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The unvaccinated were found to have a slightly lower risk.. Findings in a new study challenge the mainstream narrative that COVID-19 vaccinations prevent long COVID. The study found that while previous infections reduce the risk of long COVID by 86 percent, vaccination status prior to COVID infection is irrelevant to a person's risk of developing long COVID. “The notion had been that both previous infection as well as vaccination reduce the chances of subsequent long COVID should you become infected,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told The Epoch Times. These...

You swabbed the inside of your nose and performed the at-home rapid antigen test for COVID-19 and thankfully, it was negative. Hold on. Do the test again, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, whether you have symptoms or not. The FDA said today it “is advising people to perform repeat, or serial, testing following a negative result on any at-home COVID-19 antigen test, to reduce the risk an infection may be missed (false negative result) and to help prevent people from unknowingly spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus to others.” At-home tests detect the antigens from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes...

Covid-19 antigen tests may be less capable of detecting the fast-spreading Omicron variant, the Food and Drug Administration cautioned on Tuesday. The new warning is based on preliminary studies by the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative using patient samples with live virus — analysis that “represents the best way to evaluate true test performance in the short-term,” according to FDA. “Early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the Omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity,” the FDA said on Tuesday. Omicron's large number of mutations have raised the possibility that it could evade protections against...

Definitions: Antigen = the COVID-19 virus Antibody = immune cells to the COVID-19 virus We have antigen tests. We will have more antigen tests in the future. When the antibody tests go mainstream people will get tested for both. Antigen negative, antibody negative = You haven't yet contracted COVID-19, although you could be incubating a case of COVID-19. Antigen positive, antibody negative = You have a case of COVID-19 which you haven't begun to fight off. Antigen positive, antibody positive = You have a case of COVID-19 which you are fighting off Antigen negative, antibody positive = You've had a...

Lead researcher James Paton said G-PN would help to increase immune responses to pneumococcus because it kept the antigenic structure of protein surfaces on the bacterium. "Pneumococcus is a big deal in terms of disease and it is the biggest bacterial killer on the planet," he said. "There are currently similar wholesale vaccines being developed, which have used chemical killing but that is nowhere near as good. The fact that gamma radiation is being used to inactivate it makes it a better vaccine.

Single molecule can bind firmly to two different antigens. The two-in-one antibody.llison Bruce and Jenny Bostrom Researchers have challenged an old immunological dogma — that an antibody can bind to only a single target or antigen — by engineering an antibody to bind tightly to two distinct proteins. The antibody, described in Science1, blocks two proteins: vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). VEGF is thought to promote growth in tumours, and HER2 is highly expressed by some aggressive breast tumours. Separate antibodies that target each protein individually are already used to treat some...