Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
Moderna’s Spikevax Carries Higher Risk of Myocarditis Than Pfizer’s Comirnaty, Study Says
It’s been nearly two years since Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine made its debut in the U.S., but research on the shot is far from over. Now, a new study has flagged higher risks of heart inflammation associated with Moderna’s shot compared with the rival from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the study concluded that the risk of myocarditis is two to three times higher after a second dose of Moderna’s Spikevax compared with Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty.
Cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, were most prevalent in men under 40 years of age who received the Moderna vaccine, the study found. Researchers noted that the findings support the idea of recommending specific vaccines to certain populations to minimize adverse events.
The study looked at data from about three million participants who had received two primary doses of either Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine in British Columbia, Canada, between January 2021 and September 2021.
Second, Third COVID Vaccine May up Relapse in Glomerular Disease
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
Exposure to a second or third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is associated with an increased risk for relapse for adults with glomerular disease, according to a study published online on Nov. 3 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Mark Canney, M.B., B.Ch., Ph.D., from the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues examined the relative and absolute risks of glomerular disease relapse following COVID-19 vaccination in a retrospective population-level cohort study involving 1,105 adults with biopsy-proven glomerular disease.
The researchers found that 12.1% of patients had a relapse during 281 days of follow-up. There was no association seen for the first vaccine dose with relapse risk (hazard ratio, 0.67; 95% confidence interval, 0.33 to 1.36), but exposure to a second or third dose was associated with an elevated risk for relapse (hazard ratio, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 1.06 to 4.71).
A similar pattern of relative risk was seen across glomerular diseases. There was variation noted in the absolute increase in 30-day relapse risk linked to a second or third vaccine dose, from 1 to 2% in antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-related glomerulonephritis, minimal change disease, membranous nephropathy, or focal segmental glomerulosclerosis to 3 to 5% for immunoglobulin A nephropathy or lupus nephritis. Four of 24 patients experiencing a vaccine-associated relapse had a change in immunosuppression; none required a biopsy.
One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
BioNTech Lifts Lower End of Vaccine Sales Target Range
COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech (22UAy.DE) on Monday raised the lower bound of its 2022 COVID-19 vaccine revenue guidance for the full year, citing demand for its adapted shots and higher prices.
The German biotech firm, the vaccines partner of U.S. pharma giant Pfizer (PFE.N), said in a statement that it is now targeting 16 to 17 billion euros ($16-$17 billion) in vaccine sales, compared with a previous range of 13-17 billion but down from 19 billion euros reported for last year.
Partner Pfizer last week raised its forecast for its 2022 sales of the COVID-19 vaccine by $2 billion to $34 billion.
Hospitalizations for Eating Disorders Grew in the Pandemic. The Problem Isn’t Over, Experts Say
Alongside the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric care, researchers have seen a stark increase in young adults seeking treatment for disordered eating behaviors.
Across the United States, inpatient admissions for young adults and adolescents with eating disorders rose by a rate of about 0.7% a month in the two years before the pandemic, according to a new study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. But in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, that growth increased to 7.2% a month on average.
From the spring of 2020 — when most COVID-19 restrictions/lockdowns were first put in place — through spring 2021, the number of eating disorder inpatient admissions about doubled. This number rose to its peak in April 2021.
Individual hospitals had reported a rise in eating disorder cases over the pandemic, but this study was the first to show the impact across the nation, said Dr. Jason Nagata, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Nagata was not involved in the study.
Kids’ Average Daily Screen Use Increased by More Than an Hour and Twenty Minutes During the Pandemic, Analysis Finds
Average daily screen use by children during the COVID-19 pandemic increased by more than an hour and twenty minutes, according to an analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday.
Researchers looked at screen time and the types of devices used between January 1, 2020, and March 5, 2022, by extracting data from 46 studies on nearly 30,000 kids in multiple countries. The children in the studies ranged from ages 3 to 18, with an average age of 9.
Kids’ average daily screen use increased by 1.5 times during the pandemic — from a baseline of 162 minutes a day before the pandemic to 246 minutes during the pandemic, according to the analysis.
The largest increase in screen use was seen in adolescents ages 12 to 18 because they were more likely than younger kids to “own and access digital devices,” wrote the researchers, who are from the University of Calgary, Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and University College Dublin.
Telemedicine’s Popularity Has Risen During Pandemic
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Telemedicine became widespread during the pandemic, and that may have shifted patient views about using technology as a way to communicate with their doctors, a new study suggests.
In the study, data was collected on 1,600 adults who participated in the RAND American Life Panel, completing surveys in February 2019, May 2020, August 2020 and March 2021. Participants answered questions about their use of telehealth and their attitudes toward the technology.
Willingness to use video telehealth increased overall from 51% in February 2019 to 62% in March 2021.
Fewer Than 7% of Canadian Kids 5 and Younger Have Gotten a COVID Vaccine
It has been more than four months since Health Canada approved the first COVID-19 vaccine for children under five, but national uptake has been low.
The latest numbers from the Public Health Agency of Canada show, as of Oct. 9, 6.5% of kids under five have received one dose of vaccine, while one percent have received two doses. By comparison, 86.9% of Canadians five and older have received one dose, while 84.2% have received two doses.
“It hasn’t been around; parents are maybe a bit concerned about the long-term picture of what that will look like,” said Shannon MacDonald, a nursing professor at the University of Alberta who leads the university’s applied immunization research team. “The behaviors and attitudes of parents are very different around COVID vaccination.”
Vaccines for kids under five “got rolled out later, at a point in the pandemic where I think Canadians, in general, are not seeing COVID-19 as much of a threat either for the children themselves or for the population at large,” said Dr. Jesse Papenburg, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Novavax Says Omicron Shot Shows Strong Immune Response as Second Booster
Vaccine maker Novavax Inc. (NVAX.O) said on Tuesday its COVID-19 shot retooled against the Omicron BA.1 variant showed a strong immune response as the fourth dose and met the main goal of strain change in a late-stage study.
Data showed the shot, NVX-CoV2515, produced 1.6 times the amount of neutralizing antibodies in people who had previously not been exposed to COVID-19 compared to Novavax’s original coronavirus vaccine.
The trial included Novavax’s so-called bivalent vaccine, the BA.1-tailored shot and its prototype vaccine.
