Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Social Issues / 01.10.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Madhur Garg, MD MBA Clinical director, Radiation Oncology Montefiore Health System and Professor Departments of Otorhinolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery - and Urology Albert Einstein College of Medicine  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: ​The Bronx was hit particularly hard with Covid-19 - making up one of the highest per capita cases and deaths in the country. Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, care for a large population of ethnic minorities (non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic individuals make up 65% of our patient population). (more…)
Author Interviews, Cancer Research, HPV, Karolinski Institute, NEJM, Vaccine Studies / 30.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Jiayao Lei PhD Prof. Pär Sparén PhD Karolinski Institute MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The efficacy and effectiveness of quadrivalent HPV (qHPV) vaccine protecting against HPV infection, genital warts and high-grade precancerous cervical lesions have been shown. However, there is lack of population-based studies in examining the association between HPV vaccine and invasive cervical cancer on individual level.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 29.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Stephen Poole BRC Clinical Research Fellow from the Southampton Southampton, UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Our understanding of how the emergence of COVID 19 (SARS-CoV-2) has effected existing seasonal respiratory viruses, like influenza or common cold viruses, is limited. Many labs stopped or reduced their testing for these other respiratory viruses during the first epidemic peak as healthcare providers were trying to save resources for COVID-19 testing. We know that the viruses in circulation prior to COVID caused a lot of exacerbations of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but it is unclear whether this is the case with SARS-CoV-2. The aims of our study were to measure the impact of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 on other respiratory viruses and to compare the patterns of illness. Our group in Southampton, UK led by Dr Tristan Clark were uniquely positioned to be able to do this. We have run 3 large trials in the last 5 winters which have tested for a wide range of respiratory viruses all in the same group of patients: adults arriving in hospital with a recent onset respiratory illness. We use this to compare the proportion of tests which were positive in the height of the COVID pandemic (March-May) with the same time period in previous years. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 29.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gizem Kilic MSc, PhD Candidate} Radboud University Medical Center Department of Internal Medicine Laboratory of Experimental Internal Medicine Nijmegen MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Having emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, novel coronavirus infection 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) has become a major health crisis affecting worldwide. Although the disease symptoms are mild in most of the cases, it is known that advanced age and co-morbidities such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases increase the risk of disease severity. Moreover, epidemiological data from different countries indicated that the mortality rate is higher in males compared to females. There are reports suggesting that some viral and bacterial infection are sex-biased; however, why males are more susceptible to develop severe COVID-19 infection has not been fully understood yet.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Kidney Stones, Lancet, Stanford / 26.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Shuchi Anand M.D. M.S. Director of the Center for Tubulointerstitial Kidney Disease Stanford University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Seroprevalence (or presence of antibodies in response to SARS CoV-2) is considered by many experts to be the most complete to track the spread of COVID19 in communities. However seroprevalence studies are hard to conduct, because they require going into communities and underdoing random blood draws. Many people—especially racial and ethnic minorities, or people with underlying health conditions, or people with language barriers—may be hard to reach for these types of surveys. Plus outreach into communities is very difficult in light of the COVID19 pandemic. To mitigate this problem we worked with a random sample of 28,503 patients on hemodialysis, the vast majority of whom are covered by Medicare. They get their blood drawn monthly, as part of their routine care. Furthermore even though we used a random sample, we know that patients on dialysis are more likely to be racial and ethnic minorities, and more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Lipids, Statins, UCSD / 26.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lori B. Daniels, MD, MAS, FACC, FAHA Professor of Medicine Director, Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit UCSD Division of Cardiovascular Medicine Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center La Jolla, CA 92037-7411  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The purpose of our study was to investigate whether there is an association between the use of statin medications and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among patients hospitalized for COVID-19. Our study investigated all patients hospitalized for treatment of COVID at a major US academic medical center during the study period. We studied patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19, and compared those who had been taking statins for at least 30 days prior to admission, with those not on statins.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, FASEB, Genetic Research / 25.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David Gurwitz, PhD Associate Professor Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry Sackler Faculty of Medicine Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv Israel MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We closely followed the news on COVID-19 epidemiology since it was declared a pandemic, and were puzzled by the low fatality rates reported in nearly all East Asian countries, even that clearly this was in part due to fast response; for example, Taiwan remains the best example for combatting the pandemic. My past research on serpins (serine protease inhibitors) made me wonder if ethnic differences in some of them are in part related to the relatively low COVID-19 morbidities and fatalities, as serine proteases, in particular TMPPRSS2, are strongly implicated in the SARS-CoV-2 respiratory track cell entry and infection. Additionally, serine proteases such as neutrophil elastase are highly implicated in inflammatory tissue damage. Guy Shapira, a graduate student of my colleague Professor Noam Shomron, examined mutation records in different ethnic groups for the entire human serpin gene family. He came up with the findings we report regarding a close correlation between national records of the frequencies of the two mutations PiZ and PiS, underlying alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, in 67 countries on the global scale, and the current COVID-19 fatalities in the same 67 countries.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs / 23.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gaurav Pandey, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences Icahn Institute of Genomics and Multiscale Biology Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Given the toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on people's health and lives worldwide, it is crucial to be able to accurately predict patients' outcomes, including their chances of mortality from the disease. Using the largest clinical dataset to date, and a systematical machine learning framework, the research team at Mount Sinai identified an accurate and parsimonious prediction model of COVID-19 mortality. This model was based on only three routinely collected clinical features, namely patient's age, minimum oxygen saturation over the course of their medical encounter, and type of patient encounter (inpatient vs outpatient and telehealth visits). (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 23.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joon Seo Lim, PhD, ELS Clinical Research Center Asan Institute for Life Sciences Asan Medical Center, Songpa-gu Seoul, Republic of Korea MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to spread at an alarming rate in all parts of the world, and screening individuals based on symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, anosmia) does not seem to be effective in sufficiently curbing the transmission of the disease. This suggests that asymptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be a driving force of the ongoing pandemic, but empirical evidence on this issue has been lacking because asymptomatic individuals are likely to go unnoticed unless subjected to systematic contact tracing. A large-sized outbreak of COVID-19 from a single religious group in South Korea enabled us to identify and test a large number of asymptomatic individuals with SARS-CoV-2 alongside symptomatic patients from the same cluster.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Education / 18.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Thomas M. Selden Director of the Division of Research and Modeling Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Rockville, Maryland  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Across the United States, school districts are facing decisions about whether and how to reopen elementary and secondary schools.  We conducted this study to provide evidence on the risk of severe COVID-19 among adults who are connected to schools in some way – as teachers or other school workers or as household members of school-age children or school employees. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collects the data we used in this study as part of its longstanding Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which is the nation’s most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage. (more…)
Author Interviews, Critical Care - Intensive Care - ICUs, Infections, PLoS / 17.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Prof. Alexandre Mebazaa Head of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Hôpital Lariboisiere and of the Research group MASCOT supported by Inserm and the Université de Paris (Paris, France). Prof. Mebazaa is the principle investigator of the recently published preclinical experiments on Procizumab, a potent, pre-clinical drug candidate targeting DPP3 in patients with acute mycardial depression.  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What is the significance of DPP3?  Response: The global burden of sepsis counts for one in three deaths world-wide. Recent findings have shown that circulating Dipeptidyl Pepidase 3 (cDPP3) is elevated in critical patients, including cardiogenic shock and septic patients, with the highest DPP3 blood levels found in non-survivors. Dipeptidyl Peptidase 3 (DPP3) is an intracellular peptidase that is released into the bloodstream upon cell injury and death, where it inactivates many circulating peptides including angiotensin II. This process likely leads to cardiac depression. Procizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody in preclinical development that targets and modulates DPP3. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the benefits of inhibiting circulating DPP3 by Procizumab in a preclinical model of sepsis-induced myocardial depression. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Cleveland Clinic, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Mental Health Research / 16.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rong Xu PhD Center for Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery, School of Medicine Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Chronic use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs is associated with cardiovascular, pulmonary, and metabolic diseases, all of which are also risk factors for COVID-19 infection and for worse outcomes.  Additionally, individuals with substance use disorders are more likely to experience social adversity such as homelessness, decreased access to health care, housing insecurity among others. Based on these, we hypothesis or predict that individuals with SUD are especially vulnerable for COVID-19 infection and adverse outcomes. In our study, we found that  individuals with substance use disorders, especially individuals with OUD and African Americans with SUD, as having increased risk for COVID-19 and its adverse outcomes  (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, HIV, JAMA, Sexual Health / 14.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gordon Mansergh, PhD Senior Behavioral Scientist CDC Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention MedicalResearch.com: What would you say is the take home message from the study? Response: A small but notable subgroup of gay and bisexual men are sharing their PrEP medication with others. As PrEP continues to be more commonly used, it is important to better understand and address the context of PrEP sharing, and to emphasize messaging about provider monitoring of medication use over time for health and safety reasons. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Smoking, Tobacco, Tobacco Research / 11.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Irfan Rahman, Ph.D. Principal Investigator. Center for Inhalation and Flavoring Toxicological Research University of Rochester MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our study aimed to determine whether vaping and smoking affect Covid-19 proteins and genes and whether that effect changes depending on the age of the vaper/smoker. SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, enters cells by interacting with ACE2 and TMPRSS2-Furin proteins. We found that both of these proteins increase with age and are also increased by smoking or vaping. This suggests that older adults, smokers and vapers may be more prone to infection with SARS-Cov-2 and may be more likely to have severe complications. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Pediatrics / 10.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Burak Bahar, MD Children’s National Hospital Laboratory Medicine Division Washington DC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Objective of this study was to help us better understand how long it takes pediatric patients with COVID-19 to clear it from their system, and at what point they start to make antibodies against the virus. Main findings of our study were 19.5 days being the median duration of viral positivity which is later than 18 days that is the median time for detecting antibodies in the circulation. We also found that kids aged 6 through 15 had a longer duration of viral positivity which was a median of 32 days. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Hospital Acquired, Infections, JAMA / 10.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Chanu Rhee MD MPH Associate Hospital Epidemiologist Attending Physician, Infectious Diseases and Critical Care Medicine Assistant Professor of Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: Many patients have been avoiding essential care during the COVID-19 pandemic due to fear of contracting SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare settings. Little is known, however about the adequacy of infection control practices in preventing nosocomial COVID-19 in U.S. acute care hospitals. We therefore conducted this observational study to determine the incidence of nosocomial COVID-19 in patients hospitalized at a large academic medical center in Boston (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) during the first 12 weeks of the surge in Massachusetts.    (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 09.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Claudia Alteri, PhD Assistant Professor (RTD-B) in Microbiology And Clinical Microbiology Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology University of Milano  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: In the context of SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, laboratories play a critical role in confirming the initial clinical suspicion of this disease, as confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 presence is essential to ensure the prompt initiation of containment and treatment protocols. This is of utmost importance to avoid further spread of the pandemic, and to assure the best clinical and therapeutic management of the infected patients in the hospital setting. Unfortunately, currently used rtPCR assays lack of the necessary sensitivity to identify all cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection (20% of false negative results [Li D et all, Korean J Rad 2020; Zhao et all CID 2020]). Complementary laboratory assays are therefore strongly needed. Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR) is a highly sensitive assay for the direct detection and quantification of DNA and RNA targets. It has been increasingly used in infectious disease settings, especially thanks to its ability to consistently and reliably detect down to few copies of viral genomes. Standing the necessity of a limitation (as much as possible) of false negative results in COVID-19 diagnosis, the use of ddPCR could provide a critical support. In the context of COVID-19 diagnosis, two recent studies highlight the good performances of ddPCR in detecting low viral load samples (Suo T MedRxiv 2020; You F MedRxiv 2020)  (more…)
Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews, CDC, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 09.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Nathan Furukawa, MD, MPH Medical officer, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention CDC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The cost of the PrEP medication is the largest driver of the cost of providing PrEP care. Most patients need insurance or help from a medication assistance program to cover the large costs of the PrEP medication. We wanted to describe how these costs were paid by patients (out-of-pocket payments) and insurers (third-party payments) nationally.    MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Response: The study found that the cost for a month of the PrEP medication tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine increased from $1350 to $1638 from 2014 to 2018, an average annual increase of 5%. Out-of-pocket costs increased faster from $54 to $94, an average annual increase of 14.9%. In 2018, at least $2 billion was spent paying for the PrEP medication, and this covered 18% of people that had an indication for PrEP.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Pediatrics / 08.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Xiaoyan Song, PhD, MBBS, CIC Director, Office of Infection Control/Epidemiology Children's National Hospital Professor of Pediatrics George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Science Washington, D.C. 20010 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: As soon as SARS-COV-2 virus began spreading in early January and raising concerns for a potential pandemic, both the public and healthcare providers have wondered how this new virus is compared to influenza, a virus that human has known for a century and has become much more familiar with its spread pattern, disease characteristics, and treatment. In contrast, we have very little knowledge about SARS-COV-2 and are still getting to know it little by little.  At Children’s National, we always maintain high vigilance on emerging infectious diseases and have excellent surveillance programs for influenza and other respiratory viral diseases.  Therefore, driven by 1) Our curiosity to know if SARS-COV-2 is indeed similar or different from influenza, and 2) Availability of both SARS-COV-2 and influenza data, we conducted this retrospective study. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 08.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Gadi Segal Director of the Internal Medicine Department Sheba Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: The background is the need to learn about COVID-19 pathophysiology in order to better stratify patients according to current and future severity. Such classification will enable better triage in times of pandemic and health-care-system over-load. (more…)
Author Interviews, Infections, JAMA / 08.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Yaa-Hui Dong PhD Faculty of Pharmacy National Yang-Ming University Taipei, Taiwan MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Previous observational studies found that fluoroquinolones may be associated with more than 2-fold increased risk of aortic aneurysm or aortic dissection (AA/AD). However, these studies might not well address the influence of concurrent infection, which is also a suggested risk factor for AA. Moreover, most of these studies compared fluoroquinolone use versus no fluoroquinolone use, which might overestimate the risk with fluoroquinolones as patients on fluoroquinolones may have more severe infection versus those not on fluoroquinolones. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Inflammation, Pediatrics / 04.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alvaro Moreira, MD Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics Co-Director Neonatal Nutrition and Bone Institute UT Health San Antonio MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), also known as pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome, is a new dangerous childhood disease that is temporally associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We conducted a systematic review to communicate the typical presentation and outcomes of children diagnosed with this hyperinflammatory condition.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Education, Pediatrics / 04.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Katherine A. S. Auger, MD, MSc Division of Hospital Medicine James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings Network Cincinnati, Ohio MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: All states closed schools in the spring of 2020 to try to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Our study demonstrated a large, significant association between school closure and fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths even when accounting for other state policies. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 03.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Benjamin Glicksberg, PhD Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences Member of the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center Member of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Healt Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Reports from health systems that detailed the clinical characteristics and outcomes of their COVID-19 patients were instrumental in helping other health systems rapidly adapt and know what to expect. There are few studies, however, that assess what happens to these patients after they were discharged from the hospital. In our work, we address this gap by determining both how many individuals re-present to the hospital within 14 days, and what clinical characteristics of these patients differ from those who do not. Such information is critical in order to continue to refine optimal treatment plans and discharge decisions for patients of all backgrounds and clinical profiles. To provide more context to the question, we also determined if and how these factors changed between initial presentation and readmission to the hospital. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 03.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: corona virus-Covid19Dr. Francesco Venturelli Servizio di Epidemiologia Direzione Sanitaria - Azienda USL-IRCCS di Reggio Emilia Padiglione Ziccardi, Via Amendola MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Contact tracing and isolation for people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 are two of the main strategies to limit the viral spread and contain the current pandemic. Long persistence of viral RNA detected by RT-PCR on nasopharyngeal swabs is commonly reported, while its correlation to virus viability is still debated. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?  Response: The study showed that in people with COVID-19, the median time between symptoms onset and viral clearance at RT-PCR was 36 days. Moreover, an overall 20% risk of “false negative” results at RT-PCR was observed, decreasing with time from diagnosis.     (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Infections / 01.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hariom Yadav, PhD Assistant Professor, Molecular Medicine Wake Forest School of Medicine  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: As gut microbiota is linked with all kind of known human diseases, however, commonly studied microorganisms are bacteria. Our study is first-of-its kind to discover the role of fungi living in our gut to influence our brain health like Alzheimer’s disease pathology in humans. It also describes that a Mediterranean ketogenic diet can beneficially change fungi and bacteria populations to improve brain health.  (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 29.08.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joanne Lemieux, Ph.D. Professor, Director, Membrane Protein Disease Research Group Department of Biochemistry Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry University of Alberta Edmonton AB Canada  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Labs at the University of Alberta developed and studied inhibitors directed against the main protease of coronavirus virus back in 2003 during the initial SARS outbreak. These inhibitors were subsequently developed by other labs to treat a fatal form of coromavisus infection in cats. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Medical Imaging / 27.08.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Bruce G. Haffty, MD FACR FASTRO FASCO Associate Vice Chancellor Cancer Programs Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Professor and Chair, Dept. Radiation Oncology Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson and New Jersey Medical Schools Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? : What are the main findings? Response: That at peak times of COVID in NJ, in a tertiary care hospital with lots of COVID patients, where cancer patients still need to get treated, there was no evidence of surface COVID contamination, which should be reassuring to patients requiring radiation treatment in a busy hospital with a high in patient population of COVID patients. It should be noted that patients and staff were routinely mask wearing, observing social distancing and routinely hand washing as well as screening patients as they came in to the department with temperature checks and questions regarding symptoms. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Inflammation / 27.08.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sacha Gnjatic, PhD Associate Director of the Human Immune Monitoring Center Associate Professor of Medicine, Oncological Sciences and Pathology Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Member of the Precision Immunology Institute and The Tisch Cancer Institute Mount Sinai MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you explain what is meant by cytokine/cytokines? Response: COVID-19 is a disease where inflammation is suspected to play a large role in pathogenicity, possibly more so than the tissue damage created by the virus alone. Cytokines are small soluble proteins that are produced by both immune cells and cells from tissues, and many play a role in signaling such inflammation, to alert of tissue damage or infection. Among these cytokines, interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, IL-1beta, and Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-a) have been well established as important markers of pathogenic inflammation. Drugs that counteract these cytokines are routinely use in various inflammatory disease, from rheumatoid arthritis to plaque psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. When the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2 infection hit our hospitals in New York, we therefore wondered whether these cytokines were associated with COVID-19 disease severity and outcome, and hoped that a rapid test to detect them in blood could be useful to make clinical decisions about treatment. We were able to analyze a very large number of patient samples (>1400) in a period of one month, and confirmed our findings in a second smaller cohort. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Gastrointestinal Disease / 27.08.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Arvind J. Trindade, MD Director of Endoscopy Long Island Jewish Medical Center Associate professor at Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research Division of Gastroenterology, Zucker School of Medicine Hofstra/Northwell, Northwell Health System New Hyde Park, NY MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Although most patients with COVID-19 present with respiratory symptoms, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms have also been reported in up to 25% of patients. Some case reports have shown acute pancreatitis as the initial presentation in patients with COVID-19, however the literature supporting this is limited. Our study aimed to report the point prevalence, risk factors, and outcomes of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 presenting with acute pancreatitis in a large health system and to compare outcomes of pancreatitis in patients without COVID-19. (more…)