Virus World

A provocative study suggests that certain colds may leave antibodies against the new coronavirus, perhaps explaining why children are more protected than adults. It’s been a big puzzle of the pandemic: Why are children so much less likely than adults to become infected with the new coronavirus and, if infected, less likely to become ill? A possible reason may be that many children already have antibodies to other coronaviruses, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London. About one in five of the colds that plague children are caused by viruses in this family. Antibodies to those viruses may also block SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the pandemic. In a study published Friday in Science, the group, led by George Kassiotis, who heads the Retroviral Immunology Laboratory at the institute, reports that on average only 5 percent of adults had these antibodies, but 43 percent of children did. 

As the flu season approaches, a strained public health system may have a surprising ally — the common cold virus.Rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of common colds, can prevent the flu virus from infecting airways by jumpstarting the body’s antiviral defenses, Yale researchers report today (September 4, 2020) in the journal The Lancet Microbe. The findings help answer a mystery surrounding the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic: An expected surge in swine flu cases never materialized in Europe during the fall, a period when the common cold becomes widespread. A Yale team led by Dr. Ellen Foxman studied three years of clinical data from more than 13,000 patients seen at Yale New Haven Hospital with symptoms of respiratory infection. The researchers found that even during months when both viruses were active, if the common cold virus was present, the flu virus was not. “When we looked at the data, it became clear that very few people had both viruses at the same time,” said Foxman, assistant professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology and senior author of the study. Foxman stressed that scientists do not know whether the annual seasonal spread of the common cold virus will have a similar impact on infection rates of those exposed to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. “It is impossible to predict how two viruses will interact without doing the research,” she said.

To test how the rhinovirus and the influenza virus interact, Foxman’s lab created human airway tissue from stem cells that give rise to epithelial cells, which line the airways of the lung and are a chief target of respiratory viruses. They found that after the tissue had been exposed to rhinovirus, the influenza virus was unable to infect the tissue. “The antiviral defenses were already turned on before the flu virus arrived,” she said. The presence of rhinovirus triggered production of the antiviral agent interferon, which is part of the early immune system response to invasion of pathogens, Foxman said. “The effect lasted for at least five days,” she said. Foxman said her lab has begun to study whether introduction of the cold virus before infection by the COVID-19 virus offers a similar type of protection.

Published in the Lancet Microbe (Sept. 4, 2020):

https://doi.org/10.1016/S2666-5247(20)30114-2

Fever, runny nose, headache? Lost your sense of taste or smell? Your guide to differentiating between the three illnesses. With winter approaching, the UK is entering the traditional seasons for colds and flu, with the additional complication this year that symptoms of those two illnesses can be broadly similar to those experienced by people who have caught the coronavirus and may be at risk of spreading it. The NHS in England has produced a guide to differentiate between the three types of illnesses, which health experts hope will make it clearer to people whether they have an illness they would have most likely brushed aside last year, but which this year might lead them to think they need to self-isolate or seek to have a coronavirus test.

Coronavirus or Covid-19

The most common symptoms of coronavirus or Covid-19 are a fever – a temperature of 37.8C (100F) – a new persistent cough (usually dry), and a loss of their sense of taste and/or smell. Patients may also sometimes suffer from fatigue, aches and pains, sore throat, headaches and shortness of breath. Diarrhoea and a runny or stuffy nose are rare. The NHS says symptoms can range from mild to severe.

Cold

The most common symptoms of a cold are sneezing, aches and pains, a runny or stuffy nose and sore throat. A mild cough can be experienced. There is sometimes fatigue, and it is rare to experience a fever or headaches. Colds do not cause diarrhoea. The NHS states that with a cold there is usually a gradual onset of symptoms

Flu

Flu most commonly consists of a fever, fatigue, a dry cough, aches and pains and headaches. Patients will sometimes experience a runny or stuffy nose or a sore throat. Diarrhoea can sometimes occur in children. There is no sneezing or shortness of breath with flu, and the NHS notes there is usually a rapid onset of symptoms.

Drugmakers on the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine have promised massive supply rollouts in the coming months if their candidates pass regulators' scrutiny. But promises and results are very different things:for two highly touted mRNA-based shots, storage concerns could derail those plans. A pair of frontrunner mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer could run into supply logistics issues over the ultra-cold storage needs for both shots, SVB Leerink analysts said in a pair of client notes Thursday. Citing discussion at a CDC advisory committee meeting Wednesday, analysts pointed out that experts expressed concern that the temperatures required to store mRNA vaccines were "severely limiting" to distributors' ability to ship the shots and to clinics' ability to administer them to a wide swath of patients.

Pfizer and BioNTech's mRNA hopeful, dubbed BNT162b2, specifically raised eyebrows: The vaccine reportedly needs to be held in storage at -94° Fahrenheit, and will last for only 24 hours at refrigerated temps between 35.6° and 46.4°. Meanwhile, most protein subunit vaccines—the type being developed for COVID-19 by Sanofi and Novavax, among others—can be held at refrigerated temps for months, analysts said. Given those constraints, the analysts argued that Pfizer's shot could only be used at certain hospitals and clinics with the proper equipment, and would require "intensive one-day vaccination events at such sites ... (that would) cover a fraction of the healthy population." In a statement, Pfizer argued that its vaccine could be stored at refrigerated temps for up to 2 days, instead of the 24 hours cited by analysts. The drugmaker has also developed shipping containers using dry ice that it believes will solve some shipping worries.  "We are confident of our capability to deliver and store doses to the destination's governments designate, according to product shipping and storage requirements," a spokeswoman said. Despite similar storage issues, Moderna is pursuing stability data showing its vaccine, mRNA-1273, can be stored at -4° Fahrenheit—which would be a big leg up over Pfizer's candidate. On a Wednesday call with investors, Moderna CTO Juan Andres said the -4° mark was a "very normal storage condition" comparable to home freezers. 

"Of course, industrial, well-monitored freezers for pharmaceuticals will be used for storage and shipment, Andres said. "The point here is that the infrastructure is widely available, and we do not need special equipment to use our vaccine." In the meantime, though, Moderna is likely to pursue an emergency use approval with cold-storage requirements similar to Pfizer's—and analysts said Moderna's eventual advantage over its rival might not be much of an advantage given the range of competitors in the hunt. "We note that storage/distribution temperature may be less of an advantage–and may in fact still be substantially inferior to non-mRNA competitors utilizing a protein sub-unit approach with much more permissive storage conditions," analysts wrote. The ability to successfully distribute their vaccines will come as a big challenge for both companies, which have promised hundreds of millions of doses within months if an approval comes through....