Healthcare & Laboratory News

The Hill (11/20, Suter) reports, “Most Americans in a new poll said they probably won’t get an updated COVID-19 vaccine.” The Pew Research Center survey’s findings (PDF) show that “60 percent said they are ‘probably not’ going to ‘get an updated vaccine.’” Meanwhile, “just less than 25 percent said they ‘probably’ will get a booster, and 15 percent said they have already received the latest shot.”

The AP (11/20) reports, “The World Health Organization has authorized the first mpox vaccine for children, a decision experts hope will help make immunizations more widely available to one of the hardest-hit populations during the ongoing outbreaks of the disease in Congo and elsewhere in Africa.” On Tuesday, the WHO “said it had approved the mpox vaccine made by Japanese company KM Biologics for use in children over 1 year of age as a single dose.” The health organization “said Japan had announced it would donate about 3 million doses of the shot made by KM Biologics to Congo.”

Infectious Disease Advisor (11/20, Basilio) reports, “Among commercially insured pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) users, high or gradually declining vs minimal PrEP adherence is associated with a lower risk for HIV, according to study results.” Researchers found that “compared with the minimal use group, the consistently high...gradually declining...and rapidly declining...adherence groups were all associated with a higher risk for STI.” The findings were published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The Washington Post (11/20, Johnson, Malhi) reports “a rare disease spread by body lice poses a danger to people experiencing homelessness and others who have received organ transplants from the infected, according to three papers released Wednesday by investigators at the” CDC. Although the bacterial infection, known as Bartonella quintana, “is not new, the papers from the CDC published this week in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases serve as a fresh warning to public health officials about the difficulty identifying and treating B. quintana within a vulnerable community.” The federal agency’s “cases included five people in New York who had experienced periods of homelessness outside of shelters, and two kidney transplant recipients who received their organs from the same deceased donor, a person with a history of homelessness.” The findings can be found here, here, and here.

The AP (11/20, Ramakrishnan, Ungar) reports, “Researchers have created an early map of some of the human body’s estimated 37.2 trillion cells.” Investigators “focused on certain organs – plotting the jobs of cells in the mouth, stomach and intestines, as well as cells that guide how bones and joints develop.” The scientists “also explored which cells group into tissues, where they’re located in the body and how they change over time.” The scientists “hope the high-resolution, open-access atlas – considered a first draft – will help researchers fight diseases that damage or corrupt human cells.” The findings were published in multiple papers in Nature and related journals.

Infectious Disease Advisor (11/19, Nye) reports research found that “in combination, casirivimab plus imdevimab is safe and elicited a low drug-induced immunogenicity rate in pediatric outpatients with COVID-19.” The investigators said, “The findings support development of next-generation anti-SARS-CoV-2 [monoclonal antibodies] for at-risk pediatric patients.” The findings were published in The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

Pulmonology Advisor (11/19, Stong) reports, “Hospitalization rates related to influenza in the United States varied significantly from the 2010/2011 through the 2022/2023 influenza seasons, according to study findings.” Researchers found that “the proportion of patients hospitalized with influenza and admitted to the intensive care unit ranged from 14.1% in 2021/2022 to 22.3% in 2013/2014 and was comparable among age groups during each season.” The findings were published in MMWR Surveillance Summaries.

Scleroderma News Today (11/19, Bryson) reports, “Cells derived from people with systemic sclerosis (SSc) had widespread DNA mutations compared with healthy cells, which may explain the higher risk of cancer in this patient population, according to a study.” Researchers found that “changes included mutational patterns found solely in the genomes of certain cancers, as well as changes in one or two DNA building blocks, insertions and deletions of DNA segments, and alterations in whole chromosomes.” The findings were published in Nature Communications.

MedPage Today (11/19, DeBenedette) reports, “Among adults with outpatient respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections across six RSV seasons, roughly one in 20 were hospitalized within 28 days, according to a large cohort study that used data from three health record databases.” Researchers found that “in the cohort of over 67,000 patients with outpatient medically attended RSV infections, hospitalization rates were 4.5% to 6.2%, and 6.5% to 8.5% in a high-risk subgroup, across the three databases.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

MedPage Today (11/18, Gever) reports “lupus nephritis (LN) diagnosis could improve greatly if early results with a multimarker urine test are confirmed in larger studies, research” suggested. The study found that “measurement of 12 biomarkers in urine, yielding a numerical score for LN activity, led to an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.90, whereas presence of proteinuria – the usual means for detecting LN – had an AUC of just 0.61, not much better than random chance.” The findings were presented at ACR Convergence 2024.