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Sterghios A. Moschos Profile picture
Sterghios A. Moschos
@DocMoschos
Founder & CSO PulmoBioMed; FRSC FIBMS Associate Professor @NorthumbriaUni, nucleic acid Dx/Rx, RNA, respiratory, virology, NGS, seaside wanderer. Tweets own &c.
Gerard J Brandon 🇺🇦 Profile picture 1 subscribed
Sep 6, 2022 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
100% detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 with PBM-HALE, in 1 minute of exhaled breath, requires forced expiration and gives Ct's as low as 25.8. We have updated our preprint with the interim data from our Brazil study 1/n We had tried to detect COVID-19 in exhaled tidal breath. That's resting breathing to you and me. It didn't work (n=42). We concluded that at least PBM-HALE does what it says on the tin; no environmental contamination, as we sampled in COVID-19 wards with no ventilation. 2/n
May 28, 2022 • 33 tweets • 13 min read
Our Pre-print on exhaled breath detection of COVID-19 and bacteria from your lung. TL;DR summary: you do not emit any virus if you are infected, have symptoms, and are breathing in a relaxed fashion.

This DOES NOT mean COVID-19 isn’t airborne 1/n medrxiv.org/content/10.110… People emit a lot more aeorosols in different ways when they talk, shout, sing, etc. Please wear a mask because we have 3 new variants with more disease burden poised to make our collective summers a mess.

We are working to find out how much virus you emit otherwise 2/n
Feb 6, 2022 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
It looks like people aligned with the party in government are paying attention to the first fluttering canary, but not chirping, in the coal mine: Israel. Reduced 4th dose uptake and letting omicron rip has lead to deaths climbing. This was predictable 1/n telegraph.co.uk/global-health/… And it will also happen here: it’s started already. Why? Because we are starting to fall off the cliff with boosting, testing, and paying attention to mitigations. So the virus is finding fertile ground. And it was all entirely, totally predictable. Let me explain why. 2/n
Dec 25, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
So it my turn to get COVID19. 2 kids in my 4yo sons’ class tested +ve 12/12/21 so we LFT’d him. He was +ve but asymptomatic; catarrh, cough, mild fever the next day. I developed symptoms 14/12 w/ weak +ve LFT -ve RT-PCR: deep, rattling chesty cough. 1/n I get these every year but this was on another level. LFTs serially -ve next few days, no notification sons’ +ve was omicron, so I assume he got delta reinfection 8 months on after his first bout of COVID19 (from nursery). 2/n
Dec 11, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Stunning work on nasal vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. THIS might solve a few issues! 20 years ago I was in my second year in my PhD busy testing intranasal vaccines for H. pylori infection (stomach ulcers/cancers). We knew back then that dosing the nose raised antibodies throughout all mucosal surfaces. And yet in the clinic we remain reticent.
Dec 8, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
We now have 3 independent data sources confirming 40x reduction in nAb efficacy vs omicron and one showing UK’s vaccination strategy particularly weak in that respect. A thread 1/n Are we screwed? No. Vaccine efficacy is sustained, but significantly lowered for hospitalisation (based on extrapolations from different vaccines and strains) especially in the U.K. where AZ might prove a handicap. Our likelihood of infection even boosted will be higher.
Jul 13, 2021 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Today I was interviewed by @BBCLN who presented me as “a scientist” criticising the government. There are another 1000 signatories in the Lancet letter castigating the government. The piece closes with the excuse of higher autumn risk; unfortunately even this is inadmissible. 1/n When the government defines the terms of reference for the analyses to exclude what WILL make a difference, you can only expect them to raise their hands up in the air and plea no other options. The people need to know the machinations of the modelling. 2/n
Jul 11, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
🧵 Yesterday Aris RT’d my dissatisfaction with the estimate-based approach on the preprint regarding PFR, CFR, IFR, etc. Aris focused on the @BBCNews article. An almighty pile on ensued. I invited debate on the maths. Explore @apsmunro’s timeline as an example 1/n My main problem is that the authors estimate cases (a medically defined term requiring a positive test) and infections (which includes asymptomatics) over a year half of which had no testing; instead they should present data over the period for which testing results exist- in 2/n
May 22, 2021 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
nature.com/articles/s4159… You’ll hear a lot about a study showing Vx’s work (yes, they work!), that your Ab response to SARS-CoV-2 tells you how likely you are protected, how long before you might need a booster (TLDR, >8 months is v. likely w/out breakthrough mutants) 1/n The paper takes the results from phase I-III clinical trials for 7 vaccines. They use math to get over differences between these studies in data gathering, what is mild or severe disease, how protection is reported, etc etc etc- the word “assume” is used many many times. 2/n
Feb 19, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
🧵 We will be hearing a lot in the coming days about new LFTs & newly found freedoms. The crux of the matter is that we still don’t know what the mechanism of superspreading is. The assumption is viral load, perhaps increased aerosol exhalation (a Pareto association). That is, roughly 20% of people have more humid exhalations, and this matches with the superspreader rate so, if it walks like a 🐓 and talks like a 🐓 etc. The LFTs still stand on the Mina premise that low Ct (high viral load) is what matters. But...
Feb 10, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
News of the day: inhaled budesonide can keep people with COVID19 out of hospital. 👏👏👏👏👏👏 medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Small, but blindingly effective study using an off the shelf, cheap, widely used drug to give a short treatment course shows faster symptom resolution and even reduced incidence of #LongCovid. Asthmatics take it routinely and might explain observations.
Feb 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm getting queries regarding the lack of updates on the clinical study front. In the past months we've observed real time what suboptimal study size data mean for statistics. Whatever the observation, it needs to be robust, reproducible, and delivered with responsibility. This applies on all science work, let alone research with immediate public health impact at the scale of COVID19. We will disclose the data when a clear answer is at hand. Rest assured that we are continuing the work under very challenging conditions.
Jan 31, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This ups the stakes enormously. If the superspreader child didn’t cry, talk, sneeze, cough, it’s coming from exhaled breath. Perhaps EBC screening is the path to superspreader detection. The room layout shows juxtaposed individuals not getting infected. Layout includes A/C & venting. HCPs infected were in 2m proximity, some for 10 min, w/ masks.
Jan 12, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Imagine a screen composed of pixels. The top left is white, the bottom right should be black. You can only move one hue per pixel as you go white to black. In a screen of 4 pixels, you get 4 hues of white. In a screen of 1024 pixels, you get closer to black. This is what is... ...happening with SARS-CoV-2 right now. The more feeding ground it gets (transmission), the closer it gets from white to black- black being a variant that will not be stopped by the spike vaccines. The human screen measures 91 million infections, and variants are looking...
May 22, 2020 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
Let’s talk about nasal carriage of #SARSCoV2, detection, replication, transmission. The receptor ACE2 is expressed ar high protein levels in the lower respiratory tract. There is little of the protein in the nose, mouth, upper airways. Yet it is detectable in nasal swabs, .... ...less so on oral swabs, but also in saliva, and extremely well in bronchoalveolar lavage or tracheal aspirates. This implies the virus is mainly produced in the lower lung, that’s where we see most of it. So don’t cells in the upper respiratory tract produce the virus at...
Mar 19, 2020 • 29 tweets • 9 min read
THREAD: ANTIBODY GAME CHANGER TESTS AND DIAGNOSTIC REALITY. Most people don’t understand infectious disease and how ‘tests’ work. Like many things in science they’re not simply black and white things. This thread will explain in simple terms the value of #covid19 tests. Infectious disease like #COVID19 has four phases: exposure, incubation, disease, resolution. Exposure is when you catch it. With COVID19, it involves coughs, droplets, aerosols and infected surfaces. Incubation is when the virus quietly minds its own business. No symptoms...
Mar 16, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I was right. Sci chauvinism is profound in the #cobra advisory position re #covid19. Too many assumptions ignoring Asian data, too many expert opinions based on flu; case to point: banning mass gathering will have limited impact. Hello? South Korea???? imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial… The paper is riddled with jibes over suppression of testing in U.K., also “It is important to note at the outset that given SARS-CoV-2 is a newly emergent virus, much remains to be understood about its transmission.”