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Eating Disorders in Teen Girls Doubled During the Pandemic — Female Adolescents Also Saw Increases in Anxiety Disorders, ADHD and Depression
Trends in the prevalence of mental health diagnoses among youths differed by age and sex during the COVID-19 pandemic, with female adolescents representing “the most vulnerable population,” a cross-sectional study showed.
Among teenage girls, the prevalence of anxiety disorders, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and eating disorders all increased, with the prevalence of diagnosed eating disorders more than doubling, from 0.26% in March 2020 to 0.36% in October 2020 and 0.56% in March 2022, reported Loreen Straub, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.
“Female youth, especially female adolescents, represented the most vulnerable population with regard to marked increases in the prevalence of MH [mental health] diagnoses during the pandemic, the most pronounced being the prevalence of eating disorders,” the authors wrote in a research letter published in JAMA Network Open.
COVID Vaccines May Undergo Major Overhaul This Fall
Earlier this year, U.S. regulators settled on a new strategy for COVID-19 vaccines. Like the annual flu shot, the vaccines will be updated each year based on the virus’ evolution, then rolled out in the fall.
Accordingly, on June 15, advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh which strain or strains of SARS-CoV-2 should make up the next iteration of the vaccine, so that the agency can greenlight a version for companies to mass-produce.
Regulators may well jettison the original SARS-CoV-2 strain that emerged in China and is long extinct — but which people are still being vaccinated against today. Many scientists favor eliminating it.
The ancestral strain “should go out of the formulation,” says William Messer, an infectious disease specialist and viral immunologist at Oregon Health & Science University. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed. But other questions loom, including whether to bundle multiple virus strains into the vaccine or just one.
Globe-Trotting Moderna Is Investing $322 Million in New Manufacturing Site Close to Home
Moderna is establishing manufacturing footholds in far-flung outposts including Australia, Kenya, South Korea, Canada and the U.K.
Now, the company is setting up a plant closer to home in Massachusetts. The Cambridge-based biotech has bought a new manufacturing facility 30 miles to the west in Marlborough.
Flush with cash from sales of its mRNA COVID vaccine, Moderna has spent $91 million for the empty 140,000-square-foot biomanufacturing building and the 24 acres on which it sits, the Worcester Business Journal reports, citing a county deed listing.
The company plans to expand the facility to 200,000 square feet for a total investment of at least $322 million, it said during a Marlborough city council meeting earlier this month.
New U.S. Lab Will Work With Deadly Animal Pathogens — in the Middle of Farm Country
Virologist Robert Cross’s lab is equipped to handle some of the world’s most dangerous viruses. At the Galveston National Laboratory he has worked with guinea pigs infected with Ebola virus and macaques carrying Lassa fever. What it can’t accommodate are pigs, which are common carriers of the deadly Nipah virus. “We’re not really geared to handle large animals,” says Cross, who wears a pressurized biosafety suit for his studies. “You can’t just pick them up when you’re wearing these space suits.”
That’s one reason why Cross is welcoming tomorrow’s ceremonial opening of a massive new high-security laboratory in Kansas, the first in the United States designed with pens and equipment such as cranes to move big animals tainted with the most hazardous infectious agents, including Nipah virus. Although active research won’t begin at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan for several years, Cross predicts that “a high containment resource to deal with agriculturally important pathogens … is going to change the [research] landscape.”
The laboratory, which will be operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has taken nearly a decade longer to complete than planned and, at $1.25 billion, cost nearly three times as much as first predicted. It is also controversial.
Although many researchers and powerful Kansas politicians have supported the project, some scientists, Manhattan residents, and farm groups have voiced concerns about handling pathogens dangerous to livestock and humans in the nation’s agricultural heartland. If a highly contagious animal disease escaped the lab, “it would just shut down commerce,” says Larry Kendig, a board member of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association.
Federal Survey: 1 in 10 Previously Infected U.S. Adults Report Long COVID Symptoms
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The percentage of Americans reporting symptoms of long COVID-19 declined slightly over the past several weeks, according to a federal survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic improves, the number of Americans experiencing long COVID remains in the millions.
Extended to the U.S. population, the survey’s results mean that more than 14.4 million adult Americans are currently experiencing symptoms of long COVID.
Messenger RNA COVID Vaccines Linked to Increased Risk of Vaginal Bleeding: Study
Women vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are at higher risk of vaginal bleeding, according to a new study.
One or more doses of the messenger RNA shots increased the risk of bleeding in women aged 12 to 74, Swedish researchers reported in the study, published on May 3 by the British Medical Journal.
Adjustments to the data resulted in the removal of some of the heightened risks, but even after adjustments, younger women were still more likely to experience bleeding after the first and third doses and older women were more likely to suffer from the issue after the first, second, and third doses.
The Swedish researchers sought to examine the risks among the vaccinated by examining national data that covers every woman aged 12 to 74 in the country. After excluding women who had a history of certain conditions such as menstruation disorders and women living at special care facilities, the study population was 2.94 million. Cases were only included if they were diagnosed at a hospital or another healthcare facility.
China Prepares for New Wave of COVID Cases From XBB Variants
Chinese authorities are rushing to push out vaccines to fight an ongoing second wave of the coronavirus expected to peak in June and infect as many as 65 million people a week, as a new XBB variant of the virus evolves to overcome the immunity built up after China’s abrupt exit from zero COVID last year.
Senior Chinese epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan said Monday that two new vaccines for the XBB Omicron subvariant had received initial approval, according to state media reports. Zhong, speaking at a biotech forum in Guangzhou, said three to four other vaccines were set to be approved soon as well but did not provide more details.
While officials in China say the new wave will be less severe, public health experts say that an aggressive vaccine booster program and a ready supply of antivirals at hospitals are needed to prevent another spike in deaths among China’s large elderly population.
