Lifeboat Foundation

Featured Image Source: NASA

NASA has been highly dependent on booking Russian spacecraft for almost a decade. Ever since the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, the United States has not conducted manned flights to space. Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, a final Russian Soyuz rocket launched a NASA Astronaut for the last time to the International Space Station (ISS). On April 9, the Soyuz-2.1 rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Russia, at 4:05 a.m. Eastern time. Then the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft was deployed into orbit about 9 minutes later. After a 6-hour trip, the spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory. Onboard the Soyuz spacecraft were American Astronaut Chris Cassidy, and Russian Cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. They all makeup Expedition 63, the crew will stay at the orbiting laboratory for 6 months. Due to the coronavirus, staff during the launch was limited in order to avoid spreading the COVID-19 respiratory illness. Governments from across the world have issued ‘stay at home’ orders to avoid straining healthcare systems. NASA and Roscosmos took extra precautions by limiting contact with Astronauts so they would not take any illnesses to ISS. “I knew I was going to be in quarantine these two weeks, but what’s really different is everybody else around us is in quarantine, too,” Cassidy said in a prelaunch interview on NASA TV. “It’ll be a really, really skeletal crew in the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which will be quite different.”

After the successful Soyuz launch, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated:

Medical researchers have been studying everything we know about Covid-19. What have they learned – and is it enough to halt the pandemic?

There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, with three candidates already being tested in human trials, according to the World Health Organization, as drugmakers race to find a cure for the deadly pathogen.

Here are three Black scientists and doctors making a difference during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Circa 2015

A “dialysis for cancer,” which cleanses blood of cancer, has been developed by a team of scientists from Australia.

Governments around the world are using high-tech surveillance measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak. But are they worth it?

Edward Snowden doesn’t think so.

The former CIA contractor, whose leaks exposed the scale of spying programs in the US, warns that once this tech is taken out of the box, it will be hard to put it back.

Among the drugs being investigated is remdesivir, an experimental antiviral made by the US drug company Gilead Sciences. It has been characterized as one of the most promising by health authorities, including WHO officials —though that optimism is inspired only by anecdotal information. US data on remdesivir’s performance in controlled clinical trials is expected next month, and data from late-stage trials conducted in China will be released by the end of April.

The US military, however, has already secured access to remdesivir for its service members.

On March 10, the Pentagon announced a deal with Gilead Sciences in which the pharmaceutical company would supply the military with the intravenous drug at no cost. “Together with our government and industry partners, we are progressing at almost revolutionary rates to deliver effective treatment and prevention products that will protect the citizens of the world and preserve the readiness and lethality of our service members,” Army Brig. Gen. Michael Talley, commanding general of the US Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) and Fort Detrick, Maryland, said in a media statement at the time.

The role of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in the pathophysiology of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is not well understood. Inducible NOS is upregulated during physiologic stress; however, if NOS substrate is insufficient then NOS can uncouple and switch from NO generation to production of damaging peroxynitrites. We hypothesized that NOS substrate levels are low in patients with severe sepsis and that low levels of the NOS substrate citrulline would be associated with end organ damage including ARDS in severe sepsis.

Plasma citrulline, arginine and ornithine levels and nitrate/nitrite were measured at baseline in 135 patients with severe sepsis. ARDS was diagnosed by consensus definitions.

Plasma citrulline levels were below normal in all patients (median 9.2 uM, IQR 5.2 — 14.4) and were significantly lower in ARDS compared to the no ARDS group (6.0 (3.3 — 10.4) vs. 10.1 (6.2 — 16.6), P = 0.002). The rate of ARDS was 50% in the lowest citrulline quartile compared to 15% in the highest citrulline quartile (P = 0.002). In multivariable analyses, citrulline levels were associated with ARDS even after adjustment for covariates including severity of illness.

2004…

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(04)00052-9/fulltext

“During the SARS epidemic, Chen and colleagues included inhalation of NO gas in the treatment of a number of SARS patients. Medicinal NO gas, a gaseous blend of nitric oxide (0.8%) and nitrogen (99.2%), was given for three days or longer, initially at 30 ppm and then at 20 and 10 ppm on the second and third day (unpublished data). Their findings suggest not only an immediate improvement of oxygenation but also a lasting effect on the disease itself after termination of inhalation of NO.

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