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Background Nursing homes for older adults have concentrated large numbers of severe cases and deaths for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods Point seroprevalence study of nursing homes to describe the demography and characteristic of severe acute respiratory syndrome by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) immunoglobulin G (IgG)-positive residents and staff. Results Clinical information and blood samples were available for 9,332 residents (mean age 86.7 ± 8.1 years, 76.4% women) and 10,614 staff (mean age 45.6 ± 11.5, 86.2% women). Up to 84.4% of residents had frailty, 84.9% co-morbidity and 69.3% cognitive impairment; 65.2% of workers were health-aides. COVID-19 seroprevalence was 55.4% (95% confidence interval (CI), 54.4–56.4) for older adults and 31.5% (30.6–32.4) for staff. In multivariable analysis, frailty of residents was related with seropositivity (odds ratio (OR): 1.19, P  = 0.02). In the case of staff, age > 50 years (2.10, P  < 0.001), obesity (1.19, P  = 0.01), being a health-aide (1.94, P  < 0.001), working in a center with high seroprevalence in residents (3.49, P  < 0.001) and contact with external cases of COVID-19 (1.52, P  < 0.001) were factors associated with seropositivity. Past symptoms of COVID-19 were good predictors of seropositivity for residents (5.41, P  < 0.001) and staff (2.52, P  < 0.001). Conclusions Level of dependency influences risk of COVID-19 among residents. Individual and work factors, contacts outside the nursing home are associated with COVID-19 exposure in staff members. It is key to strengthen control measures to prevent the introduction of COVID-19 into care facilities from the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 before and shortly after the onset of symptoms suggests that only diagnosing and isolating symptomatic patients may not be sufficient to interrupt the spread of infection; therefore, public health measures such as personal distancing are also necessary. Additionally, it will be important to detect the newly infected individuals who remain asymptomatic, which may account for 50% or more of the cases. Molecular techniques are the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the massive use of these techniques has generated some problems. On the one hand, the scarcity of resources (analyzers, fungibles and reagents), and on the other the delay in the notification of results. These two facts translate into a lag in the application of isolation measures among cases and contacts, which favors the spread of the infection. Antigen detection tests are also direct diagnostic methods, with the advantage of obtaining the result in a few minutes and at the very "pointof- care". Furthermore, the simplicity and low cost of these tests allow them to be repeated on successive days in certain clinical settings. The sensitivity of antigen tests is generally lower than that of nucleic acid tests, although their specificity is comparable. Antigenic tests have been shown to be more valid in the days around the onset of symptoms, when the viral load in the nasopharynx is higher. Having a rapid and real- time viral detection assay such as the antigen test has been shown to be more useful to control the spread of the infection than more sensitive tests, but with greater cost and response time, such as in case of molecular tests. The main health institutions such as the WHO, the CDC and the Ministry of Health of the Government of Spain propose the use of antigenic tests in a wide variety of strategies to respond to the pandemic. This document aims to support physicians involved in the care of patients with suspected SC2 infection, in the context of a growing incidence in Spain since September 2020, which already represents the second pandemic wave of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which found that phenotypic characterization of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) requires considering the expression of genes CD45, CD34 and KDR, along with CD31 and CD133. It focuses on previous studies that indicated that HIV infected individuals have lower EPC levels than uninfected controls of the similar age group. It says that EPCs creates a balance between endothelial vascular injury and repair that is required for endothelium integrity.