Citizen Science smartphone-based study designed to track COVID-19 symptoms and outcomes. Our discovery cohort (n=1428) was comprised of unvaccinated, self-identified subjects who reported a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2. We tested for association of five HLA loci (HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, -DQB1) with disease course and identified a strong association of HLA-B*15:01 with asymptomatic infection, and reproduced this association in two independent cohorts. Suggesting that this genetic association is due to pre-existing T-cell immunity, we show that T cells from pre-pandemic individuals carrying HLA-B*15:01 were reactive to the immunodominant SARS-CoV-2 S-derived peptide NQKLIANQF, and 100% of the reactive cells displayed memory phenotype. Finally, we characterize the protein structure of HLA-B*15:01-peptide complexes, demonstrating that the NQKLIANQF peptide from SARS-CoV-2, and the highly homologous NQKLIANAF from seasonal coronaviruses OC43-CoV and HKU1-CoV, share similar ability to be stabilized and presented by HLA-B*15:01, providing the molecular basis for T-cell cross-reactivity and HLA-B*15:01-mediated pre-existing immunity. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study was funded by grants R01AI159260 and 3U2CEB021881-05S1 from the National Institutes of Health, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), NHMRC SRF (#1159272). The CIBMTR is supported primarily by Public Health Service U24CA076518 from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); HHSH250201700006C from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); and N00014-20-1-2832 and N00014-21-1-2954 from the Office of Naval Research; Support is also provided by Be the Match Foundation, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the National Marrow Donor Program. The views expressed in this article do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Institute of Health, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) or any other agency of the U.S. Government. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: This study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the UCSF Human Research Protection Program Institutional Review under approvals IRB# 17-21879, IRB# 20-30850, IRB# 20-30588, and IRB# 20-30479, and informed consent was obtained from all individual participants involved in the study. I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes All data is provided in the manuscript and supplementary data

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the healthcare system. Our study armed to assess the extent and the disparity in excess acute myocardial infarction (AMI)-associated mortality during the pandemic, through the recent Omicron outbreak. Using data from the CDC’s National Vitals Statistics System, we identified 1,522,669 AMI-associated deaths occurring between 4/1/2012 and 3/31/2022. Accounting for seasonality, we compared age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) for AMI-associated deaths between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, including observed versus predicted ASMR, and examined temporal trends by demographic groups and region. Before the pandemic, AMI-associated mortality rates decreased across all subgroups. These trends reversed during the pandemic, with significant rises seen for the youngest-aged females and males even through the most recent period of the Omicron surge (10/2021–3/2022). The semiannual percent change in the youngest and middle-age group in AMI-associated mortality increased by 5.3% (95%CI:1.6–9.1%) and 3.4% (95%CI:0.1–6.8%), respectively. The excess death, defined as the difference between the observed and the predicted mortality rates, was most pronounced for the youngest (25–44 year) aged decedents, ranging from 23–34% for the youngest compared to 13–18% for the oldest age groups. The trend of mortality suggests that age and sex disparities have persisted even through the recent Omicron surge, with excess AMI-associated mortality being most pronounced in younger-aged adults.

New data analysis from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai found that deaths from heart attacks rose significantly during pandemic surges, including the COVID-19 Omicron surges, overall reversing a heart-healthier pre-pandemic trend.Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, heart attacks were the leading cause of death worldwide but were steadily on...

Die Tabelle zeigt zu jedem Meldezeitpunkt den aktuellen Stand des Versicherungsgeschehens seit Beginn der Pandemie. Die Werte, die für einen Monat angegeben sind, enthalten also immer auch die Werte der Vormonate. Dementsprechend bildet beispielsweise der Wert für den 31.12.2020 auch das Versicherungsgeschehen des ganzen Jahres ab.