LONDON: Painkiller aspirin will be evaluated as a possible treatment for COVID-19 in one of Britain’s biggest trials, which will assess whether it might reduce the risk of blood clots in people with the disease. The scientists behind the RECOVERY trial, which is looking into a range of potential treatments for COVID-19, said it would…
Immune response: memory T cells are formed earlier than previously thought
Munich: For a person to acquire immunity to a disease, T cells must develop into memory cells after contact with the pathogen. Until now, the number of cells that do this was believed to depend above all on the magnitude of the initial immune response. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich…
Remdesivir provides little effect on COVID-19: WHO
New York: Remdesivir, an antiviral drug initially developed to treat Ebola by the pharmaceutical company Gilead, has “little or no effect” on survival for people in hospital with COVID-19, a World Health Organization (WHO) trial has found. As part of its SOLIDARITY trial, WHO researchers tested the effects of four potential treatments, including antiviral drugs remdesivir and interferon-β1a, the…
Nobel prize for medicine goes to discoverers of the hepatitis C virus
The 2020 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles Rice for discoveries about the virus that causes hepatitis C. The trio’s work led to treatments for the liver-destroying disease. These discoveries have saved millions of lives worldwide and led to the development of drugs that cure…
Hongkong reports first documented coronavirus re-infection case
HONG KONG: A Hong Kong man who recovered from COVID-19 was infected again four-and-a-half months later in the first documented instance of human re-infection as quoted recently by the researchers at the University of Hong Kong. “The findings indicate the disease, which has killed more than 800,000 people worldwide, may continue to spread amongst the…
Russia claims developing first coronavirus vaccine amid skepticism
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin recently declared Russia the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, but scientists and the World Health Organisation said it still needed a rigorous safety review. Putin said the vaccine was safe and that one of his own daughters had been inoculated, though clinical trials were not yet complete and final…
Bill Gates appreciates Pakistan’s flattened COVID-19 curve
ISLAMABAD: The Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates has acknowledged Pakistan’s flattened COVID-19 curve. In an interview with CNN, Bill Gates said the situation of coronavirus in Karachi, Pakistan, but like Europe, they worked hard to bring cases down. Coronavirus cases have witnessed massive decline in Pakistan in recent days after which the Pakistan government has decided…
‘Remdesivir can reduce risk of death in severe COVID-19 cases’
Columbia: A new analysis by Gilead Sciences has shown its antiviral remdesivir to have helped reduce the risk of death in severely ill coronavirus patients, the company recently announced. Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the global battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times, according to data in…
COVID-19: Dexamethasone becomes the first life-saving drug
Thanks to latest development, a cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus. The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say. The drug is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also…
Coronavirus cure: When will we have a remedy?
More than 150,000 people have died with Covid-19, but there are still no drugs proven to help doctors treat the disease. So how far are we from these life-saving medicines? What work is being done to find treatments? More than 150 different drugs are being researched around the world. Most are existing drugs that are…