A Potential Novel COVID-19 Vaccine With RBD-HR1/HR2 Hexamer Structure

The COVID-19 pandemic and the continued spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 variants have brought a grave public health consequence and severely devastated the global economy with recessions. Vaccination is considered as one of the most promising and efficient methods to end the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate the disease conditions if infected. Although a few vaccines have been developed with an unprecedented speed, scientists around the world are continuing pursuing the best possible vaccines with innovations. Comparing to the expensive mRNA vaccines and attenuated/inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines have certain advantages, including their safety (non-virus components), potential stronger immunogenicity, broader protection, ease of scaling-up production, reduced cost, etc. In this study, we reported a novel COVID-19 vaccine generated with RBD-HR1/HR2 hexamer that was creatively fused with the RBD domain and heptad repeat 1 (HR1) or heptad repeat 2 (HR2) to form a dumbbell-shaped hexamer to target the spike S1 subunit. The novel hexamer COVID-19 vaccine induced high titers of neutralizing antibody in mouse studies (>100,000), and further experiments also showed that the vaccine also induced an alternative antibody to the HR1 region, which probably alleviated the drop of immunogenicity from the frequent mutations of SARS-CoV-2.

Molecular Phenomic Approaches to Deconvolving the Systemic Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Post-acute COVID-19 Syndrome

SARS COV-2 infection causes acute and frequently severe respiratory disease with associated multi-organ damage and systemic disturbances in many biochemical pathways. Metabolic phenotyping provides deep insights into the complex immunopathological problems that drive the resulting COVID-19 disease and is also a source of novel metrics for assessing patient recovery. A multiplatform metabolic phenotyping approach to studying the pathology and systemic metabolic sequelae of COVID-19 is considered here, together with a framework for assessing post-acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS) that is a major long-term health consequence for many patients. The sudden emergence of the disease presents a biological discovery challenge as we try to understand the pathological mechanisms of the disease and develop effective mitigation strategies. This requires technologies to measure objectively the extent and sub-phenotypes of the disease at the molecular level. Spectroscopic methods can reveal metabolic sub-phenotypes and new biomarkers that can be monitored during the acute disease phase and beyond. This approach is scalable and translatable to other pathologies and provides as an exemplar strategy for the investigation of other emergent zoonotic diseases with complex immunological drivers, multi-system involvements and diverse persistent symptoms.

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Socioeconomic and Health Disparities

Disadvantaged groups around the world have suffered and endured higher mortality during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This contrast disparity suggests that socioeconomic and health-related factors may drive inequality in disease outcome. To identify these factors correlated with COVID-19 outcome, country aggregate data provided by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission subjected to correlation analysis. Socioeconomic and health-related variables were used to predict mortality in the top 5 most affected countries using ridge regression and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models. Our data reveal that predictors related to demographics and social disadvantage correlate with COVID-19 mortality per million and that XGBoost performed better than ridge regression. Taken together, our findings suggest that the health consequence of the current pandemic is not just confined to indiscriminate impact of a viral infection but that these preventable effects are amplified based on pre-existing health and socioeconomic inequalities.

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Socioeconomic and Health Disparities

Disadvantaged groups around the world have suffered and endured higher mortality during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This contrast disparity suggests that socioeconomic and health-related factors may drive inequality in disease outcome. To identify these factors correlated with COVID-19 outcome, country aggregate data provided by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission subjected to correlation analysis. Socioeconomic and health-related variables were used to predict mortality in the top 5 most affected countries using ridge regression and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models. Our data reveal that predictors related to demographics and social disadvantage correlate with COVID-19 mortality per million and that XGBoost performed better than ridge regression. Taken together, our findings suggest that the health consequence of the current pandemic is not just confined to indiscriminate impact of a viral infection but that these preventable effects are amplified based on pre-existing health and socioeconomic inequalities.

Demographic, Personality, and Social Cognition Correlates of Coronavirus Guideline Adherence in a U.S. Sample

Objective: The present study examined patterns and psychosocial correlates of coronavirus guideline adherence in a U.S. sample (N = 500) during the initial 15-day period advocated by the White House Coronavirus Task Force.Methods: Descriptive and correlational analyses were used to examine the frequency of past 7-day adherence to each of 10 guidelines, as well as overall adherence. Guided by a disposition-belief-motivation model of health behavior, path analyses tested associations of personality traits and demographic factors to overall adherence via perceived norms, perceived control, attitudes, and self-efficacy related to guideline adherence, as well as perceived exposure risk and perceived health consequence if exposed.Results: Adherence ranged from 94.4 % reporting always avoiding eating/drinking inside bars/ restaurants/food courts to 13.6 % reporting always avoiding touching one’s face. Modeling showed total associations with overall adherence for greater conscientiousness (β = .191, p < .001), openness (β = .098, p < .05), perceptions of social endorsement (β = .202, p < .001), positive attitudes (β = .105, p < .05), self-efficacy (β = .234, p < .001), and the presence versus absence or uncertainty of a shelter-in-place order (β = .102, p < .01). Age, self-rated health, sex, education, income, children in the household, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, perceived exposure risk, and perceived health consequence showed null-to-negligible associations with overall adherence.Conclusions: The results clarify adherence frequency, highlight characteristics associated with greater adherence, and suggest the need to strengthen the social contract between government and citizenry by clearly communicating adherence benefits, costs, and timelines.