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The woman who discovered the first human coronavirus was the daughter of a Scottish bus driver and dropped out of school at 16.
June Almeida became a pioneer in the production of virus images, but her work was forgotten … until the current pandemic covid-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
This new strain is a coronavirus of the familyfirst identified female doctor Almeida in 1964 in his laboratory at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London.
A virologist was born in 1930 and raised in Glasgow, Scotland.
She dropped out of school after receiving a small formal education, but got a job as a laboratory assistant in histopathology at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow.
She later moved to London to pursue her career, and in 1954 she married Venereuelan artist Enrique Almeida.
Colds
The couple and their little daughter moved to Toronto, Canada. According to medical journalist George Winter, who spoke about John Beatty’s program on BBC Scotland Radio, it was at the Ontario Cancer Institute that Dr. Almeida developed her outstanding skills in front of an electron microscope.
It was a pioneer of method for displaysR best virusesdue to the fact that through the use of antibodies developed in animals or humans that cause the formation of viruses around them, British Medical Journal in the obituary of Almeida, published in 2008.
Her talent was recognized in the United Kingdom, so in 1964 she was recalled to work at the Medical School at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, in the same hospital where the current British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was treated, when he suffered from covertness. -19.
Upon his return, he began collaborating with Dr. David Tyrrell, who led research departmentaboutRI am esfriado fromOmmon,
Winter says that Dr. Tyrrell studied nasal lavage in volunteers and that his team found that they could receive cultures with several viruses associated with the common cold, but not all.
In particular, one sample, known as B814, was obtained in 1960 from the nose of a student at a boarding school in Surrey, in the south of the United Kingdom.
They found that the sample could transmit the symptoms of the common cold to volunteers, but they could not get the usual cell culture.
However, voluntary studies demonstrated its growth in organ cultures, and Dr. Tyrrell wondered if the virus could be seen under an electron microscope.
They sent samples to June Almeida and the doctor managed to see viral particles,
Almeida described them as flu or flu viruses, but not exactly the same.
Doctor determined what became known as the first human coronavirus.
Winter says Almeida saw other particles from other coronaviruses when examining hepatitis in mice and infectious bronchitis in chickens.
Nevertheless, him the first article with their results for the magazine scientific was rejected “Because the judges said the images they received were just bad images of particles of the flu virus.”
A new discovery of strain B814 was reported in British Medical Journal in 1965 and the first photographs of what he saw were published in Journal of General Virology two years later.
These were Dr. Tyrrell and Dr. Almeida, as well as Professor Tony Waterson, in charge of St. Thomas, who They called the new particles “coronavirus.”, because of the crown that surrounded them in the images.
“It is estimated that about 20% of the common cold is caused by the coronavirus, which (Tyrrell and Almeida) have discovered,” Professor Hugh Pennington, professor emeritus of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, told the newspaper. Herald from Scotland in March.
Almeida she was also the first to receive rubella virus imagesas noted British Medical Journal in his obituary.
Later, the woman worked at the Higher Medical School in London, where she received a doctorate.
She ended her career at the Wellcome Institute in London, where she was awarded several patents in the field of visualization of viruses.
After leaving Wellcome, Almeida became a yoga teacher, but returned to virology as a consultant in the late 1980s when she helped take new pictures of the HIV virus.
June Almeida died in 2007, at the age of 77.
“His pioneering work is now helping in the fight against Covid 19.” His methods are still in use. and it helps in the current outbreak, “said Professor Pennington Herald,
“Unfortunately (Almeida was forgotten). Although, ironically, this outbreak of Kovid-19 again illuminated her work, ”he added.
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