FactsRun

Surfaces contaminated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, pose a grave threat to the safety of healthcare workers, patients, frontline responders, military service members, cruise line passengers, hotel guests and people everywhere. A new study published on medRxiv reports the effectiveness of a broad spectrum, pulsed xenon ultraviolet (PX-UV) disinfection system in quickly deactivating SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces, and the implications for reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission everywhere that people work, travel, play and live. The study authors include renowned infectious disease physicians, infection prevention experts, and representatives from the Central Texas Veterans Healthcare System, HonorHealth, Mayo Clinic, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Michigan, University of California-San Francisco, WVU Medicine, and Xenex. Deactivating SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces is a critical and necessary step to protect peo...

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues its destructive course, two theories are being widely aired. Coronavirus pandemic may have been the result of an attack at a biosafety level 4 laboratory in China’s Wuhan city. Two, and this is more fanciful but not impossible, that China deliberately launched a biological attack in order to position itself as the single greatest superpower, while flattening its rivals’ industrial and economic capacity. Both theories have strong supporters armed with a battery of ‘facts’. The problem is not with data, though. It’s China itself, with its habitual secrecy, big ambitions, and absolute disregard for life or the environment. Allied to that is the fact that bio labs everywhere have been a source of serious threats, with the big powers seeing them as potentially usable as weapons of mass destruction, proved by the large number of...

Origin of SARS-CoV in Bats The earlier SARS outbreak in China was the result of a virus almost entirely identical to that in market civets in the Chinese province of Guangdong. Following this, many other similar CoVs, called SARS-related (SARSr) CoVs, have been found all over China and Europe, in horseshoe bats, sharing 96% of nucleotides with both human and civet SARS-CoVs. The greatest consistent variability was in the spike protein-encoding region and the accessory protein ORF3, and 8. Every single nucleotide in the SARS-CoV has been found in one or other bat CoV genome. This indicates that the SARS-CoV could well have arisen in bats through recombination. It is essential to find the key sites on the virus, which play a crucial part in the ability to jump species since these could predict the odds of such events occurring between animals and humans. The researchers have already discovered a variety of SARSr-CoV viruses that can infect Chinese horseshoe bats, ...

New research in mice suggests that when the DNA allows it, the brain neutralizes fearful memories using ‘fear extinction.’ The flexibility of a person’s DNA structure may correlate with a ‘flexibility of memory,’ according to new research. When confronted with danger, fear spurs a person into defensive actions. This is invaluable as a survival mechanism; however, there is little reason for fear to persist once a threat passes. The brain neutralizes the memory of that feeling with something called “fear extinction.” This process involves a non-fearful memory with similar circumstances competing with the fear memory to try to suppress it. A new study finds that the ability to neutralize fear depends on the flexibility of one’s DNA. “Fear memories need to be plastic. They can be very useful for survival, but they can also get in the way of normal functioning,” says Dr. Paul Marshall of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He is the lead author of the study, which...

By analysing virus genomes from over 7,500 people infected with Covid-19, a UCL-led research team has characterised patterns of diversity of SARS-CoV-2 virus genome, offering clues to direct drugs and vaccine targets. The study, led by the UCL Genetics Institute, identified close to 200 recurrent genetic mutations in the virus, highlighting how it may be adapting and evolving to its human hosts. Researchers found that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is found in all hardest-hit countries, suggesting extensive global transmission from early on in the epidemic and the absence of single 'Patient Zeroes' in most countries. The findings, published today in   Infection, Genetics and Evolution , also further establish the virus only emerged recently in late 2019, before quickly spreading across the globe. Scientists analysed the emergence of genomic diversity in SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing Covid-19, by screening the g...

For the past 70 years, the best indicator of life expectancy for a patient with glioblastoma (GBM) -- the most common and the most aggressive brain cancer -- has simply been age at diagnosis. Now, an international team of scientists has experimentally validated a predictor that is not only more accurate but also more clinically relevant: a pattern of co-occurring changes in DNA abundance levels, or copy numbers, at hundreds of thousands of sites across the whole tumor genome. Patients with the genome-wide pattern survive for a median of one year. However, patients without it survive three times as long, for a median of three years. The results came from a retrospective clinical trial that was published today in the journal  Applied Physics Letters  (APL)  Bioengineering . Having a predictor of a patient's life expectancy can help inform medical decisions. The GBM pattern can, in principle, be used in this way today. For example, when a patient has...