MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS: COVID-19 and Smoking + Experimental Blood Test Detecting Cancer
A new study in the journal ‘Viral Immunology’ finds the higher the amount of virus present in a throat swab correlates with a more severe COVID-19 disease. High viral load also correlated with a greater risk of organ damage and a longer recovery period.
Smoking increases entry points in the lungs for the COVID-19 virus, according to South Carolina researchers. They also found smokers were at an increased risk of the virus binding to proteins in the lungs.
And for the first time, an experimental blood test is helping detect many types of cancer in people with no history or symptoms. Scientists from Johns Hopkins University developed the gene-based test and say it, alongside standard screening methods, doubled the number of cancers they were able to detect.
