Aster Medical Journal (AMJ)

Aster Medical Journal is an independent knowledge dissemination platform for medical fraternities in the Middle East and India, and our mission is to advance healthcare by sharing knowledge and expertise

Return to Normalcy

Aster Medical Journal

There won't be a declaration that the end has come…

Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to trio for work on hepatitis C

Mysterious inflammatory syndrome tied to COVID-19 strikes adults as well as kids

Africa declared free from wild polio

'Vulnerable Being'

70% of COVID-19 Patients Don’t Transmit the Virus Reveals Study Conducted in Two Indian States • A new study has thrown up lesser-known findings that can help us understand the way COVID-19 spreads in India and across the globe.

Post Covid, Kids Too Get Diabetes • Evidence suggests that the virus may enter the pancreas through the ACE2 receptor and damage the pancreatic beta islet cells which produce insulin.

In focus

WHEN WILL THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC END? AND HOW? • Bubonic plague has struck several times in the past 2,000 years, killing millions of people and altering the course of history. Each epidemic amplified the fear that came with the next outbreak.

VACCIINE WHERE WE ARE, WHATS NEXT? • Researchers are testing 44 vaccines in clinical trials on humans, and at least 91 preclinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals.

Coronavirus Drug &Treatment Tracker • Doctors and scientists are scrambling to find treatments and drugs that can save the lives of infected people and perhaps even prevent them from getting sick in the first place.

I’m a COVID-19 long-hauler and an epidemiologist – here’s how it feels when symptoms last for months

Conversation • “Under the deployment of Hubei Provincial Government, our team, alongside researchers from Huazhong Agricultural University, collected environmental samples and frozen animal samples in Huanan seafood market. We detected SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids only in the environmental samples such as roller shutter door handles, the ground and sewage, but not in the animals.”

HOW TO PREVENT THE NEXT PANDEMIC • Author David Quammen, wrote the book on coronavirus almost a decade ago. He published it in 2012. It's called Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic and it expounds on a threat that epidemiologists have known about for decades, animal-borne or zoonotic diseases jumping the species barrier and becoming global disasters. The title 'spillover' was the result of five years of research on scientists who were looking into the possibility of another Ebola-type disease emerging.

Was the coronavirus accidentally released from the lab? • Meet Dr Shi Zhengli, a virologist who is often called China's "bat woman" by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust Shi Zhengli into a fierce spotlight.

Research

The Etiological Spectrum of Dizziness Observed at a Vertigo Clinic: A Study of a Dubai Outpatient Population • There is little data available describing the incidence of vestibular disorders in the Dubai population.4 This study therefore aims to report the etiological spectrum of vertigo and dizziness from a vertigo speciality clinic in Dubai.

Lung Transplantation for COVID-19-Associated Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in a PCR-Positive Patient • Christian Lang*, Peter Jaksch*, Mir Alireza Hoda, György Lang, Thomas Staudinger, Edda Tschernko, Bernhard Zapletal, Silvana Geleff, Helmut Prosch, Riem Gawish, Sylvia Knapp, Oliver Robak, Florian Thalhammer, Alexander Indra, Markus Koestenberger, Robert Strassl, Thomas Klikovits, Kamran Ali, Gottfried Fischer, Walter Klepetko, Konrad Hoetzenecker*, Peter Schellongowski*

COVID-19: Risk Assessment &...