Articles: coronavirus, sars-cov-2, pandemics, and covid-19.
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During the current corona pandemic, new therapeutic options against this viral disease are urgently desired. Due to the rapid spread and immense number of affected individuals worldwide, cost-effective, globally available, and safe options with minimal side effects and simple application are extremely warranted. This review will therefore discuss the potential of zinc as preventive and therapeutic agent alone or in combination with other strategies, as zinc meets all the above described criteria. ⋯ Interestingly, most of the risk groups described for COVID-19 are at the same time groups that were associated with zinc deficiency. As zinc is essential to preserve natural tissue barriers such as the respiratory epithelium, preventing pathogen entry, for a balanced function of the immune system and the redox system, zinc deficiency can probably be added to the factors predisposing individuals to infection and detrimental progression of COVID-19. Finally, due to its direct antiviral properties, it can be assumed that zinc administration is beneficial for most of the population, especially those with suboptimal zinc status.
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The world is currently grappling with the potentially life-threatening coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), marking it as the most severe health crisis in the modern era. COVID-19 has led to a pandemic, with the World Health Organization (WHO) predicting that individuals with diabetes are at a higher risk of contracting the virus compared to the general population. This review aims to provide a practical summary of the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on patients with diabetes. Specifically, it focuses on the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on different types of diabetic patients, the associated mortality rate, the underlying mechanisms, related complications, and the role of vitamin D and zinc in therapeutic and preventive approaches. ⋯ Diabetes increases the morbidity and mortality risk for patients with COVID-19. Efforts are globally underway to explore therapeutic interventions aimed at reducing the impact of diabetes on COVID-19.
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Military body fat standards were implemented in the 1980s to prevent obesity and associated poor military readiness. In the past 2 decades, enforcement of existing Army body composition standards has been eroded by the steady increase in national obesity rates, the demand for new recruits especially during the 2007 surge in Iraq, and the COVID epidemic in 2020. The diminishing qualified recruit pool puts a new focus on accession standards. The purpose of accession standards is to ensure that recruits will meet soldier standards, but accession standards have been relaxed to improve recruitment with an assumption that most recruits will achieve the retention standards during initial entry training. A new method of percent body fat estimation (%BF) adopted by the Army in 2024 further liberalizes both accession and retention standards. This study examined the impact of current accession and retention %BF standards on the proportion of the US population that would be disqualified from Army service. ⋯ Army body composition standards are generous, extending to the limits of increased metabolic health risks and providing underestimates of actual %BF based on the behavior of circumference-based methods of body fat estimation. However, current standards do not accurately select or track physical readiness, especially for women, and should be updated. Modernization of physical readiness standards to meet the needs of the Army of 2030 could include adoption of new technologies that directly assess central adiposity, adequate muscle mass, and replace fitness testing with cardiac output metrics. With half of US adults projected to be obese by 2030, it is time for a review of the strategic goals of modernized military readiness standards.
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Multicenter Study
Timing of surgery following SARS-CoV-2 infection: an international prospective cohort study.
Surgery should be delayed for at least 7 weeks after COVID, although those with persistent COVID symptoms will still have more than twice the 30-day mortality than those without.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Intramuscular AZD7442 (Tixagevimab-Cilgavimab) for Prevention of Covid-19.
The monoclonal-antibody combination AZD7442 is composed of tixagevimab and cilgavimab, two neutralizing antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that have an extended half-life and have been shown to have prophylactic and therapeutic effects in animal models. Pharmacokinetic data in humans indicate that AZD7442 has an extended half-life of approximately 90 days. ⋯ A single dose of AZD7442 had efficacy for the prevention of Covid-19, without evident safety concerns. (Funded by AstraZeneca and the U.S. government; PROVENT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04625725.).