Nancy Lapid

(Reuters.) – Here is a list of recent COVID-19 studies. These include additional research to confirm the findings, and which has not yet been certified by peer review.

The mysterious case of hepatitis C in children could be caused by SARS-CoV-2

Research suggests that there could be an underlying chain of events that are triggered possibly by the unrecognized SARS/CoV-2 coronavirus infection. These cases have been reported in hundreds upon hundreds of children all over the globe.

Children with COVID-19 are at significantly increased risk for liver dysfunction afterward, according to a report posted on Saturday on medRxiv ahead of peer review https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.10.22274866v1. Most children who have acute hepatitis, which is a rare condition in this age group, don’t report any previous SARS/CoV-2 infection. A majority were found to have an adenovirus, 41F. It is unknown if it can attack the liver. It is possible that the affected children, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated, may have had mild or asymptomatic COVID infections that went unnoticed, a separate team of researchers suggest in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468125322001662. They believe that lingering coronavirus particles in children’s gastrointestinal tracts could cause an immune response that causes the body to produce high levels of inflammation proteins, which can eventually lead to liver damage.

According to them, “We recommend that children suffering from acute liver disease be examined for SARS CoV-2 persistence of stool” as well as other indicators that indicate that liver damage has occurred. This spike protein is known as a superantigen and oversensitizes your immune system.

For awake patients, face-down is not a good position

A new study suggests that lying facedown might not prevent COVID-19-injured patients in hospital who can breathe on their own, but are supplemented with oxygen, from needing to be mechanically ventilated.

Randomly, 400 patients were assigned to either standard or prone-positioning care. Intermittently lying on your stomach is a common position that can improve the recovery of sedated patients who are on ventilators. The difference in intubation and ventilator use in the two groups was statistically not significant. There might have been a reduction in the risk for intubation with prone positioning among some of the patients, researchers said on Monday in JAMA https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2792506, but they could not confirm it statistically from their data. It took approximately five hours for prone positioning to occur per day, which is shorter than the eight-to-10 hour target.

Researchers concluded that “Long periods of awake prone posture are very challenging” and were highly affected by the patient’s comfort and preference. Patient request was the most frequent reason that prone positioning was interrupted. This could have been due to subjective improvement, or discomfort.

Click for a Reuters graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl on vaccines in development.