University of Minnesota Medical School and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) researchers found that metformin was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 death risks in women in one of the world's largest observational studies of COVID-19 patients.

Metformin is an established, generic medication for managing blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Virologists at the Rega Institute at KU Leuven (Belgium) have developed a vaccine candidate against COVID-19 based on the yellow fever vaccine, which as a result also works against yellow fever. Results published today in Nature show that the vaccine protects hamsters from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus after a single dose. The vaccine is also effective in monkeys. The team is currently preparing for clinical trials.

A computational model of a human lung cell has been used to understand how SARS-CoV-2 draws on human host cell metabolism to reproduce by researchers at the University of Warwick. This study helps understand how the virus uses the host to survive, and enable drug predictions for treating the virus to be made.

The lives of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are being saved by doctors who are using an existing medical treatment at an earlier stage.

Dr Luigi Sedda of Lancaster University analysed the results from the team at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (WWL). Their research has now been published in the prestigious medical journal BMJ Respiratory Open.

A new therapy for influenza virus infections that may also prove effective against many other pathogenic virus infections, including HIV and COVID-19, has been developed by Purdue University scientists.

In an average year, more than 2 million people in the United States are hospitalized with the flu, and 30,000 to 80,000 of them die from the flu or related complications.

The surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is studded with spike proteins. The virus needs these in order to dock onto proteins (ACE2 receptors) on the surface of the host cell. Before this docking is possible, parts of the spike protein have to be cleaved by the host cell's enzymes - proteases.

Results from an early-phase randomised clinical trial of a Chinese vaccine candidate based on the inactivated whole SARS-CoV-2 virus (CoronaVac) are published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, finding the formulation appears safe and induces an antibody response in healthy volunteers aged 18 to 59 years.