The human immune defense is based on the ability of white blood cells to accurately identify disease-causing pathogens and to initiate a defense reaction against them. The immune defense is able to recall the pathogens it has encountered previously, on which, for example, the effectiveness of vaccines is based.

Several weeks following the publication of the large real-world COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness study by the Clalit Research Institute in Collaboration with Harvard University in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), additional results focusing on vaccine effectiveness in specific sub-populations have now been published.

The largest study of its type in the UK has identified differences in the immune response to COVID-19, between people with no symptoms, compared to those suffering a more serious reaction to the virus.

Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Newcastle University, University College London, University of Cambridge, EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and their collaborators within the Human Cell Atlas initiative, found raised levels of specific immune cells in asymptomatic people.

COVID-19 patients who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop a more severe infection than patients of healthy weight, and they require oxygen and invasive mechanical ventilation more often. There is no increased risk of death . These conclusions, for which more than 7,000 patients were studied, appear from international research in eleven countries, including the Netherlands (Radboud university medical center).

A COVID-19 vaccine that could provide protection against existing and future strains of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and other coronaviruses, and cost about $1 a dose has shown promising results in early animal testing.

Vaccines created by UVA Health's Steven L. Zeichner, MD, PhD, and Virginia Tech's Xiang-Jin Meng, MD, PhD, prevented pigs from being becoming ill with a pig model coronavirus, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV).

It is an open question to what extent protection against reinfection persists after overcoming a SARS-CoV-2 infection. The "Rhineland Study", a population-based study conducted by DZNE in the Bonn area, is now providing new findings in this regard. Blood samples taken last year indicate that an important component of immunity - the levels of specific neutralizing antibodies against the coronavirus - had dropped in

New research published in Science Advances provides a template for how to develop directly-acting antivirals with novel modes of action, that would combat COVID-19 by suppressing the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. The study focused on the macrodomain part of the Nsp3 gene product that SARS-CoV-2 uses to suppress the host cell's natural antiviral response.