Blaine Caslin
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Acute brain dysfunction in COVID-19 intensive care patients can be mitigated with care and contact
Written by: Blaine Caslin Edited by: Esther Melamed While the vaccine rollout is bringing a glimmer of hope for the pandemic, many people are still getting hospitalized for COVID-19 and needing to be treated in the intensive care unit (ICU). Doctors and scientists are continuing to develop new clinical guidelines and models of care to…
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Zoonotic transmissible SARS-CoV-2 mutant identified in Danish mink
On Wednesday November 4th, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that a zoonotically transmissible mutant strain of SARS-CoV-2 had been discovered on mink farms in northern Denmark[1]. The Danish State Serum Institute had reported their findings to the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Control a week earlier, although the data have…
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What role does estrogen play in the COVID-19 sex difference?
Previous entries in this blog have shown that men who contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus are more likely to develop severe disease symptoms than women. The closely related coronavirus SARS-CoV-1, which also targets the ACE2 protein for cell adhesion and infiltration, showed a similar sexual disparity during the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic. Research into the mechanisms of…
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What is driving the sex difference in COVID-19?
The current evidence for a male predisposition toward increased risk of severe disease from SARS-CoV-2 infection is consistent across age groups and cultural demographics. Smoking was examined as a possible risk factor based on early studies on COVID-19 epidemiology out of China, where the noticable sex difference in disease severity was paired with a national…
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Are there sex differences in COVID-19 epidemiology?
As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the world, global health organizations have begun to identify patterns of uniquely susceptible populations. When discussing the epidemiology of this virus, it is important to distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of the COVID-19 disease. Approximately 50% of people who become infected with the virus do…