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A new international study, led by Dr. Sonny Dhanani of the CHEO Research Institute, and published in the January 28 issue of the
New England Journal of Medicine, documents the physiology of the dying process. Working closely with the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program, the research team asked over 600 families to allow their loved ones in the ICU to have their vital signs monitored during the dying process. This is the largest international study of its kind.
Why is a study like this important?
For families to choose organ donation when a loved one has died, they must be able to trust that death has really happened and that it is irreversible. Trust allows people to decide to donate at a time of grief and allows the medical community to feel comfortable opening a dialogue about donation. For donation after circulatory-determined death to be medically possible, death must be declared within a window of time after life sustaining measures are withdra
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National consortium to study threats of new SARS-CoV-2 variants
The University of Liverpool is part of a new national research project to study the effects of emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2.
Supported by £2.5 million funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the ‘G2P-UK’ National Virology Consortium will study how mutations in the virus affect key outcomes such as how transmissible it is, the severity of COVID-19 it causes, and the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments.
The consortium will bring together leading virologists from 10 research institutions including the University of Liverpool. They will work alongside the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, which plays a world-leading role in virus genome sequencing, and Public Health England to boost the UK’s capacity to study newly identified virus variants and rapidly inform government policy.
Ottawa, ON June 11, 2003 The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has unveiled a three-part health research strategy on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
The strategy includes funding of C$1.7 million to four research teams, funding of about $1 million to support related public-health research, and the creation of a research consortium to coordinate, promote and support Canadian research in the area.
Leaders of the four teams funded to a total of $1.7 million are:
– Dr Mark Loeb (McMaster University), whose team will work to improve our understanding of the diagnosis, clinical course, epidemiology and immunopathogenesis of SARS;
– Dr Danuta Skowronski (University of British Columbia), whose team will carry out research leading to the development of a vaccine for SARS;
DuKai photographerGetty Images
There is a new variant of COVID-19 circulating in the UK, but there is no reason to worry or panic: the new variant may spread faster but it is not more deadly and there is no reason to believe the vaccines won’t work to stop it.
On December 13, Public Health England confirmed that they identified a variant in 1,108 cases of COVID-19, which UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “may be up to 70 percent more transmissible than the earlier strain.” By early January, the variant was found in 37 countries, according to CNN, and in the US states of California, Colorado, and Florida.