COVID-19 severity, rather than sex or age, predicts SARS-CoV-2 kinetics, and SARS-CoV-2 viral load from lower respiratory tract specimens may predict severe disease days before clinical deterioration for COVID-19 patients.

Patients exposed to ⍺1-AR antagonists have reduced risks of mechanical ventilation and death in lower respiratory tract infection-related illnesses, highlighting the need for prospective trials assessing ⍺1-AR antagonists' effectiveness in COVID-19.

Interferon-λ plays a decisive and previously underestimated role in limiting the spread of respiratory viruses from the nasal cavity to the lungs and it efficiently restricts virus transmission from infected individuals to naïve contacts.

The IFNλ family of interferons controls the spread of viruses in the upper respiratory tract and transmission between mice.

Goblet cells secrete mucins—which are key components of mucus—in a process that is regulated by calcium ions, which enter the goblet cells via a mechanism involving a channel protein called TRPM5.

Vaccination has the potential to decrease swine influenza diversification by restricting influenza virus co-infections and reassortment events in pigs.

Broader case variation in respiratory viral load, and in shedding virus via droplets and aerosols, for SARS-CoV-2 than influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 facilitates greater transmission heterogeneity in the COVID-19 pandemic than the 2009 flu pandemic.

The PreBötzinger complex, which contains neurons that are the kernel for inspiratory rhythm generation, also contains sympathoexcitatory and parasympathoinhibitory neurons that drive respiratory-phase oscillations in blood pressure and heart rate.

A respiratory tissue-associated commensal Lactobacillus strain confers colonization resistance to Streptococcus pneumoniae, when applied therapeutically in a post influenza virus super-infection model.

Recordings from brainstem nuclei involved in chemosensory regulation of breathing in awake freely behaving mice show different complementary types of neuronal responses to hypercapnia in the retrotrapezoid nucleus and the rostral medullary raphe.