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By Nancy Lapid
July 15 (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.
Lung radiation may hasten COVID-19 pneumonia recovery
A low dose of radiation to the lungs of COVID-19 pneumonia
patients can help them recover more quickly, a small study
suggests. Doctors at Emory University in Atlanta treated 10 such
patients with lung radiation and compared them to 10 patients of
similar ages who received usual care, without radiation. With
radiation, the average time to significant improvement was three
days, compared to 12 days in the control group. Other potential
effects included a shorter average time to hospital discharge
(12 days with radiation versus 20 days without it) and a lower
risk of mechanical ventilation (10% with radiation versus 40%
without it). But those two differences were too small to rule
out the possibility they were due to chance, the researchers
found. The radiation group was "a little older, a little sicker,
and their lungs were a little more damaged ... but despite that
we saw a strong signal of efficacy," Emory's Dr. Mohammad Khan
told Reuters. Khan noted that in the radiation group, COVID-19
medications were withheld before and after the treatment, so the
results reflect the effect of the radiation alone.
"Radiotherapy," Khan said, "can reduce the inflammation in the
lungs of COVID-19 patients and reduce the cytokines that are
causing the inflammation." Cytokines are proteins made by the
immune system. The results on the first five patients have been
accepted for publication by the journal Cancer. The results on
all 10 were posted on Tuesday ahead of peer review on the
website medRxiv. The researchers have launched a randomized
controlled trial of the treatment and expect to eventually
include multiple centers. (https://bit.ly/2DDaAdI)
Smoking may boost severe COVID-19 risk among young adults
Close to one third of young U.S. adults appear to have an
elevated risk for severe COVID-19, with smoking their strongest
risk factor, according to survey data. Researchers looked at
data from more than 8,000 participants, ages 18 to 25, in the
nationally representative National Health Interview Survey for
2016 to 2018. They also looked at participants' medical
conditions identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention as making people of any age "medically
vulnerable" to severe illness from the coronavirus. Among these
are diabetes, heart disease, immune problems, smoking, poorly
controlled HIV or AIDS, and respiratory diseases. Overall, 32%
of the young adults surveyed were seen as medically vulnerable
to severe COVID-19. Among non-smoking young adults, however,
only 16% were seen as medically vulnerable. "Efforts to reduce
smoking and e-cigarette use among young adults would likely
reduce their medical vulnerability to severe illness," the
researchers said on Monday in the study published in the Journal
of Adolescent Health. "Our analysis suggests that risk from
smoking and e-cigarette use is highest among young adults who
are male, white, and lower income and who are fully or partially
uninsured." (https://bit.ly/32mZ9S2)
Coronavirus may rarely pass through placenta
It is unclear whether the coronavirus can pass through the
womb from mother to fetus. On Tuesday, doctors in France
reported a very rare case that suggests transmission through the
placenta may be possible. In the journal Nature Communications,
they described a baby born prematurely to a mother with
COVID-19. They found the virus in placental tissue as well as in
the mother's and baby's blood, which suggests that
transplacental transmission of the novel coronavirus virus may
be possible, although further studies are needed. Both mother
and baby recovered well. Marian Knight, a professor of maternal
and child population health at Oxford University, said the case
should not be a major worry for pregnant women. Among the many
thousands of babies born to mothers infected with the virus,
only around 1% to 2% have been reported to also have had a
positive test, Knight said. (https://reut.rs/3h3xWry;
https://go.nature.com/2WmjWRz)
Promising results from early trial of new vaccine
Moderna Inc's experimental vaccine for COVID-19,
mRNA-1273, was safe and provoked immune responses in all 45
healthy volunteers in a first-in-humans phase 1 study,
researchers reported on Tuesday in the New England Journal of
Medicine. Volunteers who got two doses of the vaccine had levels
of virus-killing antibodies that exceeded the average levels
seen in recovered COVID-19 patients. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director
of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, whose researchers developed Moderna's vaccine
candidate, called the results good news. Fauci noted that the
study found no serious adverse events and the vaccine produced
"reasonably high" levels of virus-killing or neutralizing
antibodies. "If your vaccine can induce a response comparable
with natural infection, that's a winner," Fauci told Reuters.
"That's why we're very pleased by the results." A phase 2 trial
testing the vaccine's efficacy in a larger group started in May.
A much larger phase 3 trial to confirm efficacy and identify
rare side effects will begin this month, ultimately including
30,000 participants. Separately, early-stage human trial data on
a vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford
University will be published on July 20, the Lancet medical
journal said on Wednesday. (https://reut.rs/3hemOs3;
https://bit.ly/30aFwtD)
Open https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/yxmvjqywprz/index.html
in an external browser for a Reuters graphic on vaccines and
treatments in development.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Kate Kelland and Julie Steenhuysen;
Editing by Will Dunham)
