News & Events
University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine
• KOLO Channel 8 News
“For now what we know is, the vaccine is protecting people from getting serious symptoms,” says Dr Subhash Verma with the University of Nevada Reno Microbiology and Immunology Department. The new vaccines are called MRNA vaccines.
“This virus matches mostly to the European strain, most of the strain we have also seen in New York and Washington. or California,” says Dr. Subhash Verma, an Associate Professor at University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine in Microbiology and Immunology. “But one big difference of what we saw here was 50% of the variant we picked up here is unique to Northern Nevada. Northern Nevada somehow has a unique mutation which is in one of the proteins which makes the virus replicate,” says Dr. Verma.
• KOLO Channel 8 News
Every day the staff at the state’s Public Health Lab processes tests seeking answers important--even critical-- to our health. Health screenings for the state’s infants, testing well water and, of course, infectious diseases.
• Daily Mail
Dr Mark Pandori, from the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and who led the study, told DailyMail.com the patient may have received a 'very high dose' of the virus to become re-infected. This would have 'overwhelmed' the immune system, he said, leading to a more serious infection.
• International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD)
Mark Riddle, M.D., Dr.P.H., associate dean of Clinical Research, discusses the prevalence of GI disorders among veterans with the International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD).
• Las Vegas Review Journal
“No test is perfect, but there are consequences to varying degrees of less perfect,” said Mark Pandori, who directs the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory in Reno. “If false positive individuals are put into quarantine along with other truly positive people, that is very bad,” he said.
• edible Reno-Tahoe
For Karen Bain, dietitian, health and wellness coach, and diabetes care and education specialist at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, a plant-based diet is similar to the Mediterranean diet that health care professionals have been promoting for years. “The Mediterranean eating plan has been a great way to eat, especially for those with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure,” Bain explains. “It is very plant centered, though it brings lean proteins into the eating plan.”
• KMAX-TV CBS13 Sacramento
California’s new $25 million coronavirus testing lab is supposed to revolutionize testing. The state’s $1.7 billion contract with PerkinElmer requires the diagnostics company return results out of the lab in 24 to 48 hours. CBS13 shared our results withDr. Mark Pandori, the director of Nevada’s public health lab and formally the public health lab director in San Francisco and Alameda counties.
• Northern Nevada Business Weekly
Danielle Eaton, senior director and research manager for the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine Clinical Research Center, was recently named executive director of the Sierra Veterans Research and Education Foundation (SVREF).
• Medical Dialogues
There are still many unknowns about SARS-CoV-2 infections and the immune system's response, but our findings signal that a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection may not necessarily protect against future infection," said Mark Pandori, lead author of the study and director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine
• KTVN Channel 2 News
• KRNV Channel 4 News
• KUNR
“We did find certain mutations that were virtually unique to Nevada,” explains Director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, Mark Pandori. “Now, we don’t know what that means, or why that’s the case, but we did see some, what we call ‘point mutations’.”
• Public News Service
Dr. Alexandra Watson, a family practice physician in Reno, said first and foremost, it's important to establish a relationship with a health professional, and if you've lost health insurance, to open enroll for the Affordable Care Act starting this Sunday.
• KRXI Fox 11 News
Yumei Feng Earley, Ph.D., M.D., associate professor, departments of pharmacology, and physiology and cell biology at the UNR Med was awarded a competitive, four-year, $2.3 million grant from the NIH to support her research on increased sympathetic nervous system activity which has been found to be a primary precursor of hypertension.
• Northern Nevada Business Weekly
For 50 years, Renown Health and the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine have had a long history of working together to improve healthcare in Northern Nevada.
• This is Reno
Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, said a reinfection can happen and is a common knowledge among immunologists and virologists who work on immunity in the human body and infectious diseases.
• Chicago Daily Herald
The first study to investigate the case of a person in the U.S. who contracted COVID-19 twice found reinfection can occur swiftly and the second bout of illness can be more severe.
• The World News Great Britain
Mark Pandori, the study’s co-author and director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory says that the virus is still very new, with lots of research around the development of the virus still taking place. “We’re still learning about the biology of the virus and our own biology with regards to dealing with the virus,” he said.
• KTVN Channel 2 News
University of Nevada, Reno's Center For Molecular Medicine is about to enter Phase 2 of its research on a COVID test that takes only 30 seconds to get back results.
• KTVN Channel 2 News
The case of a Reno man who caught COVID-19 twice could provide valuable data in the fight against the pandemic.
• Voice of America
Writing in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists describe the case of a 25-year-old man who was infected on two separate occasions about six weeks apart.
• The National Post Canada
"It’s not clear how often reinfection might occur, because we’re not routinely looking for it, and a lot of work needs to go into proving it. Right now, most testing systems are geared at just keeping our heads above water," Pandori said. “We don’t necessarily have a system that’s well designed to find reinfection cases and as such I’m unwilling to say how often it does happen."
• The Japan Times
The first study to investigate the case of a person in the U.S. who contracted COVID-19 twice found reinfection can occur swiftly and the second bout of illness can be more severe. The research, published in the Lancet medical journal, indicates that exposure to the virus may not guarantee future immunity.
• The Times U.K.
A 25-year-old man has become the first person in the United States to be confirmed as having been infected with coronavirus twice. His case is the fifth confirmed Covid-19 reinfection worldwide, and specialists said it indicated that exposure to the virus did not necessarily confer total immunity.
