Elevated ACE2 and inflammation levels increase risk for pregnant women infected with SARS-CoV-2
Among the hundred million or so cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that have occurred since the pandemic began, pregnant women have been a conspicuous risk group. However, the exact nature of the risk they and their fetuses face, and the mechanism by which it operates, is far from clear. A new preprint research paper posted to the
medRxiv server throws some light on this area by revealing the presence of significant inflammation at the maternal-fetal interface.
Study: SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy is associated with robust inflammatory response at the maternal-fetal interface. Image Credit: Natalia Grevtsova / Shutterstock
A team of scientists from the United States has recently revealed that about 25% of people with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection develop renal complications and that the viral spike protein can be detected in the urine samples of these patients. The study is currently available on the medRxiv preprint server.
New York Tech researchers receive NIH grant to improve the understanding of atherosclerosis
A New York Institute of Technology research team led by Olga V. Savinova, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM), has secured a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The $1.8 million grant, which includes a first-year award of $342,675, will support research to improve the understanding of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and deliver a new treatment for heart disease.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30 million U.S. adults have been diagnosed with heart disease, which also causes one in every four deaths. Researchers have long believed that atherosclerosis is a risk factor in predicting heart disease-related illness and death. The buildup of calcium salts in blood vessel tissue, known as vas
Now, in new research posted to the preprint server bioRxiv , scientists use an experimental structure of the Spike RBD domain co-crystallized with part of the ACE2 receptor and several in silico methods to analyze the possible impacts of three amino acid replacements (Spike K417N, E484K, N501Y) concerning ACE2 binding.
Using more than 100,000 virus genome sequences uploaded in the GISAID database, researchers found around 9,000 mutations in the virus spike protein RBD.