The overwhelming focus of research into the cellular immune response to SARS-CoV-2 has been investigating the reaction of vaccinated people, in an effort to establish correlates of protection required to fight off infection. But with a majority in many African and Asian countries still unvaccinated, it also is important to understand the natural cellular immune response, and to track the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with the potential to escape immunity in these populations.

Studies published this week have introduced a consensus-based definition of long COVID-19 in children and young persons, narrowing its prevalence estimates, which have been wildly divergent. Long COVID rates for adults are still unclear, but a recent meta-analysis estimated that between one third and two thirds of adult COVID-19 patients who had severe acute disease develop symptoms of long COVID.

A remarkably brief exposure to a multidrug cocktail enabled frogs to re-grow largely functional limbs after amputation, investigators from Tufts University reported in the January 26, 2022, issue of Science Advances. Twenty-four hours of exposure to five factors – brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), growth hormone (GH), 1,4-dihydrophenonthrolin-4-one-3carboxylic acid (1,4-DPCA), resolvin D5 (RD5) and retinoic acid (RA) – set off regeneration processes that continued for 18 months.

Two studies published this January by separate research teams have conclusively identified Epstein-Barr virus infection as the cause of multiple sclerosis, and the mechanism by which the immune response to EBV infection triggers an attack on the myelin sheath, the insulation that enables high-speed neuronal transmission.

Destroying senescent cells in the aging stem cell niche, either genetically or pharmacologically using the small-molecule senolytic ABT-263 (navitoclax; Abbvie Inc.), enhanced hippocampal neurogenesis and cognitive function in mice, a Canadian study led by scientists at the University of Toronto has found.

A team led by researchers from the ETH Zürich and the University of Basel has used a combination of mass spectrometry data and machine learning to predict antibiotic resistance of clinical bacterial samples. The results, which were published in the Jan. 10, 2022, issue of Nature Medicine, could speed the identification of optimal antibiotic regimens for patients.

LONDON – A population level study tracking every pregnancy in Scotland between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and the end of October 2021 lays bare the devastating impact of COVID-19 on perinatal mortality.

Clinicians at the University of Maryland have transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig bred by Revivicor Inc., a subsidiary of United Therapeutics Corp., into a patient with end-stage heart failure.

LONDON – T cells generated as a result of infection with common cold coronaviruses provide cross-protection against being infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a new study.

Combining the metabolites glutamine or inosine with ampicillin (AMP) could represent a new therapeutic approach to antimicrobial resistance that also avoids the development of acquired resistance to next-generation antibiotics, according to a new Chinese study led by scientists at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) in Guangzhou.