United States of America has reached the record number of 100 million cases of coronavirusaccording to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated this week.
Thus, the United States became the first nation to report total cases in the nine-digit range, data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center shows.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and a contributor to ABC News, said that “obviously it is a milestone that indicates the large amount of transmission that has occurred around this virus and the demographic burden that we have been facing.
“At the same time, we recognize that the reported cases are grossly underreported, testing was non-existent at the start of the pandemic,” he added.
The National Institutes of Health launched a website in late November where people can anonymously report their COVID-19 test results at home, regardless of which brand they use.
A few days ago, American scientists found out why some people do not recover their sense of smell after being infected with SARS-CoV-2. The reason is inside the nose and what the virus causes inside it.
The discovery, published this Wednesday in the magazine Science Translational Medicine, finally explains how a problem occurs that affects millions of people around the world. According to the researchers, the virus causes a continued immune damage which decreases the number of olfactory nerve cells.
The research also sheds light on the possible causes behind other lingering symptoms of covid-19, such as general fatigue, shortness of breath or lack of concentration, which could be triggered by similar biological mechanisms, according to the researchers.
“One of the first symptoms that is usually associated with Covid 19 infection is loss of smell. Fortunately, many people recover their sense of smell in a week or two, but some don’t,” says Bradley Goldstein, lead author of the study and neurobiology researcher at Duke University in North Carolina, USA.
“We wanted to better understand why some people have a persistent loss of smell for months or years after being infected,” she explains.
Together with scientists from Harvard and the University of California-San Diego, the Duke team analyzed olfactory epithelial samples collected from 24 biopsies, including those from nine patients with persistent loss of smell.
The analysis showed widespread infiltration of T cells involved in an inflammatory response in the olfactory epithelium, the tissue in the nose that contains nerve cells for smell.
The inflammatory process persisted after infection, and the number of olfactory sensory neurons was reduced, possibly due to damage to delicate tissue sustained by the persistent inflammation.
For Goldstein, “the results are amazing, it almost looks like some sort of autoimmune process in the nose.” He believes that knowing which areas are damaged and which cell types are involved is key to starting to design treatments.
Furthermore, the team finds it encouraging that neurons appear to retain some ability to repair even after an immune attack.
“We hope that modulating the abnormal immune response or repair processes in these patients’ noses could help restore, at least in part, the sense of smell,” he says.
In his view, the results of this study could also be useful for further research into other long-lasting symptoms of Covid-19 that could be caused by similar inflammatory processes.
With information from ANSA
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.