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As we write this month’s Airwaves citizens, scientists and politicians around the world are preparing for a second wave of COVID-19 cases while hoping their fears are groundless. This month’s airwaves takes the “second wave” as its theme and we explore reappearances and recurrences - both welcome and unwelcome. We bring you chimpanzees, off-target effects and dental extractions.
Chimpanzees, RSV and CEACAM3
As the nights draw in and the months of November, December and January approach, every paediatrician knows that the season for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is approaching. RSV, originally named “chimpanzee coryza agent”, causes regular winter epidemics, resulting in the hospitalisation of around 2% of infants with acute bronchiolitis as well as episodes of wheezing in older children. One of the enduring puzzles of RSV is why some children have a more severe respiratory illness than others. In this month’s Thorax, Tsai and colleagues (see page 725) describe a meta-analysis to investigate differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of RSV infection from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets. Using their findings from both a training and a validation dataset, the authors report that CEACAM3 mRNA expression is reduced in subjects experiencing asthma exacerbations. CEACAM3 (Carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 3) is an adhesion molecule …