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Chicago Battles Measles With Calls for Vaccination — in Contrast With Florida
A team of health experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Chicago on Tuesday as officials identified three new measles cases amid a flare-up of cases at a migrant shelter in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood.
The measles cases at the shelter have led to a massive response — and strong encouragement from health officials for vaccination. The city’s health department on Monday reported that, along with help from other area health officials and healthcare providers, it had “successfully vaccinated more than 900 shelter residents with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.”
Those newly vaccinated shelter residents are to stay at the shelter for 21 days until their immunity from the vaccination reaches full effectiveness. Meanwhile, more than 700 shelter residents, who had been assessed and found to already have immunity to measles from either prior vaccination or infection, were allowed to move freely in and out.
Chicago’s proactive response, full-throated calls for vaccination and collaboration with the CDC, contrast the approach Florida’s health department took in a recent measles outbreak. That outbreak began last month in a Broward County elementary school with a vaccination rate reported to be below the target of 95%.
To date, Broward has reported nine measles cases, all in children. However, the health department has not released data on if or how all nine cases are connected to the school, nor has it reported the vaccination status of those cases.
Older Californians Now Eligible for Another COVID Vaccine Dose
Older Californians who received last autumn’s updated COVID-19 vaccination can now get another shot, state health officials said.
Adults 65 and older should get a second dose of the updated shot that first became available in September, as long as at least four months have passed since that injection, the California Department of Public Health said Tuesday, echoing a recommendation issued Feb. 28 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 34% of California’s seniors 65 and older have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine since September.
Merck to Test Single-Dose Regimen of HPV Vaccine Gardasil 9
Merck & Co (MRK.N) said on Wednesday it plans to conduct clinical trials testing its human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil 9 to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a single-dose regimen compared to the approved three-dose regimen.
The company said it plans to conduct two separate trials testing Gardasil 9 in men and women 16-26 years old to examine whether a single dose of the vaccine provides comparable long-term protection when compared with the approved three-dose regimen.
The drugmaker also plans to begin human trials for an experimental HPV vaccine in the fourth quarter that is designed to offer broader protection by targeting multiple HPV types.
Gardasil 9 is now approved for use in women and men aged 9 through 45 years.
Anxiety Drug Pregabalin Linked to Rising Number of Deaths — Here’s What You Should Know
There has been a significant rise in deaths linked to the commonly prescribed anxiety drug, pregabalin. While in 2018 there were 187 deaths linked to pregabalin in England and Wales, this number was more than double in 2022 — with 441 deaths linked to the drug.
Recent press reports have framed these deaths as signaling a “U.S.-style opioid epidemic” caused by a medicine that “destroys lives.” This is not an equitable comparison, given hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to opioids. These reports may only serve to cause undue panic about the drug, especially among those who have been prescribed it.
But where pregabalin can become dangerous, whether used as prescribed or not, is if it’s taken alongside other drugs that it interacts negatively with. Pregabalin should ideally be avoided alongside other opioids, certain sleep aids, benzodiazepines (another class of anxiety drug), muscle relaxants and even certain diabetes and epilepsy drugs. Most fatalities attributed to pregabalin are due to interactions with other drugs, leading to a suppression of breathing.
Push for Young Adults to Get MMR Jab as Cases Rise
Young people across the U.K. are being urged to have their measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine following a rise in measles cases.
At the start of the year, the West Midlands saw the highest number of people with measles since the 1990s, health officials said. The NHS is now urging more than 900,000 adults aged 19-25 who have not yet had the jab to take part in a catch-up campaign.
These youngsters would have been eligible for a jab when the vaccination rates began to fall in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The West Midlands initially reported the largest measles outbreak outside of London, however, cases have now been identified in the North West, London, East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.
You Can Now Get Weight-Loss Drug Zepbound Through Amazon
The Wall Street Journal reported:
People seeking a popular new weight-loss drug will have a new home-delivery option from a familiar name: Amazon.com.
Amazon Pharmacy, which has sold prescription medicines online since 2020, will now handle some of the home delivery of anti-obesity therapy Zepbound and other Eli Lilly drugs that are ordered through the drugmaker’s new direct-to-consumer service, the companies said Wednesday.
New Nasal Vaccine Platform Helps Clear COVID Infections in an Animal Model
Penn State University reported:
A newly developed intranasal vaccine candidate helps to clear COVID-19 infections more quickly than controls in pre-clinical testing, according to a recent study. The new vaccine platform relies on a protein scaffold that resembles a tiny wire-frame soccer ball, roughly the size and shape of a virus. When the surface of the scaffold is decorated with a portion of the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus — the same protein used in existing COVID-19 vaccines — and delivered via the nose, it induces an immune response in a rodent model.
A paper describing the study, led by researchers in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State, was published recently in the journal Microbiology Spectrum. The study demonstrates proof-of-principle for the scaffold, called “SpyCage,” as a potential new delivery system for safe and effective nasal vaccines. While further study is needed to optimize the system to achieve full protection, the SpyCage platform could be easily adapted for use against a variety of respiratory viruses, according to the research team.
According to the researchers, candidate nasal vaccines that have been developed to date have used viral vectors or live-attenuated viruses and continue to have safety concerns, especially for the most vulnerable populations.
The researchers explained that the SpyCage vaccine platform continues to be developed and is the subject of several patents and pending patent applications.
Moderna, BioNTech Stocks Rise on New mRNA Possibilities
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The pandemic validated the disease-fighting prowess of mRNA vaccines. Shares of Moderna and BioNTech rose on Monday after two tantalizing morsels hinted at their potential for attacking cancer.
Cancer treatment is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest, most lucrative markets. It’s been a prized target of biotechs like Moderna and BioNTech, which have sought to extend their messenger RNA technology beyond infectious diseases like COVID-19 or RSV.
Moderna and Merck launched a Phase 2/3 study of Merck’s Keytruda with Moderna’s experimental skin cancer vaccine, according to a new posting on the government’s clinicaltrials.gov. Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said the initiation of such an expensive trial indicates the companies’ confidence in the program.
Rite Aid Opioid Settlement: Victims Will Likely Get No Payment
Bloomberg via Insurance Journal reported:
Nancy Zailo is at the back of the line. She’s behind Jeffrey Stein, the Rite Aid Corp. chief executive collecting $300,000 paychecks every month. She’s behind consultants at Alvarez & Marsal, who have billed the pharmacy chain $75 million and counting. She’s behind bondholders and behind $2,000-an-hour lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis. And she’s behind lenders like Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. that are collecting millions of dollars in interest from a credit line carrying the company through bankruptcy.
Only after they’ve all been paid — along with many, many others — could some of what’s left go to thousands like Zailo who allege the drugstore chain ignored red flags as it fed their opioid addictions for years. “I lost everything,” she said. Here’s what she’s expected to get: Nothing.
The plight of people like Zailo, it turns out, does little to bend the rigid structures of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. In fact, insolvency rules make it pretty easy for Rite Aid to nearly ignore its opioid claimants altogether. Rite Aid, which has denied wrongdoing, faced more than 1,600 opioid lawsuits when it filed for bankruptcy in October.
While rivals Walmart Inc., CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. agreed to pay more than $13 billion combined to settle opioid lawsuits, Rite Aid never reached a similar accord before its bankruptcy filing put litigation on hold. The company told opioid plaintiff lawyers it didn’t have the funds, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the talks were private. And unlike drugmakers that have gone bankrupt, the retailer doesn’t expect it will wind up with any money to pay opioid victims.
Senator Questions CDC’s Proposed Post-Exposure Doxycycline Recommendation
U.S. Senator Marc Rubio (R-FL) yesterday sent a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, expressing his concerns about the CDC’s proposed guidelines recommending the use of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxy-PEP) to reduce sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Doxy-PEP is one way the CDC is trying to combat skyrocketing rates of STIs, which increased 42% in the United States from 2011 to 2021. Although the guidelines are not yet official, public health departments in San Francisco and other U.S. cities have begun implementing the recommendations.
In his letter to Cohen, Rubio cited concerns about the potential impact of doxy-PEP on the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the quality of evidence reviewed by the CDC, and political motivations. Rubio also said he’s concerned that the CDC has not clarified whether it will commission additional studies on doxy-PEP’s long-term impact on AMR.
