Medical Journal Plays Vital Role in Disseminating New COVID-19 Research through its Free-to-Read Platform

The “novel” tag attached to descriptions of COVID-19 means it is a strain of coronavirus that medical professionals have never seen before. This makes treatment particularly tricky, as we are essentially starting from square one. The sheer number of questions that need answering, and the very real threat it poses to global public health, has made COVID-19 a top priority. To aid in research, the twice-monthly peer-reviewed medical journal Aging is publishing research related to coronavirus through its open access platform.

The general public is consuming more information than ever before in an effort to better understand what we are facing. According to ComScore, which tracks marketing data and online analytics, visits to online government sources like the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization skyrocketed 425 percent in early March 2020 compared to January. There’s clearly a  demand for information among the medical and scientific communities, too, and Aging is providing a place for these experts to convene and share their findings. 

Here are three take-aways from work recently published by Aging and available for free online:

• Researchers from Weifang Medical University found that “COPD is associated with a dramatically increased risk of aggravation in patients with COVID-19.” Those with hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cerebrovascular disease were also at an increased risk.
• Development of a vaccine to curtail COVID-19’s spread is many months away. With this in mind, researchers from University of Zagreb, Harvard Medical School and The University of New South Wales wanted to establish tools for identifying those at a high risk of contracting the virus. Their findings favored efforts to “biobank large number of plasma samples of both severe and mild cases, so that modern profiling technologies can be used to identify molecular risk factors during this and for future outbreaks.”
• The use of anti-aging drugs like Azithromycin, Quercetin, Rapamycin and Doxycycline to stop viral replication have been given closer scrutiny following clinical trials approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Those looking to learn more about Chloroquine-related compounds, which has grabbed headlines but not enough corresponding research, should look here for more.

Aging, through its open access platform, is making available research that is essential for those on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.