December 2, 2021

Temperatures are dropping. Do you feel like you’re more likely to get sick in the winter months? While this may be true, it isn’t directly caused by cold temperatures. Winter weather forces many of us to spend more time inside, closer to one another in drier air. These conditions give viruses and germs more opportunities to spread and make us sick. 

The winter months are typically cold and flu season (flu often peaks between December and February). Last winter, the virus that causes COVID-19 also had a large “wave” of increased spread, and the very contagious and infectious virus (and its variants) will likely continue to spread this winter, alongside flu viruses.

Before you get that scratchy feeling in your throat, there ARE some things you can do to boost your immune system’s ability to keep you feeling healthy this winter. Some of these winter wellness tips might feel like advice you’ve heard before, but that’s because they’re proven ways to keep your immune system healthy. 

Read more at Shot of Prevention.

November 30, 2021

(Boston)—Vaccine hesitancy is considered one of the top 10 threats to public health by the World Health Organization. Pregnant women and newborn infants are at an increased risk for severe disease from influenza (flu) and whooping cough, therefore improving maternal vaccination is a high priority for keeping moms and babies safe.

Why vaccinate?

Consider that a pregnant 30-year-old has a similar risk of hospitalization from flu as a 65-year-old. The flu can also lead to pregnancy complications. Between 10,000 and 50,000 cases of whooping cough occur in the U.S. each year and infants younger six months have a 50 percent chance of needing to be hospitalized if they get it.

The flu vaccine decreases the risk of getting the flu, and also decreases the risk of being hospitalized if one does get the flu. Whooping cough vaccination during pregnancy allows protective antibodies to pass to the baby, which protects the baby until the baby is old enough to be vaccinated. Unfortunately, only about half of pregnant individuals receive these vaccines. Rates are even lower among women of color.

Motivation to vaccinate

A new study asked pregnant women what information they found most important when deciding whether to accept recommended flu and whooping cough vaccines. The women felt vaccine safety and protection of the infant was the most significant consideration and these messages were most impactful when delivered by trusted health care providers.

Read more at EurekAlert.

November 29, 2021

When Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson announced their Phase 3 clinical trial results, suggesting that their injections were 95 percent, 95 percent and 67 percent effective at preventing infection, respectively, experts cheered. All three vaccines provided what seemed to be nearly impenetrable walls against severe COVID-19 disease. However, as the pandemic has worn on and reports of breakthrough infections made national headlines, the FDA and CDC recommended a shot to boost immunity among all adults six to eight months after their second shot of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine, or two months after the first shot of Johnson & Johnson.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recently told the New York Times that immunity is “waning to the point where you’re seeing more and more people getting breakthrough infections, and more and more of those people who are getting breakthrough infections are winding up in the hospital… boosters will be an essential part of the protection.”

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine.

December 1, 2021

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, perhaps more than any other COVID shot, knows what it is to be bullied by the American public. Since the spring, the shot’s been roasted, and roasted, and roasted again—first for its late arrival and its imperfect performance in trials, then for a rare but concerning side effect that temporarily halted its distribution in April. Tweets, memes, and listicles dragged it. SNL skewered it. CVS pharmacies stopped offering it. Then, in October, federal officials urged everyone on Team J&J to get another shot—any shot (but also, maybe try Moderna this time?)—rendering the vaccine’s one-and-done protection, its clearest advantage over its mRNA competitors, just about moot. The underdog dose, the “second class” shot, the nation’s vaccine-a non grata, seemed as good as dead.

This incessant ragging has been all too easy—and maybe shortsighted. According to some experts, the haters are overlooking a trait that could rescue J&J’s reputation, and possibly even keep it in scientific contention. “I think there is a silver lining to this vaccine that a lot of people don’t see,” David Martinez, an immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is studying immune responses to COVID-19 shots, told me. It’s a trait called durability—the ability of a vaccine’s protection to persist, despite the ravages of time. Several researchers, including representatives of the company that designed the J&J vaccine, say they’re seeing early hints of this with the shot. “It’s unequivocal,” Mathai Mammen, the global head of research and development for Janssen, the vaccine-manufacturing pharmaceutical company owned by Johnson & Johnson, told me. In tracking the vaccine’s effectiveness, “there is no change, month over month over month.” The shot’s initial magnitude of protection against sickness might not match Moderna’s or Pfizer’s. But after they’re built, J&J’s defenses seem to stick around in a way that their mRNA-driven counterparts might not, like a low-wattage bulb that keeps burning, long after all the other lights in the room have flickered and died.

Read more at The Atlantic.

December 1, 2021

A new kind of COVID-19 vaccine is about to roll out around the world. Although it won’t replace the highly successful vaccines currently available, it could make a difference in the course of the pandemic, especially in lower resourced countries.

These new vaccines are what’s called protein subunit vaccines. They work by injecting people with a tiny portion of the virus. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, that tiny portion is the so-called spike protein critical for the virus to enter cells.

An advantage of protein subunit vaccines is they tend to be very stable, so they don’t require freezers for storage. A regular refrigerator is adequate. This makes distributing the vaccine much easier.

“We were assuming that the protein subunit vaccines would play a big role in accelerating development of a COVID vaccine,” says Julie McElrath directs the vaccine and infectious disease division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. McElrath said she and her colleagues’ confidence came because there were already subunit vaccines on the market for infectious diseases.

Read more at NPR.

December 1, 2021

As Covid-19 brought nearly every corner of the Earth to a halt early last year, researchers around the world scrambled to develop a vaccine to fend off the deadly respiratory coronavirus. And just several months later — in a process that normally takes years — several vaccines were ready for worldwide distribution.

In comparison, about 40 years since the earliest reports of what became known as AIDS, scientists are still scratching their heads to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes the life-threatening disease — HIV.

But as the anniversary of the first Covid-19 vaccine shots approaches, experts say the brisk development of the lifesaving and highly effective coronavirus vaccines may have brought researchers closer to cracking the code to develop an HIV vaccine.

“There’s a lot of new energy and buzz among scientists looking at how quickly some of the Covid science got done,” said Rowena Johnston, the vice president and director of research at amfAR, an international nonprofit AIDS research group. “I think there’s been a lot of soul-searching about how the scientific enterprise can be improved so that we can better serve the people we’re trying to help.”

Read more at NBC News.

December 2, 2021

The parasite that causes malaria can kill a person within 24 hours of symptoms appearing. Patients’ symptoms are flu-like, including a fever, headache, and chills. It all starts with a microscopic poke.

When a malaria-infected mosquito plunges her needle-like mouth through human skin, she releases immature forms of the parasites, called sporozoites, into the person’s bloodstream. From there, they travel to the liver, then to red blood cells. The infected cells burst, releasing millions of daughter parasites called merozoites, which infect other red blood cells. The cycle persists until the parasites are killed — and that’s becoming harder to do.

During the first 15 years of this century, worldwide efforts to curb malaria cut cases by 40%, and deaths fell by more than 60%. But in 2015, that progress plateaued. Since then, malaria has been quietly rising after cases had been falling steadily for over a decade.

Read more at WebMD.

December 2, 2021

At first glance, it looked just like an official New York City public service announcement that listed the top 10 reasons people should get vaccinated against Covid-19.

But a closer reading revealed that the poster, seen at a B43 bus stop in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, displayed 10 reasons not to get vaccinated. Reason No. 1: “It could kill you.”

The false and blatantly misleading anti-vaccination ad caused an uproar on social media on Thursday at a time when city health officials are pushing hard to boost the vaccination rate as a new threat from the Omicron variant looms. About 69 percent of city residents of all ages have been fully vaccinated.

The poster imitated an official vaccination ad released by the city — it used the same font, layout and even the same shade of robin’s egg blue — but conveyed the opposite message.

Read more at The New York Times.

December 2, 2021

Vaccines for children under five are expected to be approved early next year, but officials and pediatricians say the slow uptake among hesitant parents for the 5-11 age group could extend to the youngest children too.

Dr. Francis Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health and spoke with NPR’s All Things Considered about the timeline for emergency use authorization of the vaccine for kids under 5, and the ongoing efforts to immunize those aged 5 to 11.

As with older Americans, before the vaccine makers can submit for FDA emergency use authorization, they must first conduct trials to ensure the vaccine is safe and effective.

For children under five, these trials are split into two different groups: those aged 2-5, and those aged six months to two years.

“Both of those have had data generated in a carefully controlled trial, and those are going to be submitted and [the] FDA will review them,” Collins said.

“But I think it will be by the first of the year before we have approval for those younger ages.”

Read more at NPR.

November 30, 2021

The flu is finally starting to make a comeback after a historically quiet 2020-2021 influenza season.

Though flu activity is low in much of the country, the United States is currently seeing more flu activity than it did during all of last season.

The bulk of cases can be traced back to Influenza A (H3N2), a strain often associated with more severe flu seasons, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

New Mexico is seeing high flu activity, while Georgia and Rhode Island are seeing moderate flu activity.

According to the Walgreens Flu Index, which attempts to monitor flu activity through antiviral prescription data, nationwide activity is currently 192 percent higher than it was at this time last year — though activity is still low, in general, compared to pre-pandemic flu seasons.

Read more at Healthline.