New findings from researchers at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a potential association between COVID-19 and increased lung cancer risk, driven by underlying biological mechanisms in the lung. 

From the Wright brothers’ first flight to the speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines, collaboration has been key to innovation. Paradoxically, even competitors can benefit from collaboration — when they hold different pieces of the same puzzle.

But these companies must strike a delicate balance, according to new research from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Ramkumar Ranganathan, associate professor of management, offers some principles for managing the balance between competition and collaboration — particularly when it involves sharing information. "Firms need to pay attention to these longer-term issues,” he says. “It’s very easy to look at the short term and think, ‘This alliance partner is giving me X amount of money to co-develop this technology. So, what if I don’t let this person talk to this other person for a few months? That shouldn’t matter, right?’ But it does matter.”

The global wildlife trade – especially in illegal and live-animal markets – is fueling the spread of diseases from animals to humans, according to a new study. The findings show that traded mammals are more than 40% more likely to harbor human-infecting pathogens, with species accumulating more shared pathogens the longer they remain in the trade. Close interactions between humans and wild animals create pathways for the spread of parasites and pathogens, sometimes triggering epidemics and pandemics. The global wildlife trade, which encompasses hunting, breeding, transport, retail, and pet ownership, poses particularly high risks of animal-to-human pathogen spillover. This trade has been linked to outbreaks ranging from HIV and Ebola to COVID-19 and mpox. While research has explored environmental and ecological factors that influence pathogen transmission, the dynamics of disease spread specifically within the wildlife trade and between humans and traded animals remain poorly understood.

 

Jérôme Gippet and colleagues analyzed 40 years of global wildlife trade data drawn from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS), and the Dataset of Seized Wildlife and their intended uses (DSW) datasets. They then linked this to the CLOVER database, which catalogs over 190,000 mammal-pathogen associations, to identify which species are known to share pathogens with humans. Gippet et al. found that among the 2,079 mammal species involved in global trade, 41% were found to share at least one pathogen with humans, compared with only 6.4% of nontraded species, and that traded mammals are 1.5 times more likely to host pathogens transmissible to humans. According to the authors, this suggests that cross-species transmission is an inherent feature of wildlife trade. Species in live-animal markets and, to a lesser extent, those involved in illegal trade, host more pathogens than those traded solely as products or legally. What’s more, the findings show that the duration a species spends in trade further amplifies risk. Gippet et al. found that each decade a species is traded corresponds to one additional pathogen shared with humans, on average.

Physicians and scientists from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center will present new research at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, highlighting advances in targeted therapies, cancer immunology, early detection and treatment strategies across a range of tumor types. 

Sport clubs became lifelines for vulnerable communities during the Covid pandemic, new research by the University of Stirling has shown.

A new study examining changes in homelessness across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., finds that eviction moratoria and climate disasters explain why homelessness surged in some states but not others during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A research team suggests zinc’s benefits in COVID-19 may reflect an intracellular stress program, not zinc levels alone.

While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged all veterans transitioning to civilian life, female post-9/11 veterans experienced a sharper decline in overall well-being compared to their male counterparts, according to new research from the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State.

The GVN is monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variant BA.3.2, sometimes informally referred to in media reports as the “cicada” variant, and emphasizes that current evidence does not indicate cause for alarm or heightened public concern

GVN's Annual International Scientific Meeting brought together leading virologists, clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health experts from around the world to examine lessons from COVID-19 and share cutting-edge research shaping the future of pandemic preparedness.

Researchers from University of Tsukuba and Institute of Science Tokyo have identified nonrandom patterns in the emergence of spike D614 reversions in publicly available SARS-CoV-2 genomic data. Analysis of publicly available sequences revealed numerous instances in which the spike D614G substitution, previously associated with increased transmissibility, reverted from G614 to the ancestral D614 residue, with these events predominantly occurring in the Delta and Omicron BA.2 lineages. The detected reversions also exhibited nonrandom patterns in temporal occurrence and geographic distribution.