Best of Last Year: The top MedicalXpress articles of 2020

Admin on 17 / 12 / 2020 under #COVID-19

It was a good year for medical research of all kinds, as a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego found a connection between gut bacteria and vitamin D levels. They discovered that gut microbiome diversity could be closely associated with active vitamin D, but not the precursor form—instead, it was the active form that had been metabolized.

Also, a team at the University of California, Davis found that surgical and N95 masks block most aerosolized particles emitted during breathing, talking and coughing. But they also found that most homemade masks released a large amount of fibers into the air from the mask during the same activities, prompting the researchers to suggest that their results underscore the importance of washing masks after every use.

And Anna Aksenova, a senior research associate at the Laboratory of Amyloid Biology at St Petersburg University, suggested that a severe course of COVID-19 may be associated with the von Willebrand factor. She noted that in some people, replication of the virus stimulates the development of microdamage on vessel walls. She theorized that this damage prompts the body to release von Willebrand factor into the blood as a way to patch the holes.

Source:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-year-medicalxpress-articles.html