Roundup of some recent studies on COVID-19 - Reuters

New heart problems discovered post COVID-19; virus mutation may make vaccines more effective More than three-quarters of recently recovered COVID-19 patients had heart muscle problems show up during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests, German doctors reported on Monday in JAMA Cardiology. In some patients, the heart may be "in serious trouble as a part of COVID-19 disease," Dr. YahooNews

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) - The following is a brief roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

New heart problems seen in recovered COVID-19 patients

More than three-quarters of recently recovered COVID-19 patients had heart muscle problems show up during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests, German doctors reported on Monday in JAMA Cardiology. In some patients, the heart may be "in serious trouble as a part of COVID-19 disease," Dr. Valentina Puntmann of University Hospital Frankfurt told Reuters. Among 100 patients ages 45 to 53, "a considerable majority" - 78 - had inflammation in the heart muscle and lining. Sixty-seven had recovered at home while 33 had required hospitalization. Half of the former patients were more than two months out since their diagnosis at the time of the MRI....

Mutation may have made virus more vulnerable to vaccines

A genetic mutation that made the new coronavirus more infectious may also make it more vulnerable to vaccines, researchers believe. The mutation, designated D614G, increases the number of "spikes" on the surface of the virus and makes them more stable, allowing the virus to more efficiently break into and infect cells. The mutation will not pose problems for vaccines now in clinical trials, however, because the extra spikes retain the targets for the "neutralizing antibodies" the vaccines are designed to induce. .. "The gain in infectivity provided by D614G came at the cost of making the virus more vulnerable to neutralizing antibodies," the researchers wrote in a paper posted on medRxiv on Friday ahead of peer review. (https://bit.ly/39vmRNr)

Do-it-yourself masks should have several layers

Do-it-yourself face masks are far more effective at blocking virus-containing droplets if they are made with two or three layers of fabric, researchers advised on Friday in the journal Thorax. Using high-speed video and special lighting, they saw that when masks have multiple layers, fewer droplets generated by speaking, coughing and sneezing escape, and droplets that do escape do not spread as far. There is a tradeoff between protection and breathability as the number of layers increases, but "three layers is quite comfortable," study coauthor Raina MacIntyre of UNSW Sydney, in Australia, told Reuters....Pandemic may increase children's risks for eating disorder

Pediatricians in Australia report a dramatic increase in severe cases of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa during the pandemic and are concerned that the same thing might be happening among vulnerable young people worldwide. People with anorexia have a pathological fear of becoming fat, and as a result they can become severely malnourished and suffer life-threatening heart damage. At Perth Children's Hospital, the number of children with anorexia nervosa requiring hospitalization for nutritional rehabilitation since the start of the pandemic has more than doubled compared with the three previous years, researchers said in a paper published on Friday in Archives of Disease in Childhood. ...