Four out of five people experiencing the recent loss of smell and/or taste tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies - and of those who tested positive, 40 percent did not have cough or fever, reports a new study in PLOS Medicine by Prof. Rachel Batterham at University College London and colleagues.

A Phase 1 trial of an investigational mRNA vaccine to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection has shown that the vaccine is well-tolerated and generates a strong immune response in older adults. A report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine describes the findings from the study, which was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

A tool designed to detect viral history in a drop of blood has gotten an upgrade in the age of COVID-19. VirScan, a technology that can determine which of more than 1,000 different viruses have infected a person, can now also detect evidence of infection from coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

By examining preexisting research for other conditions, researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found a potential treatment that could be applied to COVID-19.

The findings, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, established that a lipid found in the human body could be used to prevent or treat infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

A type of anti-bacterial T cells, so-called MAIT cells, are strongly activated in people with moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden that is published in the journal Science Immunology. The findings contribute to increased understanding about how our immune system responds against COVID-19 infection.

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were vitamin D sufficient, with a blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D of at least 30 ng/mL (a measure of vitamin D status), had a significant decreased risk for adverse clinical outcomes including becoming unconscious, hypoxia (body starved for oxygen) and death.

More than 10 percent of young and healthy people who develop severe COVID-19 have misguided antibodies that attack not the virus, but the immune system itself, new research shows. Another 3.5 percent, at least, carry a specific kind of genetic mutation.

In both groups, the upshot is basically the same: The patients lack type I interferon, a set of 17 proteins crucial for protecting cells and the body from viruses.