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Your daily COVID-19 LST Report:

— Climate:  An author at Michigan State University advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to studying and learning from this pandemic. In light of COVID-19’s possible origins from a Chinese seafood market, they call for collaboration of bioethicists with expertise in public health and social scientists with expertise in agriculture and food supply. They also suggest adapting the “One Health” approach, which seeks to coordinate veterinary and medical research and education, to bioethics and social sciences research and thinking.

— Epidemiology:  Researchers conduct a two-cohort study to better understand the relationship between COVID-19 and tuberculosis (TB).  Overall,  they found that death rates were low among TB patients with COVID-19, and the authors suggest TB may not be a significant determinant for mortality in COVID-19.

— A literature review of 2,597 pediatric patients with COVID-19 reported:

• Symptoms:  7.6% asymptomatic, 45.5% mild, 41.5% moderate, 4.4% severe, 0.9% critical, and 0.1% death
• Lung imagining:  43.5% with no obvious abnormalities, and 56.5% with inflammatory lesions
• Laboratory results:  Blood: 74.7% normal leukocytes, 8.8% leukocytosis, 21% leukopenia, and 9.8% lymphopenia.
  • Inflammatory markers: 40.8% increased procalcitonin, 18.8% increased CPR, 20.4% increased LDH

— Understanding the Pathology:  Degree of androgen sensitivity in patients may predict their vulnerability to COVID-19 and may explain increased prevalence in male adults.  Authors suggest that anti-androgen medications with benign side effect profiles to be considered as prophylactics.

— Transmission and Prevention: A Cochrane systematic review of studies simulating PPE donning and doffing found that utilizing PPE with better overall coverage (PAPR vs N95, gowns vs aprons, water-repellent vs breathable) can reduce contamination rates at the cost of higher difficulty of application. Contamination rates were also reduced when PPE can be easily removed in one-step, double gloving, and after formal video or in-person donning and doffing training.

— Diagnosis and Treatment:  Although the average sensitivity and specificity of our current antibody testing for COVID-19 is 84.80% and 98.63% respectively.  Statistical analysis suggests that the positive predictive value of this antibody test can be as low as 30% in areas with lower disease prevalence.

— R&D:  A retrospective cohort study of 65 hospitalized patients in Brooklyn, New York showed a higher survival rate and lower intubation rate in patients who received calcium channel blocking medications (Nifedipine or Amlodipine) as part of their COVID-19 treatment.