News by Subject Biology

You know that feeling in your gut? We think of it as an innate intuition that sparks deep in the belly and helps guide our actions, if we let it. It's also a metaphor for what scientists call the 'gut-brain axis,' a biological reality in which the gut and its microbial inhabitants send signals to the brain, and vice versa.

Individuals taking a class of steroid hormones called glucocorticoids for conditions such as asthma, allergies and arthritis on a routine basis may be unable to mount a normal stress response and are at high risk if they are infected with the virus causing COVID-19, according to a new editorial published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

A team of medical researchers and bioethicists at Oxford University has published results today in Science that furthers our understanding of coronavirus transmission. This evidence is enabling several international partners to assess the feasibility of developing mobile apps for instant contact tracing in record time. If rapidly and widely developed, these mobile apps could help to significantly slow the rate of transmission, and support countries to emerge from lockdowns safely, as restrictions are gradually eased.

UC Davis Health physicians and medical staff detail the diagnosis and treatment for first known case of community transmission of COVID-19 in the US. The case reveals how the patient's symptoms matched -- and sometimes varied from -- published studies of COVID-19 infection at the time.

How much spring and summer affect the COVID-19 pandemic may depend not only on the effectiveness of social distancing measures, but also on the environment inside our buildings, according to a review of Yale scientists of their own work and that of colleagues on how respiratory viruses are transmitted.