Summary

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and the disease now affects nearly every country and region. Caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 continues nearly 18 months later to present significant challenges to health systems and public health in both hemispheres, as well as the economies of every country. The morbidity and mortality of the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been significant, and various waves of disease outbreaks initially overwhelmed many hospitals and clinics and continue to do so in many countries. This influences everyone, and public health countermeasures have been dramatic in terms of their impact on employment, social systems, and mental health. This entry collection aims to gather diverse fields about COVID-19, including in epidemiology, public health, medicine, genetics, systems biology, informatics, data science, engineering, sociology, anthropology, nursing, environmental studies, statistics, and psychology.

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Entries
Topic Review
Severe TBI: Second and Third Tier Therapies
Intracranial hypertension is a common finding in severe traumatic brain injury, and requires treatment in the intensive care unit with intracranial pressure monitoring and, when possible, the application of multimodal neuromonitoring. A three-tier approach is suggested in current rec-ommendations, with higher tier therapies having more significant side effects. Researchers explain the rationale for this approach, they analyze the benefits and risks of each therapeutic mo-dality, and they discuss how to adapt the therapy to the resources available, based on the most recent recommendations.
  • 1.1K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Structural/Phylogenetic Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein Variants
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, reported for the first time at the end of 2019 in the city of Wuhan (China), has spread worldwide in three years; it lead to the infection of more than 500 million people and about six million dead. SARS-CoV-2 has proved to be very dangerous for human health. Therefore, several efforts have been made in studying this virus. In a short time, about one year, the mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 infection and duplication and its physiological effect on human have been pointed out. Moreover, different vaccines against it have been developed and commercialized. Since the beginning of the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has evolved; it has done so by accumulating mutations in the genome, generating new virus versions showing different characteristics, and which have replaced the pre-existing variants. In general, it has been observed that the new variants show an increased infectivity and cause milder symptoms. The latest isolated Omicron variants contain more than 50 mutations in the whole genome and show an infectivity 10-folds higher compared to the wild-type strain. 
  • 762
  • 05 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Epidemiological and Clinical Factors Modulating COVID-19
Addressing factors modulating COVID-19 is crucial since abundant clinical evidence shows that outcomes are markedly heterogeneous between patients. This requires identifying the factors and understanding how they mechanistically influence COVID-19. While there is a multitude of factors modulating COVID-19. These modulating factors (MFs) were selected based on epidemiological and/or clinical studies to be representative of different categories: intrinsic (age, sex and genetic factors), co-morbidities (history of dyslipidemia, obesity, pre-existing heart failure and gut dysbiosis), lifestyle-related (vitamin D deficiency and diet) and environmental (air pollution and exposure to chemicals). 
  • 479
  • 09 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Microbiological Perspectives in COVID-19 Pandemics
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 remains a significant issue for global health, the economy, and society. When SARS-CoV-2 began to spread, the most recent serious infectious disease of this century around the world, with its high morbidity and mortality rates, it is understandable why such infections have generally been spread in the past, mainly from international travel movements. Microbiology is a branch of medicine and biology that studies the structure and functions of microorganisms (i.e., all those single-celled, multicellular or acellular living organisms not visible to the naked eye such as bacteria, Archaea, some types of fungi, algae, protozoa, viruses and prions).
  • 533
  • 02 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Release of Microplastics from Masks
The global panic caused by COVID-19 has continued to increase people’s demand for masks. Due to inadequate management and disposal practice, these masks have entered the environment and release a large amount of microplastics (MPs), posing a serious threat to the environment and human health. 
  • 705
  • 29 Aug 2022
Topic Review
COVID-19 Effect on Real Estate Investment Trust Returns
Using an extended Fama–French model for real estate investment trust (REIT) returns, this paper examines how the net impact of the COVID-19 pandemic differs from that of recessions. The authors find that, as anticipated, recessions have a negative net impact on office and residential REIT returns but that the COVID-19 pandemic has a positive net influence on industrial REIT returns because of e-commerce and the demand for storage, distribution, and shipping. Contrary to what are anticipated, there are no negative net effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on office and residential REIT returns, perhaps caused by both existing office and residential leases, the percentage rent clause for commercial properties, and the grace period for residential properties during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to moving solely during recessions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the research finds that retail REIT returns fluctuate along with ongoing macro/asset-pricing conditions throughout the boom and bust cycle.
  • 727
  • 30 Aug 2022
Topic Review
MicroRNAs for Predicting Cancer Patients’ Susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that is caused by a highly contagious and severe acute respiratory syndrome—coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This infection started to spread across the world in 2019 and rapidly turned into a global pandemic, causing an urgent necessity for treatment strategies development. The mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 can trigger an immune response, providing genetic information that allows the production of spike glycoproteins. MiRNAs play a crucial role in diverse key cellular processes, including antiviral defense. Several miRNAs are described as key factors in SARS-CoV-2 human infection through the regulation of ACE2 levels and by the inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication and spike expression. Consequently, these molecules have been considered as highly promising biomarkers. In numerous human malignancies, it has been recognized that miRNAs expression is dysregulated. Since miRNAs can target SARS-CoV-2-associated mRNAs, in cancer patients, the deregulation of these molecules can impair the immune response to the vaccines. 
  • 414
  • 26 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Migrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown in France
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to governments in 157 countries introducing lockdowns or re-strictions to people’s movement and access to health and welfare support services as well as other rules including social distancing, use of masks, and quarantine. The French government introduced its first mandatory national lockdown on 17 March 2020 due to elevated cases and death rates of COVID-19 in the country. This public health measure required the general population to stay at home except those carrying out an essential job (referred to as a ‘key worker’ in the domains of transportation, education, food, and health), to buy necessary items, or to engage in physical activity. Evidence demonstrates that the pandemic disproportionately affected socially vulnerable populations, including migrants. The pandemic exposed and exacerbated health and social inequities among migrant and ethnic/racial groups. Less is known about the firsthand impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns, specifically on migrant populations in France.
  • 957
  • 31 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Nutrition as Personalized Medicine against SARS-CoV-2 Infections
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is acknowledged that vulnerable people can suffer from mortal complications of COVID-19. Therefore, strengthening the immune system particularly in the most fragile people could help to protect them from infection. First, general nutritional status and food consumption patterns of everyone affect the effectiveness of each immune system. The effects of nutrition could impact the level of intestinal and genital microbiota, the adaptive immune system, and the innate immune system. Indeed, immune system cells and mediators, which are crucial to inflammatory reaction, are in the structures of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins and are activated through vitamins (vit) and minerals. Therefore, the association of malnutrition and infection could damage the immune response, reducing the immune cells and amplifying inflammatory mediators. Both amount and type of dietary fat impact on cytokine biology, that consequently assumes a crucial role in inflammatory disease. 
  • 355
  • 26 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Reaching Undocumented Migrants with COVID-19 Vaccination
Access to vaccination against a health threat such as that presented by the COVID-19 pandemic is an imperative driven, in principle, by at least three compelling factors: (1) the right to health of all people, irrespective of their status; (2) humanitarian need of undocumented migrants, as well as of others including documented migrants, refugees and displaced people who are sometimes vulnerable and living in precarious situations; and (3) the need to ensure heath security globally and nationally, which in the case of a global pandemic requires operating on the basis that, for vaccination strategies to succeed in fighting a pandemic, the highest possible levels of vaccine uptake are required. Yet some population segments have had limited access to mainstream health systems, both prior to as well as during the COVID-19 pandemic. People with irregular resident status are among those who face extremely high barriers in accessing both preventative and curative health care. This is due to a range of factors that drive exclusion, both on the supply side (e.g., systemic and practical restrictions in service delivery) and the demand side (e.g., in uptake, including due to fears that personal data would be transmitted to immigration authorities). Moreover, undocumented people have often been at increased risk of infection due to their role as “essential workers”, including those experiencing higher exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus due to frontline occupations while lacking protective equipment. Often, they have also been largely left out of social protection measures granted by governments to their populations during successive lockdowns.
  • 583
  • 25 Aug 2022
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