ScholarPeer’s latest research news and reporting from Social Science & Medicine. Social Science & Medicine is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that publishes research on health, illness, and health care across fields including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, epidemiology, geography, and public policy. Its studies examine how social, behavioral, economic, cultural, and institutional forces influence physical and mental health, health disparities, health systems, and population well-being.
A SARS-CoV-2 outbreak swept through two Indigenous populations in Bolivia’s lowlands. Most adults were infected and many became ill, yet deaths were extraordinarily rare. A new study suggests the explanation may lie in a combination of youthful population structure, low metabolic disease and unusually regulated immune responses, not a single protective trait.