Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis
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The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a highly transmittable virus associated with a significantly increased risk of complications among the infected population. Few data are available for the outcome of pregnancy complicated by serious respiratory disease due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. ⋯ Findings from our series of cases indicated that adverse effects on foetuses from pregnancies complicated by COVID-19 infection in late pregnancy are unlikely.
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Editorial.
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The Corona Virus 19 (COVID 19) epidemic is an infectious disease which was declared as a pandemic and hit all the Countries, all over the world, from the beginning of the year 2020. In Italy the epidemic is particular serious with 169.325 confirmed cases and 21.551 deaths on 20.04.2020. To stop the contagion on March 8 and up to May 3, the Italian Government decided a lockdown for all the Country, the authors suggest how to manage the reopening and restarting of all the activities avoiding a restart of the epidemic.
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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, a possible explanation for the high heterogeneity of infection/mortality rates across involved countries was hinted in the prevalence of tuberculosis vaccination with Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG). A systematic review was therefore performed on May 2, 2020. A total of 13 articles were ultimately retrieved, 12 of them as preprint papers. ⋯ Most of them did not include main confounding factors (i.e. demographic of the assessed countries, share of peo- ple residing in urban settings, etc.), and simply assessed the differences among incidence/mortality of COVID-19 with vaccination rates or by having vs. having not any vaccination policy for BCG. Even though all studies shared the very same information sources (i.e. international registries for BCG vaccination rates and open source data for COVID-19 epidemics), results were conflicting, with later studies apparently denying any true correlation between COVID-19 occurrence and BCG vaccination rates and/or policies. As a consequence, there is no sound evidence to recommend BCG vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19.
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The Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) outbreak has been recognized as a global threat to public health. It is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and no effective therapies currently exist against this novel viral agent. ⋯ This brief review focuses on the latest and most promising pharmacological treatments against COVID-19 currently under investigation and discuss their potential use based on either documented efficacy in similar viral infections, or their activity against inflammatory syndromes. Ongoing clinical trials are also emphasized.