Pandemic Lays Bare Flaws In Peer Review Process For Medical Journals
After several high profile retractions during the pandemic, some scientists wonder just how flawed the peer-review system has become. “The problem with trust is that it’s too easy to lose and too hard to get back,” said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. “These are big blunders.” In other scientific news on the virus: the immune system's response; what doctors have learned so far; the airborne threat; and more.
The New York Times:
The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals
One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients. The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws. (Caryn Rabin, 6/14)
The Wall Street Journal:
Before Catching Coronavirus, Some People’s Immune Systems Are Already Primed To Fight It
Researchers piecing together how the body’s immune system responds to the virus that causes Covid-19 are exploring a tantalizing effect: Some people who have never encountered the pathogen before appear to be able to mobilize parts of their immune system to ward it off. That response suggests that infection with other coronaviruses, such as those responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and even the common cold, may aid the body’s fight against the new invader. Harnessing the biological processes at play could aid the search for a new vaccine, researchers say. (Douglas, 6/12)
NBC News:
What ICU Doctors Have Learned About COVID-19 — And How They're Prepared For A 2nd Wave
The World Health Organization had just declared COVID-19 a pandemic when intensive care units in the United States started to see an influx of severely ill patients. It was mid-March, and though coronavirus cases had been mounting in countries including China, South Korea and Italy, in the U.S. there was still a dearth of knowledge about how the virus spread, how it affected patients, and what type of threat it posed to the doctors treating them. Within three months, critical care physicians across the country received a crash course on a disease that didn't exist in the U.S. before this year, and are more prepared in the event of a second wave of the illness. Now, in June, doctors have a better sense of which medicines and interventions to use or avoid, how the virus affects the body, and how to face their own COVID-19 fears. (Edwards, 6/13)
The New York Times:
The Scientist, The Air And The Virus
When Linsey Marr’s son started attending day care 12 years ago, she noticed that he kept getting sick with the sniffles and other minor illnesses. But unlike most parents, Dr. Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech, tried to figure out why. “When I’d pick him up, I’d find out that more than half the kids in the room were sick too,” said Dr. Marr. “I was really curious, and wondered, if it was spreading this fast, maybe it was going through the air.” (Parker-Pope, 6/12)
Stat:
To Grasp Who's Dying Of Covid-19, Look To Social Factors Like Race
While early studies of who was dying of Covid-19 identified risks such as obesity and having diabetes, there is a growing realization that those initial conclusions might have been misleading, obscuring a more significant explanation. As researchers pull back their lens from individuals to population-level risk factors, they’re finding that, in the U.S., race may be as important as age in gauging a person’s likelihood of dying from the disease. (Begley, 6/15)
Reuters:
Popular Blood Pressure Medicines Do Not Put Patients At Greater COVID-19 Risk, New Study Finds
New research offers reassuring evidence to hundreds of millions of people with high blood pressure that popular anti-hypertension drugs do not put them at greater risk from COVID-19 as some experts had feared. (Nelson and Respaut, 6/12)
Reuters:
WHO Recommends Breastfeeding, Says No Live Coronavirus Found In Mothers' Milk
Breastfeeding mothers do not seem to be passing on the new coronavirus to their infants, and based on current evidence the benefits outweigh any potential risks of transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that it had carefully investigated the risks of women transmitting COVID-19 to their babies during breastfeeding. (6/12)
Reuters:
Virus Has Multiple Pathways Into Cells, Moderna Vaccine Clears Safety Hurdle In Mouse Study
Two teams of European researchers, working independently, have identified a new entryway through which the coronavirus gets into cells and infects them, suggesting another approach to stopping it. One key route - via a protein on cell surfaces called ACE2 - is well known. The newly identified gateway is a cell-surface protein called neuropilin-1, or NRP1. A "spike" on the surface of the coronavirus binds to NRP1, allowing the virus to break into the cell, similar to how a virus spike attaches itself to ACE2. (Lapid, 6/12)
Los Angeles Times:
Passengers Flew Into LAX With COVID-19 In March; Public Wasn't Warned
When American Airlines flight 341 to Los Angeles lifted off the tarmac at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on a cloudy Thursday in mid-March, much of the country was already on coronavirus lockdown. The flight was far from full, but the 49 passengers and eight crew shared restrooms, cabin air and a narrow aisle for the six-hour trip. Though no one knew it then, a man in first class, a retired Manhattan surgeon, was infected with the virus. The day after the flight, he was rushed by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a high fever and phlegmy cough. (Ryan and Feldman, 6/14)
