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Mis- and disinformation have been prevalent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but in recent months anti-vax activists and conspiracy theorists have latched on to a new phrase to help their cause: “died suddenly.” Anti-vaxxers hoping to convince people that COVID vaccines are linked to sudden deaths among younger people have invoked the term while trying to exploit tragic events like the death of soccer journalist Grant Wahl, or Damar Hamlin suffering a cardiac arrest during an NFL game. Though that theory has no scientific evidence to support it, the “died suddenly” rhetoric has gained a lot of traction on social media....

To efficiently infect human cells, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is able to use a receptor called Neuropilin-1, which is very abundant in many human tissues including the respiratory tract, blood vessels and neurons. The breakthrough discovery was made by a German-Finnish team of researchers led by neuroscientists Mika Simons, Technical University of Munich, Germany and virologist Giuseppe Balistreri, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Why is the new coronavirus so infectious? "That SARS-CoV-2 uses the receptor ACE2 to infect our cells was known, but viruses often use multiple factors to maximize their infectious potential"...

Researchers may have solved 100-year-old puzzle ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University researchers may have solved a 100-year puzzle: How to safely open and close the blood-brain barrier so that therapies to treat Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and cancers of the central nervous system might effectively be delivered. (Journal of Neuroscience, Sept. 14, 2011.) The researchers found that adenosine, a molecule produced by the body, can modulate the entry of large molecules into the brain. For the first time, the researchers discovered that when adenosine receptors are activated on cells that comprise the blood-brain barrier, a gateway into the blood-brain barrier...

Enlarge Image Green light. Antibodies that bind to the transferrin receptor (green) can cross the blood-brain barrier and potentially help deliver therapies to neurons (red). Credit: Yu et al., Science Translational Medicine Any would-be cure for Alzheimer’s disease or other brain disorder faces a daunting obstacle: the blood-brain barrier. This nearly impenetrable lining in the capillaries of the brain keeps out viruses and other bad guys, but it also denies entry to many potential drugs and other treatments. Now researchers have devised a way to trick one of the gatekeepers in this cellular defense system into escorting a potentially...

A new, non-invasive method to deliver drugs to the brain has been developed by Taiwanese researchers. Using a combination of magnetic nanoparticles and focused ultrasound to pinpoint specific areas, the technique could be very helpful in treating brain tumours. 'The difficulty with treating brain tumours is that the brain is protected by the blood-brain barrier,' explains Pin-Yuan Chen, who led the research at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan. 'This prevents chemotherapy drugs from entering the brain. However, we can open up this barrier in desired locations using focused ultrasound. This allows us to target our treatment effectively and safely.' Chen's team injected magnetic nanoparticles coated with...