THE OBSERVATORY :: NEWS TRENDS ANALYSIS


Severe COVID tied to high risk of death, mostly by other causes, within year


photo credit photo by Chikilino @ Pixabay


Fast Facts Malaria


The World Health Organization reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted malaria services, leading to an increase in cases and deaths.


Source: xxx


cases of malaria in 2020, 14 million more cases than in 2019


malaria deaths worldwide in 2020, 69,000 more deaths than in 2019


241 million 627,000 47,000


XXX Text here


additional deaths were linked to disruptions in the provision of


malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment during the pandemic


deaths per 100,000 is the 2020 global mortality rate


of malaria cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa


15.3 95% 80%


of malaria deaths in the African region are among children under 5 years of age


33


countries reported 819,000 children with low birthweight due to malaria infection during pregnancy


Source: World Health Organization - https://www.who.int/news/item/06- 12-2021-more-malaria-cases-and-deaths- in-2020-linked-to-covid-19-disruptions


https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/ default-source/malaria/world-malaria- reports/978924004049-eng.pdf


Survivors of severe COVID-19 — es- pecially those younger than 65 years — may be at more than twice the risk of dying within the next year than those who had mild or moderate illness or were never infected, finds a study in Frontiers in Medicine, according to a news release from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. Another finding of the analysis of electronic health records of 13,638 pa- tients who tested positive or negative for COVID-19 is that only 20% of those who had severe COVID-19 (requiring hospitalization) and died did so be- cause of complications of their infec- tion, such as abnormal blood clotting, respiratory failure, or cardiovascular problems. Rather, 80% were due to different reasons typically considered unrelated to COVID-19. Of all patients, 178 had severe CO- VID-19, while 246 were mildly or mod- erately ill, and the rest tested negative. Among all patients, 2,686 died within 12 months of their COVID-19 diagnosis. Relative to uninfected patients, those


recovered from severe COVID-19 younger than 65 years had a 233% in- creased risk of dying in the next year. The increased risk was greater than that of survivors of severe COVID-19 who were 65 years or older. The finding that most deaths were


not due to COVID-19 complications suggests that the health of these pa- tients had declined since their initial diagnosis, leaving them susceptible to different medical conditions.


COVID-19 infection rewires immunity “pathways” in pregnant mothers, affecting newborns’ immune systems


New UCLA-led research finds that severe COVID-19 illness during pregnancy triggers an inflammatory “cascade” that may lead to damage associated with the disease — and which, in turn, may alter the infants’ own immune system, according to a news release. The findings, published in Cell Reports Medicine, may explain why COVID-19 during pregnancy can cause severe, damaging disease, said Karin Nielsen, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. These findings also demon- strate the impact COVID-19 can have on infants born to women who had


6 JANUARY 2022 MLO-ONLINE.COM


the infection during pregnancy, even when the infants are not infected with the virus. The researchers focused on cellular proteins called cytokines, which are important components of the immune system. Chemokines are a type of cyto- kine that guide white blood cells to the site in need of repair. Levels of these proteins are in balance in healthy bod- ies, but in the presence of COVID-19, some cytokines are triggered, and others silenced in a process called upregulation or downregulation. The researchers tested 93 mothers infected with COVID-19 and 45 of their infants at day 1 that were exposed in the womb using next generation sequenc- ing (NGS)-based Olink proteomic profiling. This NGS technology enabled screening of nearly 1,500 cytokines, thus identifying alterations in immune system proteins and pathways. They found that severe COVID-19 appears to rewire the immune systems in mothers and their newborns. In mothers with severe disease, COVID-19 upregulated and downregulated specif- ic cytokines during pregnancy and de- livery. These inflammatory “pathways,” as they are called, are associated with liver and heart disease. In addition, infants born to mothers with severe COVID-19 had inflammatory profiles, identified by the presence of specific cytokines and chemokines, which were different from those normally found in newborns. These altered cytokine levels are


usually present in infants with respira- tory problems and, in some cases, poor neurodevelopment. The researchers did not find these immune alterations in infants born to mothers who were in- fected but asymptomatic or who had mild to moderate COVID-19 disease.


Study shows COVID-19- related brain complications


A multi-institutional international study on brain complications of CO- VID-19 has found that approximately one in 100 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 will likely develop compli- cations of the central nervous system. These can include stroke, hemorrhage, and other potentially fatal complica- tions, according to a news release from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “Much has been written about the


overall pulmonary problems related to COVID-19, but we do not often talk about the other organs that can be affected,” said Scott H. Faro, MD, FASFNR, Professor of Radiology and

Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50