Famous scientist who created vaccine is mysteriously stabbed; 3-year-old boy had strange stroke after suffering Covid and a mutation reveals science: three things we learned from the coronavirus this week

Lying on the floor after falling from the fourteenth floor, in his underwear and stabbed. This is how the Russian scientist was found Alexander “Sasha” Kagansky.

Kagansky is one of the most famous scientists in his country, who was working on a coronavirus vaccine.

The 45-year-old biologist died in a colleague’s building in Chao, St. Petersburg, so the police think they both had a fight, which the other man, however, denies, maintaining the mystery of this strange death.

The scientist had worked searching for possible cancer treatments for 13 years at the University of Edinburgh. Now he had been appointed director of the Center for Genomic and Regenerative Medicine of the Russian Far Eastern Federal University, in Vladivostok, where he continued his collaboration with the Scottish University Institute for Genetics and Molecular Medicine, where he was developing a promising coronavirus vaccine.

Kagansky was a world-famous specialist in the field of genetics, with research published in the main world scientific journals. The scientist was one of the initiators of the synthetic epigenetics, a new branch of biomedical science.

Russian intelligence has already opened a murder case and arrested one person, but his death remains shrouded in mystery.

Doctors are puzzled after a child as young as three years old experienced a stroke after falling ill with Covid-19.

The boy was recovering Thursday at the University of Missouri Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Columbia, USA, after surgery to treat a brain clot, local website KSN-TV reported.

Despite the seriousness of his condition, the doctors hope that the minor will recover completely, as they explained to the local media, adding that his case is a possible example of the neurological effects associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

Camilo Gómez, a neurologist at the hospital, said doctors were examining the extent of the link between Covid-19 and these neurological problems.

Since the start of the pandemic, scientists and doctors have been analyzed a possible association between coronavirus and blood clots, including those that affect a patient’s brain.

Researchers at the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado (United States), were one of the first to draw on the growing evidence that patients infected with Covid-19 are highly predisposed to developing blood clots. The research team is now participating in a randomized clinical trial of a drug that breaks down blood clots in patients infected with Covid-19.

A study of 214 patients earlier this year in Wuhan, China, found that more than a third had neurological manifestations of the disease, including loss of consciousness and a stroke. American doctors have also documented and studied blood clots and strokes among Covid-19 patients.

The minor had tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies and hours later he lost the ability to move his right arm and leg, his mother told KSN-TV. She said she noticed the difference when she grabbed a stuffed animal. “I went to give him his Boo and I noticed he didn’t use his dominant arm to grab it,” he said. “He reached out to grab his bunny and, again, I knew something was wrong.”

Pediatric neurologist Dr. Paul Carney said the child suffered a stroke that cut off the blood supply to the left side of his brain. “There really is no other case like this,” Carney told the TV station. “If it had been someone over 40 or 60, it probably would have had a very different outcome.”

Colt’s parents told KSN-TV that they hoped their experience would raise awareness about Covid-19. “People should wear the masks,” her father said. “It is important. If you do not want your children to go through this, people must be more aware, “he closed.

Like a slide the Sars-CoV-2 mutation discovered in Britain has many nervous. The news became widespread last week, but only in recent days did it generate panic.

However, scientists have tried to explain that all viruses, and that this coronavirus, does too.

“The mutations observed have rarely affected viral fitness and they almost never affect the clinical outcome, but the detailed effects of these mutations have not yet been fully determined ”, British scientists warned.

So if mutations in viruses are to be expected, why is the new variant detected this weekend in the UK so striking? The key is in the Spike (S) or Spike Protein.

As reported by UK authorities, the new variant called VUI 202012/01 (Variant in research, year 2020, month 12, variant 01) has multiple mutations in this protein.

Each time a virus enters a cell to infect it, it replicates in it and mistakenly transfers different information, which is what determines new combinations or mutations.

Vivian Luchsinger, virologist and researcher of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBM) of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile, He pointed out in a note published in Qué Pasa, that viruses with RNA when entering the cell and reproducing in it, use enzymes to produce new RNA particles in the children of these viruses, but this enzyme is wrong and instead of putting a nucleotide puts another. “Most of the changes are not important but these changes can occur in any protein of the virus. If there are changes in the proteins that are related to the antibodies, it may be that the protein it produces is not detected by the antibodies ”, he explained regarding the risks.

What is truly worrying is precisely when these mutations change the behavior of the virus.

Researchers have explained that so that the mutation is really worrisome and turns into a new strain, the virus must change its relationship with antibodies, or improve their immune system evasion systems or there is variation in immunological or biological characteristics. As long as this does not happen, it continues to speak of variant or lineage and not all variants are transformed into a new strain of virus, for which there must be a change in the behavior of the pathogen.

If this happens, they fear the worst, but they have said it is unlikely. And this is when the problem arises: the least this coronavirus has done is behave as the medical manuals predicted.

For now, suspicions suggest that the new variant would have a higher transmissibility, but it is not conclusive yet as laboratory studies are lacking.

Alexis Kalergis, academic at the Catholic University and director of the Millennium Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy (IMII), also told Qué Pasa that according to the report provided by the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC), it would be a new variant that presents several genetic changes and suggests that it would have the ability to be more communicable, but would not cause more serious disease. “However, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, since it requires a series of tests that will take time.”

“Mutations in virus genomes are to be expectedBut you cannot predict where in the genome it will occur or at what time, and neither can its biological or immunological implications, ”said Kalergis.

Another aspect to consider is that the United Kingdom It is one of the countries that performs the most genetic sequencing, so its detection does not imply that the mutation has occurred there. It may be that the variant has been around for a long time and has only now been detected.

Given the changes that the virus is having, one of the first questions that arose was whether the vaccines that are being developed will work? According to Kalergis, who is also general director of the clinical trial of the Sinovac and Biotech vaccine, studies are lacking to have a conclusive answer.

“There is still no evidence that this variation can evade the immune response generated by vaccines, but nevertheless it must be studied,” he said.

Scientists estimate that they are necessary many mutations so that vaccines that work with the spike protein lose effectiveness and that the changes that have occurred so far are not enough to evade the immune response generated by the vaccines. Even, they warn, if it did occur, it would be easy to include new genetic information in vaccines because that information can be adapted to vaccine technology.

The minister of Science Technology, Knowledge and Innovation, Andres Couve, He noted that the UK mutation affects the spread of the virus and makes it faster, but it is not yet known whether it is more virulent. To date, it says, the Sars-CoV-2 virus registers more than 12 thousand mutations.

Even so, noted that the mutation has not reached Chile, which was confirmed by the Institute of Public Health (ISP), although the agency also warned that “It has not been identified, it does not mean that it has not arrived.”