A study of the impact of national face mask laws on COVID-19 mortality in 44 countries with a combined population of nearly one billion people found that, over time, the increase in COVID-19 related deaths was significantly slower in countries that imposed mask laws compared to countries that did not.

Using cannabis alongside other drugs may come with a significant risk of harmful drug-drug interactions, new research by scientists at Washington State University suggests.

The researchers looked at cannabinoids - a group of substances found in the cannabis plant - and their major metabolites found in cannabis users’ blood and found that they interfere with two families of enzymes that help metabolize a wide range of drugs prescribed for a variety of conditions.

The emergence of COVID-19 variants such as delta and omicron have sent scientists scrambling to determine whether existing vaccinations and boosters are still effective against new strains of SARS-Cov-2.

A new response to the rapidly mutating virus might be found right at the door to our lungs, says Yale's Akiko Iwasaki, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology.

A molecule that shows promise in preventing Parkinson’s disease has been refined by scientists at the University of Bath in the UK, and has the potential to be developed into a drug to treat the deadly neurodegenerative disease.

Professor Jody Mason, who led the research from the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at Bath, said:

Scientists at Hokkaido University and Texas A&M University have identified a key mechanism used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to evade host immune systems.

Researchers in Japan and the United States have found SARS-CoV-2 can knock out an important molecular pathway linked to an immune complex called MHC class I. The finding should help scientists better understand how COVID-19 infection takes hold.

Our body must constantly defend itself against bacteria and viruses. It generates millions of different antibodies, which are selected to recognise the enemy and trigger the best possible immune response. Scientists use these antibodies to for therapeutic purposes to target proteins and disrupt their harmful. However, identifying the small molecules that will form the basis of the drug is a long and tedious process.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have devised a test to quickly and easily assess how well a person’s neutralizing antibodies fight infection from multiple variants of COVID-19 such as Delta and the newly discovered Omicron variant.

This test could potentially tell doctors how protected a patient is from new variants and those currently circulating in a community or, conversely, which monoclonal antibodies to treat a COVID-19 patient.