Some protracted COVID problems seen in children.Patient’s antibodies attack multiple viral targets-health-life & style

Long-term COVID-19 effect seen in children

“Long COVID” (a term that refers to the effects of a virus that lasts weeks or months) can also be a problem for children, small studies suggest. Doctors at a large Italian hospital tracked 129 children and teens with COVID-19 who were otherwise generally healthy. On average, about 5 months after diagnosis, only about 42% had a complete recovery. According to a report posted to medRxiv on Tuesday prior to peer review, approximately one in three adolescents still had one or two symptoms, and more than one in five had three or more symptoms. ..

The most common persistent problems are insomnia (reported in 18.6%), respiratory symptoms such as pain and chest tension (14.7%), nasal congestion (12.4%), malaise (10.8%), and myalgia. (10.1%), arthralgia (6.9%), and difficulty concentrating (10.1%). These problems were clearly more common in sick children, but initially also occurred in infected adolescents with few or no symptoms.

Researchers admit that there is increasing evidence that restrictive measures aimed at controlling pandemics have a significant impact on children’s mental health. Nonetheless, their findings consider the long-term effects of COVID-19 on children in developing measures to reduce the impact of pandemics on children’s overall health. It suggests that it is necessary.

Patient antibodies target the virus from different angles

Most antibody treatments and vaccines that target coronavirus focus on stimulating the immune response to the spike protein that coronavirus uses to invade cells. Researchers say it may be a better approach to target other sites of the virus as well. Their study of COVID-19 survivors, whose immune system responded strongly to the virus, showed that more than half of their antibodies targeted viral components other than peplomers.

The most common non-spike target for antibodies was a closed capsule in which the virus contained its genetic instructions and specific segments of those instructions, such as stretching the RNA code. This suggests that non-spiking antibodies may play an important role in removing the virus, the researchers said in a paper submitted to bioRxiv Thursday prior to review. From the point of view of innate immunity, it also suggests that the immune system has other sites on the virus that can memorize and attack when faced with new peplomer variants.

A spokesperson for the researcher said their company, Immunome Inc, is developing a cocktail of antibodies that target multiple sites of the virus.

COVID-19 may affect kidney filtering

New reports suggest that COVID-19 impairs the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and toxic substances in some patients.

Kidney filters usually do not put a lot of protein in the urine. Researchers studying 103 COVID-19 patients found that about 24% of them had high levels of protein albumin in their urine and 21% had high levels of protein cystatin c in their urine. Did. Approximately 25% of patients had non-infectious coronavirus in their urine, but none of the samples contained the infectious virus.

According to a report posted to medRxiv prior to peer review, this suggests that the viral particles seen by researchers are “direct consequences of filtration abnormalities, not viral infections of the kidneys.”

Except for filtration problems, none of the patients showed signs of renal dysfunction. “At this stage, we don’t know if these abnormalities are a sign of long-term consequences,” said Choukri Ben Mamoun, co-author of Yale University School of Medicine. “This is why we report these findings and emphasize the need for long-term investigation of the outcome of this infection.”

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