The second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine induces a powerful boost to a part of the immune system that provides broad antiviral protection, according to a study led by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The finding strongly supports the view that the second shot should not be skipped.

Antimicrobials are used to kill or slow the growth of bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. They can be in the form of antibiotics, used to treat bodily infections, or as an additive or coating on commercial products used to keep germs at bay. These life-saving tools are essential to preventing and treating infections in humans, animals and plants, but they also pose a global threat to public health when microorganisms develop resistance to them, a concept known as antimicrobial resistance.

A single dose of the Sputnik V vaccine may elicit significant antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2, finds a study published July 13 in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.

"Due to limited vaccine supply and uneven vaccine distribution in many regions of the world, health authorities urgently need data on the immune response to vaccines to optimize vaccination strategies," says senior author Andrea Gamarnik of the Fundación Instituto Leloir-CONICET in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In a new study of adults from the general population who were infected with COVID-19 in 2020, more than a quarter report not having fully recovered after six to eight months. Those findings are described this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Milo Puhan and colleagues at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Writing in the July 12, 2021 online issue of Nature Communications, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe a new approach that uses machine learning to hunt for disease targets and then predicts whether a drug is likely to receive FDA approval.

It is believed to be involved in the development of chronic inflammatory intestinal diseases, to trigger diabetes, to be responsible for obesity, even neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's could have their causes here - not to mention depressions and autistic disorders. We are talking about the microbiome - the vast collection of bacteria in the human gut. It is estimated that each person carries around 100 trillion bacterial cells in their digestive tract, belonging to several thousand species.

People who receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are up to 91 percent less likely to develop the disease than those who are unvaccinated, according to a new nationwide study of eight sites, including Salt Lake City. For those few vaccinated people who do still get an infection, or "breakthrough" cases, the study suggests that vaccines reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and shorten its duration.