mRNA vaccines appear effective vs India variant; people with HIV at higher risk for severe COVID-19 - Yahoo News

  (Reuters) - The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. .

  Both of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are likely effective against the coronavirus variant that is rapidly spreading throughout India and several other countries, according to laboratory experiments.

Researchers exposed the variant known as B.1.617.1 to blood serum samples from 15 volunteers with antibodies induced by the Moderna vaccine, 10 volunteers with antibodies after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and 24 people with antibodies after recovering from COVID-19.

The variant may continue to evolve, researchers noted, and it will be important to monitor how additional mutations affect vaccine efficacy.

  People with HIV who become infected with the coronavirus may be at higher risk for severe illness, according to new data.

Among the 31 people with HIV and 70 people without it who became infected with the coronavirus, however, the likelihood of severe COVID-19 was 5.52-fold higher in the HIV group, the research team reported in The Lancet HIV.

Among those who had recovered from COVID-19, antibody levels were significantly lower in people with HIV.

  Mild cases of COVID-19 in otherwise healthy adults are unlikely to cause lasting damage to the heart, a small UK study suggests.

Doctors compared 74 healthcare workers who had recovered from mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 with 75 individuals who had not been infected with the coronavirus.

A potentially worrisome variant of the coronavirus detected in India may spread more easily.

The newly revealed cases all occurred in people before the government's 11-day pause in J&J's single-dose vaccine last month