The New York Post reported this Saturday on the case of a second year medical student at Sophie Davis/CUNY School of Medicine who apparently cured his mom’s COVID-19-related respiratory distress with 2,000 milligrams of glutathione. Josephine Bruzzese, 48, developed symptoms of COVID-19 on March 22. “She was so short of breath she couldn’t speak,” the …
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The Liver is Clotted But Not Very Inflamed in COVID-19
Today, Italian pathologists released the liver findings from the first large series of COVID-19 autopsies as a preprint.* Their findings suggest the liver is not a major site of inflammation, but suffers from extensive effects of blood clotting, probably driven by fundamental problems with the blood clotting process or the function of the cells that …
Vitamin D: The First Study on COVID-19 Infection Risk
Today, the first study on the association between vitamin D status and infection risk was published in fully peer-reviewed and final form in the journal Nutrients (a journal I published part of my doctoral research in). Background to the Issue Up to this point, there have been four studies published as preprints associating vitamin D status with …
Confirmed: Blood Clots Underlie Stroke in COVID-19
On April 22, I reported on the first large series of autopsies, which showed that blood clots are found in the small arteries of the lungs. The authors of that report suggested the blood clots are responsible for the low blood oxygen (hypoxemia) that occurs in severe COVID-19. Soon after, news reports surfaced of New …
The First Zinc and COVID-19 Study in Humans: Very Promising
I was an early advocate for zinc in the context of COVID-19, having first recommended it on March 17 in The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus and providing detailed justifications for zinc dosing in the April 10 issue of this newsletter. I am also involved in the design of a clinical trial that will …
Two New Vitamin D Studies
Two new preprints* on vitamin D were released on May 5, and I analyze them in this update. Background So far I have covered vitamin D in three issues of this newsletter: My Response to Rhonda Patrick on Vitamin D and COVID-19 Update on Vitamin D and COVID-19 Using the First Observational Study Released The …
Why the Mutated Virus Spreads Faster in America and Europe Than East Asia
On May 1, I reported that the virus had mutated to spread faster. The key mutation was a change from the amino acid aspartate (abbreviated “D”) to the amino acid glycine (G) at position 614 of the spike protein sequence, a change known as D614G. The mutation didn’t seem to make the disease worse, though …
Remdesivir Is Probably a Reproductive Toxin, and Its Benefit Is Unclear
On April 29, the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced promising preliminary results of its clinical trial testing the effect of remdesivir in COVID-19 patients. The study has not been released even as a preprint.* Fauci told the press that he chose to speak about the …
Naproxen (Aleve), Clotting, Viral Growth, and COVID-19: Preliminary Evidence
On April 22, I reported on the first large series of post-mortem analyses that suggested blood clots within the small arteries of the lungs may be at the root of the COVID-19 hypoxemia (low blood oxygen). Since then, New York City doctors have reported strokes occurring in COVID-19 patients under the age of 50, including …
The Virus Has Mutated to Spread Faster
Researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom have collaborated to produce a data collection pipeline that identifies potentially important mutations in the coronavirus in real-time as genome sequences are submitted to the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID). The first tool they developed focuses on mutations in the spike protein, the …