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Are We Heading for a Bird Flu Pandemic? Experts Weigh In
While bird flu’s risk to the general public remains low, there are many “barriers to success” that make containing the virus — and staving off a possible pandemic — somewhat tricky for public health officials, according to a Boston-based infectious disease expert.
Recent cases of avian influenza, or H5N1, among U.S. farmworkers have been overwhelmingly mild, but also “curious and poorly understood,” said Dr. Shira Doron, chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.
Speaking to reporters at an Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing last week, Doron noted the 66 confirmed human cases logged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the past year are “certainly an undercount since we’re unlikely to be capturing some cases of mild disease.”
Over 2 Million Americans Projected To Get Cancer Diagnosis This Year
The American Cancer Society projected approximately 2 million new cancer diagnoses and 618,000 new cancer deaths in the U.S. in 2025, with a cancer burden increasingly borne by younger populations, particularly women.
While cancer continues to be a leading cause of death overall in the U.S., and the leading cause among persons under the age of 85, “there is really some good news here,” said William Dahut, M.D., chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, during a press briefing. “There is a decrease in cancer mortality.”
Specifically, due to smoking reductions, earlier detection of some cancers, and improvements in treatment, there was a 34% drop in the cancer death rate from 1991 through 2022. This translated to about 3 million fewer cancer deaths in men and about 1.44 million fewer deaths in women than if mortality had remained at its peak, according to the society’s annual cancer statistics report, led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH, of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, and published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
However, Siegel and colleagues noted that progress is lagging in cancer prevention, as incidence rates continue to increase for several cancers, including melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer.
HHS Inspector General Raises Concerns Over FDA’s Accelerated Approvals
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to strengthen guardrails to ensure its accelerated approval pathway is used appropriately, the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) said. The agency should do two things, the OIG recommended in a new report: it should define when its intra-agency accelerated approval council should advise on certain drug applications, and it should ensure all meetings with drug companies are documented in its files.
The report was prompted by the FDA’s 2021 approval of the Alzheimer’s disease drug aducanumab (Aduhelm) using the accelerated approval pathway.
The aducanumab approval raised concerns in Congress and throughout the medical community about the accelerated pathway program and the agency’s judgment, the OIG said. It spurred a congressional investigation that demonstrated how the FDA broke with its own protocols by inappropriately collaborating with drugmaker Biogen on briefing documents and holding unreported meetings.
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Pharma Digs in on Changes It Wants From Trump Administration
The pharmaceutical industry, grappling with new government limits on drug prices, is focusing its requests for president-elect Donald Trump and Congress on “fixing” a Biden-era law allowing the Medicare health plan to negotiate prices for its costliest medicines along with insurance changes.
The industry, which argues that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) contribute to the high price of prescription drugs, is also pushing for curbs on the rebates they pay to PBMs in exchange for favorable placement on insurer coverage lists. Such changes would likely require Congressional action, either in stand-alone legislation or as part of a wider bill.
CEOs of some of the largest drugmakers said this week they were encouraged after Trump said at a meeting with pharma executives late last year that these middlemen need to be eliminated.
Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo Loses Flamingo, Seal to Bird Flu
The Avian Influenza has claimed the lives of a Harbor Seal and a Chilean Flamingo at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. The zoo announced they received results that confirmed the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza was the cause of Teal, a Chilean Flamingo, and Slater, a Harbor Seal’s death.
“This is sad news for wildlife and for the zoo team. Not only are we facing the first known cases of HPAI in animals in our care, but we’ve lost two amazing animals,” said Director of Veterinary Services Lester E. Fisher and Dr. Kathryn Gamble in a statement.
“While highly pathogenic avian influenza is a naturally occurring virus in free-ranging waterfowl, more mammal species have been reported to be susceptible to HPAI since 2022.”
Tanzania Denies Suspected Marburg Outbreak After Who Alert
Tanzania has dismissed a World Health Organization (WHO) report of a suspected new outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in the northwest of the country. On Tuesday, the global health agency said a total of nine suspected cases were reported over the last five days in the Kagera region, including eight deaths.
But in a statement, Tanzania’s Health Minister Jenista Mhagama said after samples were analyzed, all suspected cases were found negative for Marburg virus.
She said that the country had strengthened its surveillance systems and disease monitoring.
We “would like to assure the international organisations, including WHO that we shall always keep them up to date with ongoing developments,” Mhagama said.
