IBEC researchers led by ICREA Research Professor Núria Montserrat, together with international collaborators, have identified a drug capable of blocking the effects of the SARS-Co-V2 virus, the origin of the Coronavirus 2019 diseaseThe treatment, which can be tested on two hundred Covid-19 patients as of today, has proven effective in mini-kidneys generated from human stem cells. Using hese organoids generated by bioengineering techniques, it has been deciphered how SARS-Co-V2 interacts and i...

The Spanish Association of Surgeons (AEC) has issued a publication on recommendations for action in esophagus-gastric oncological surgery during the Covid-19 pandemic, which includes: 
Criteria to consider in decision making


Action scenarios


Multidisciplinary treatment strategy


Recommendations for surgery

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The Renin-Angiotensin Aldosterone is an elegant cascade of vasoactive peptides that orchestrate key processes in human physiology. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1) and SARS-CoV-2, which have been responsible for the SARS epidemic in 2002 to 2004 and for the more recent coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, respectively, interface with the RAAS through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), an enzyme that physiologically counters RAAS activation but als...

Gastrointestinal endoscopy (GIE) is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering gastroenterology, especially in relation to endoscopy. This journal from ASGE (American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy) published a full article with instructions about how to safely perform an endoscopy during the coronavirus pandemic: different measures implemented in the hospital to prevent further dissemination of COVID-19 infection. The article was written by different Italian doctors who have al...

A case fatality ratio of an infectious disease measures the proportion of all individuals diagnosed with a disease who will die from that disease. For an emerging infectious disease, this ratio is thus a very important indicator not only of disease severity but also of its significance as a public health problem. For instance, WHO estimated a case fatality ratio of approximately 14–15% for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003,1 and approximately 35% for Middle East resp...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will have a large impact in low-resource settings (LRS). 20% of COVID-19 patients become critically ill with hypoxia or respiratory failure. Critical illness, describing any acute life-threatening condition, is receiving increased attention in global health because of its large disease burden and population impact. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, growing evidence suggested that the care of critical illness was overlooked in LRS—hosp...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, which started in the Hubei province of China in 2019, has now spread to all continents, affecting 177 countries by March 27, 2020. Successful efforts in containing the COVID-19 virus in Asia resulted in WHO declaring Europe as the epicentre of the disease on March 13. Whether warmer temperatures will slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been a point of muc...

AbstractThe world is going through a life-threating, a war-like, virus attack called COVID-19. Since its inception in the last four months, it has been increased ten times every two weeks outside mainland China. In this case, we address this challenging human crisis with a focus on the early discovery of coronavirus asymptomatic patients which would help to reduce the cross-infection of COVID-19 that estimates to attack at least 60% of the world population, according to WHO (2020). This p...

A novel SARS-like coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) recently emerged and is rapidly spreading in humans1,2. A key to tackling this epidemic is to understand the virus’s receptor recognition mechanism, which regulates its infectivity, pathogenesis and host range. SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV recognize the same receptor - human ACE2 (hACE2)3,4. Here we determined the crystal structure of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) (engineered to facilitate crystallization) in complex with hACE2. Compared wi...

Human infections with a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) were first identified via syndromic surveillance in December of 2019 in Wuhan China. Since identification, infections (coronavirus disease-2019; COVID-19) caused by this novel pathogen have spread globally, with more than 250,000 confirmed cases as of March 21, 2020. An open-label clinical trial has just concluded, suggesting improved resolution of viremia with use of two existing therapies: hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as monotherapy, and in...

Estimating the number of infections and the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in 11 European countriesSummary  - Click to access full textFollowing the emergence of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and its spread outside of China, Europe is now experiencing large epidemics. In response, many European countries have implemented unprecedented non-pharmaceutical interventions including case isolation, the closure of schools and universities, banning of ma...

AbstractFew novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and recently classified COVID‐19 as a worldwide pandemic. As of this writing, the epidemic has not yet peaked in the United States, but community transmission is widespread. President Trump declared a national emergency as fifty governors declared sta...