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 Severe sleep apnea tied to severe COVID-19
The risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is higher in people with
obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing problems that cause
oxygen levels to drop during sleep, researchers say. They tracked
5,402 adults with these problems and found that roughly a third of
them eventually tested posted for the coronavirus. While the chance
of being infected did not increase with the severity of their
problems, people with higher scores on the "apnea-hypopnia index" -
a measure of the severity of their sleep-related breathing problems
- had higher odds of needing to be hospitalized or dying from
COVID-19, Drs. Cinthya Pena Orbea and Reena Mehra of the Cleveland
Clinic and colleagues reported on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/
jamanetworkopen/
fullarticle/2785921. It is not clear if treatments that improve
sleep apnea, such as CPAP machines that push air into patients'
airways during sleep, would also reduce the risk of severe COVID-19,
said Pene Orbea and Mehra.
Body's coronavirus memory may abort new infections
Healthcare workers who did not test positive for COVID-19, despite
heavy exposure to infected patients, had T cells that attacked a
part of the virus that lets it make copies of itself, according to a
report published Wednesday in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04186-8.
Researchers who studied the 58 healthcare workers found their T
cells responded more strongly to a part of the virus, called the RTC,
that is very similar on all human and animal coronaviruses,
including all variants of SARS-CoV-2. They suspect the T cells
recognized the RTC because they had "seen" it on other viruses
during other infections. That makes the RTC a potentially good
target for vaccines if more research confirms these findings, study
leaders Mala Maini and Leo Swadling, both of University College
London, said in a joint email to Reuters. These data were collected
during the first wave of the pandemic, they added. "We don't know if
this sort of control happens for more infectious variants currently
circulating."
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 Vaccines induce neutralizing
antibodies in breast milk
Infants might benefit from COVID-19 antibodies
in breast milk regardless of whether mothers
acquired the antibodies from being infected with
SARS-CoV-2 or from vaccines, according to new
findings reported on Wednesday in JAMA
Pediatrics https://bit.ly/3ojI4kX. Researchers
studied antibodies in breast milk samples from
47 mothers who had been infected with the virus
and 30 healthy mothers who had received the
vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech.
Antibodies from both groups were able to
neutralize active SARS-CoV-2 virus, and while
antibodies from infection were evident in milk
for longer periods, antibody levels from
vaccination "were much more uniform," said study
leader Bridget Young of the University of
Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in
New York. Thus, there is likely benefit to
getting vaccinated even after a COVID-19
infection because breast milk would then contain
a diverse variety of antibodies, she said. The
researchers did not study the effect of the
antibodies on the babies who consumed the milk.
Click for a Reuters graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl
on vaccines in development.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Tiffany
Wu)
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