Lifeboat Foundation

A 75-year-old man from Northern Israel died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, the Health Ministry has confirmed. The man had pre-existing conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, the ministry said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” Levy said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. Levy noted that the initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination. Recall that when Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration back in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine.

A 75-year-old man from Beit She’an died of a heart attack about two hours after being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus on Monday morning, the Health Ministry reported. The man had preexisting conditions and had suffered from heart attacks in the past, it said. Health Ministry director-general Chezy Levy has launched an investigation into the incident. “We share in the grief of the family,” he said in a statement. The man was inoculated at around 8:30 a.m. at a Clalit Health Services clinic. He stayed at the facility, as is customary, for a short period of time to ensure he had no side effects. When he felt well, the clinic released him. The initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination, Levy said. When Pfizer presented its safety data to the US Food and Drug Administration in early December, it was found that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine. One of the deceased was immunocompromised, meaning the person’s immune defenses were low. In response to the report of those deaths, Israel’s Midaat Association said when vaccines are administered to at-risk populations, “there may be unfortunate cases. One should not infer from this about the safety of the vaccine, but welcome the transparency required from the pharma companies in the drug approval process.”

You want 2021 to be super. But not in a super gonorrhea type of way.

“Super gonorrhea” is trending on Twitter right now because, well, why not? It’s 2020, after all. And what better thing to have trend at the end of a year that brought us the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, a shortage of basically everything, constant drama in the White House, and a Presidential election that just won’t end? Consider this sexually transmitted infection to be the pie à la mode, the night cap, the final wipe of 2020.

This new anti-cancer drug will be attacking the mitochondria of cancer cells. They do this by inhibiting the enzyme mitochondrial RNA polymerase (POLRMT).

Differentiated tissues are said to be tolerant of the inhibition of this enzyme while rapidly proliferating cells are impacted more.

The compound was found to reduce tumor growth in mice.

Continue reading “New Drug Starves Cancer Cells” »

People born without a corpus callosum do not have a bridge between the two cerebral hemispheres. Neuroscientists from UNIGE have shown how the brain manages to adapt.

One in 4000 people is born without a corpus callosum, a brain structure consisting of neural fibers that are used to transfer information from one hemisphere to the other. A quarter of these individuals do not have any symptoms, while the remainder either have low intelligence quotients or suffer from severe cognitive disorders. In a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) discovered that when the neuronal fibers that act as a bridge between the hemispheres are missing, the brain reorganizes itself and creates an impressive number of connections inside each hemisphere. These create more intra-hemispheric connections than in a healthy brain, indicating that plasticity mechanisms are involved. It is thought that these mechanisms enable the brain to compensate for the losses by recreating connections to other brain regions using alternative neural pathways.

The corpus callosum develops in utero between the tenth and twentieth week of gestation. Agenesis of the corpus callosum is a congenital brain malformation in which this brain structure fails to develop, resulting in one out of 4000 babies born without a corpus callosum. When it is missing, nothing replaces this structure measuring about ten centimeters, with the exception of cerebrospinal fluid. This means that the information transmitted from one hemisphere to the other can no longer be conveyed by the neuronal projections from the corpus callosum. “Their role in a healthy brain,” begins Vanessa Siffredi, a researcher in UNIGE’s Faculty of Medicine, “is to ensure the functioning of various cognitive and sensorimotor functions.” Surprisingly, 25% of people with this malformation have no visible signs; 50% have average intelligence quotients and learning difficulties; and the remaining 25% suffer from severe cognitive disorders.

Turns out it’s just as good as chomping on gum as a human.

The prospect would effectively double the number of vaccine doses available and allow more people to be vaccinated quickly. But the idea has set off a debate, with experts saying there isn’t enough evidence yet to justify a single dose and people should plan to get two doses.

The push in favor of exploring the idea of a single-dose vaccine crystallized with a recent New York Times op-ed from Michael Mina, an immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Zeynep Tufecki, a sociologist who has written extensively on the pandemic.

They called for immediately starting a new clinical trial to study whether one dose of the vaccine is sufficient. They cited data from the trials already conducted for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that showed protection began after the first dose, with as much as around 90 percent efficacy, compared to around 95 percent efficacy after two doses.

Doses of monoclonal antibodies—Covid-19 therapies authorized for emergency use last month—are sitting unused in hospital pharmacies, even as cases surge across the country.

Hospitals say the rollout of the therapies has been stunted by a lukewarm response from infectious-disease specialists, who say they want more clinical trial data before using them on a regular basis. Medical centers are also grappling with a lack of awareness and interest from both the primary-care doctors who would normally prescribe the drug and patients who are offered it. And some places are dealing with a shortage of space and staff to administer the therapies.

When monoclonal antibody therapies from Eli Lilly & Co. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. were approved for emergency use in November, health agencies were worried there wouldn’t be enough supply to meet demand. Now, health-care providers are administering just 20% of the doses they receive each week, according to officials with Operation Warp Speed, the federal initiative to support development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for Covid-19.

^The end of the year in cybersecurity mirrored the wider world by concluding in catastrophe: With more than 10000 people dying every day from Covid-19, a highly sophisticated electronic espionage campaign targeted U.S. government agencies and critical private industry, all customers of a single company: SolarWinds.

But there are some champions trying to make the online world a safer place. Our inaugural Forbes Cybersecurity Awards celebrate their achievements.

Jason Asbahr.

Reese Jones

New research suggests that electrophysiological brain signals associated with neural plasticity could help explain the rapid, antidepressant effects of the drug ketamine. The findings, European Neuropsychopharmacology, indicate that ketamine could reverse insensitivity to prediction error in depression.

Continue reading “Ketamine may ease depression” »