Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS-CoV-2 positive children - a nationwide cohort study

Most children have a mild course of acute COVID-19. Only few mainly non-controlled studies with small sample size have evaluated long-term recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection in children. The aim of this study was to evaluate symptoms and duration of ‘long COVID’ in children. A nationwide cohort study of 37,522 children aged 0–17 years with RT-PCR verified SARS-CoV-2 infection (response rate 44.9%) and a control group of 78,037 children (response rate 21.3%). An electronic questionnaire was sent to all children from March 24th until May 9th, 2021. Symptoms lasting > 4 weeks were common among both SARS-CoV-2 children and controls. However, SARS-CoV-2 children aged 6–17 years reported symptoms more frequently than the control group (percent difference 0.8%). The most reported symptoms among pre-school children were fatigue Risk Difference (RD) 0.05 (CI 0.04–0.06), loss of smell RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.01), loss of taste RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.02) and muscle weakness RD 0.01 (CI 0.00–0.01). Among school children the most significant symptoms were loss of smell RD 0.12 (CI 0.12–0.13), loss of taste RD 0.10 (CI 0.09–0.10), fatigue RD 0.05 (CI 0.05–0.06), respiratory problems RD 0.03 (CI 0.03–0.04), dizziness RD 0.02 (CI 0.02–0.03), muscle weakness RD 0.02 (CI 0.01–0.02) and chest pain RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.01). Children in the control group experienced significantly more concentration difficulties, headache, muscle and joint pain, cough, nausea, diarrhea and fever than SARS-CoV-2 infected. In most children ‘long COVID’ symptoms resolved within 1–5 months. Conclusions: Long COVID in children is rare and mainly of short duration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00431-021-04345-z

Do journals and corporate sponsors back certain views in topics where disagreement prevails?

The article focuses on scientific disagreement about the use of statin-related drugs in the prevention of cardiovascular events. The study forms part of an exploration of the broader principle of research polarization, foremost in medicine. The hypothesis is that statin-positive and statin-critical researchers publish in different committed central journals, and that they are financially supported by different dedicated corporate sources. Methodologically we use Web of Science (WoS) analytic tools to perform publication analysis of a time series covering 1998–2018 in three seven-year windows. For each window data is captured based on sets of known statin-positive and statin-critical articles and researchers, and their primary and secondary co-authors. Standard deviation is used as a focused normalization and visual instrument together with Spearman’s correlation coefficient in order to compare frequency distributions of statin-positive and critical journal and sponsor articles. Z-test p-values are used to assess the probability of error concerning the distributions. Findings at general topical level showed that a few journals consistently and significantly occupied top positions, 2 of which, American Journal of Cardiology and Circulation, published articles from both positions. Besides, Journal of the American College of Cardiology served as a major publisher of statin-positive research from 2005, as did European Heart Journal from 2012, replacing American Journal of Cardiology at the top. From 2012 Atherosclerosis and European Journal of Preventive Cardiology served as top-publishers of statin-critical articles. Two central US funding agencies, US Department of Health Human Services and National Institutes of Health (NIH), operated at general topical level across the time series, but the agencies played only a minor role in the divergent research positions. From 2005 statin-positive as well as statin-critical research was mainly sponsored by multinational pharmaceutical companies, predominantly Merck, AstraZeneca and Pfizer. In conclusion, the initial hypothesis about dedicated journals and sponsors was entirely substantiated at the general topical level and at the journal level of research disagreement, but not at sponsor level. Distinct dedicated journals were extracted separately from the 2 divergent statin positions. Since the WoS coverage of sponsor data 1998–2004 was sporadic sponsor data are analyzed from 2005. Only from 2012 the WoS sponsor coverage of the topic is consistently at 60%

Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS)-Loaded Nanoporous Polymer as Anti-Biofilm Surface Coating Material

Biofilms cause extensive damage to industrial settings. Thus, it is important to improve the existing techniques and develop new strategies to prevent bacterial biofilm formation. In the present study, we have prepared nanoporous polymer films from a self-assembled 1,2-polybutadiene-b-polydimethylsiloxane (1,2-PB-b-PDMS) block copolymer via chemical cross-linking of the 1,2-PB block followed by quantitative removal of the PDMS block. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was loaded into the nanoporous 1,2-PB from aqueous solution. The SDS-loaded nanoporous polymer films were shown to block bacterial attachment in short-term (3 h) and significantly reduce biofilm formation in long-term (1 week) by gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli. Tuning the thickness or surface morphology of the nanoporous polymer films allowed to extent the anti-biofilm capability

Familial Risk and Heritability of Cancer Among Twins in Nordic Countries

10.1001/jama.2015.17703JAMA-JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION315168-7