Pharmacist prescribers Linda Bryant and Leanne Te Karu discuss positive polypharmacy for heart failure. Current evidence shows the intensive implementation of four medications offers the greatest benefit to most patients with heart failure, with significant reductions in cardiovascular mortality, heart failure hospitalisations and all-cause mortality
COVID: How worried should we be about the new AY.4.2 lineage of the coronavirus?
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In print
COVID-19
COVID: How worried should we be about the new AY.4.2 lineage of the coronavirus?
Wednesday 10 November 2021, 12:10 AM
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If the shape of AY.4.2’s spike proteins has changed, antibodies may struggle to bind to them to destroy the virus [Image from Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash]
Just when you thought all the talk of new COVID variants was over, there’s news of yet another one: AY.4.2. But what is it, where did it come from, and should we be concerned?
AY.4.2 is what’s termed a “lineage”. These are labels given to branches of the SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary tree to illustrate their relatedness. They are
References
1. WHO. Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants. who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants
2. COG-UK. VOCs/VUIs in the UK. sars2.cvr.gla.ac.uk/cog-uk
4. Hodcroft EB, Zuber M, Nadeau S, et al. Spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant through Europe in the summer of 2020. Nature 2021;595:707–12.
5. McCallum M, Walls AC, Sprouse KR, et al. Molecular basis of immune evasion by the delta and kappa SARS-CoV-2 variants. bioRxiv 2021; 12 August online.