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 Omicron infections are contagious for at least 6 days
Patients infected with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 remain
contagious for just as long as patients infected with earlier
variants, according to a small study.
Researchers took blood samples from 56 newly-diagnosed patients,
including 37 with Delta infections and 19 with Omicron infections.
All were mildly ill, such as with flu-like symptoms, but none were
hospitalized. Regardless of which variant or whether or not they had
been vaccinated or boosted, study participants "shed live virus for,
on average, about 6 days after symptoms (began), and... about one in
four people shed live virus for over 8 days," said Dr. Amy Barczak
of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who coauthored a
report posted on medRxiv
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/
10.1101/2022.03.01.22271582v1 ahead of peer review.
"Although it is unknown exactly how much live virus is needed to
spread the disease to others, we take these data to suggest that
people with mild COVID-19 infection may be contagious on average for
6 days, and sometimes longer," Barczak said. "Decisions about
isolation and masking should take such information into account,
regardless of variant or prior vaccination status."
Takeda angioedema drug shows promise for COVID-19
A drug used to treat a blood vessel condition called angioedema has
shown promise as a treatment for COVID-19 in lab experiments,
researchers said.
Icatibant, sold as Firazyr by Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co,
blocks a protein called bradykinin receptor b2 in the so-called
kinin system. The protein is regulated by the ACE2 protein on cell
surfaces, which the coronavirus uses as a gateway for infection.
When the researchers analyzed nasal cells obtained from newly
diagnosed COVID-19 patients, they found elevated levels of
bradykinin receptor b2, which led them to wonder whether blocking
that protein with icatibant could protect the airway-lining cells
against the coronavirus. "To our surprise, icatibant effectively
reduced viral load by more than 90% and protected cultured human
airway cells from cell death upon SARS-CoV-2-infection," said Adam
Chaker of Technical University of Munich, whose team reported their
findings on Saturday in the Journal of Molecular Medicine
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007
/s00109-022-02182-7. Icatibant uses different biochemical pathways
to protect the airways than steroids, the researchers found.
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 In their test tube experiments, repeated dosing
of icatibant did not stop coronavirus infection
completely, but reduced the severity of
infection, they reported. Previous small
observational studies have suggested that
icatibant might provide some benefit to COVID-19
patients. Now, Chaker said, it is time for
"double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical
trials ... conducted in high-risk patients and
see potential to use icatibant as add-on
treatment at early stages of infection."
Heart defects boost risks for hospitalized COVID-19 patients
People born with heart defects who become sick enough from COVID-19
to be hospitalized are at higher risk for becoming critically ill or
dying, researchers said.
The findings were drawn from a study that compared 421 patients with
a heart defect who were hospitalized for COVID-19 with 235,638
similar hospitalized COVID-19 patients born with normal hearts.
After researchers accounted for patients' other risk factors, those
with congenital heart defects were 40% more likely to be admitted to
an intensive care unit, 80% more likely to need mechanical
ventilation, and two times more to die while hospitalized, compared
to patients in the control group, according to the report published
on Monday in the journal Circulation
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/
CIRCULATIONAHA.121.057833. Hospitalized patients with a congenital
heart defect and another health condition faced even higher risks
for poor outcomes, the researchers found.
"People with heart defects should be encouraged to receive the
COVID-19 vaccines and boosters and to continue to practice
additional preventive measures for COVID-19, such as mask-wearing
and physical distancing," study leader Karrie Downing of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
Click for a Reuters graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl on vaccines in
development.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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