Category: Vaccines

Categories : COVID General Interest VaccinesTags :

After Receiving Vaccine, Queen Elizabeth Encourages Others

On By ModernMedia

After receiving her COVID vaccine, Queen Elizabeth encouraged those who were wary to think of others and do the same.

She and Prince Philip received their vaccine in the initial wave of vaccinations for the elderly in the UK. Prince Philip, 99,  is currently in hospital for a non-COVID related illness. There are concerns about the health of her husband Prince Philip, but the palace says that he is responding to treatment, but likely to remain in hospital for a few more days.

“Once you’ve had a vaccine you have a feeling of you know, you’re protected which I think is very important and as far as I could make out it was quite harmless,” the 94-year old monarch queen said in a video call with health officials supervising inoculations across the UK.

“It was very quick, and I’ve had lots of letters from people who have been very surprised by how easy it was to get the vaccine. And the jab – it didn’t hurt at all,” she added, likening the virus to a plague.

Earlier this week, the UK’s vaccine minister said that 11% to 15% of people were hesitant about receiving a vaccine, especially among minority groups.

“It is obviously difficult for people if they’ve never had a vaccine because they ought to think about other people other than themselves,” said the queen.

She praised the “remarkable” Britain’s rollout of the vaccination, one of the world’s fastest. Other members of the royal family including Prince Charles and his son Prince William, have been visiting vaccination centres over the last two weeks to convey their thanks to staff and volunteers for their work.

Data from Public Health England suggest that the vaccines are 80% effective in preventing serious COVID in the elderly.

Source: Reuters

Categories : Urology VaccinesTags :

New Vaccine for UTIs Developed With a Localised Approach

On By ModernMedia

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a common complaint, affecting women more than men, with a lifetime prevalence of 50% in women, but so far an effective vaccine has proved elusive. Now, researchers from Duke University have come up with an approach that could result in an workable vaccine.

UTIs are caused by a wide range of Gram-negative and positive bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, and antibiotic resistance coupled with common recurrence makes it a growing health burden. It is thought that the immune response to bladder infections sends more repair cells to deal with the bacterial infection than cells to kill the invading bacteria. Because of this, there are often surviving bacteria that reproduce to cause a subsequent infection.

“Although several vaccines against UTIs have been investigated in clinical trials, they have so far had limited success,” said senior author Professor Soman Abraham at Duke University.

“There are currently no effective UTI vaccines available for use in the U.S. in spite of the high prevalence of bladder infections,” Prof Abraham said. “Our study describes the potential for a highly effective bladder vaccine that can not only eradicate residual bladder bacteria, but also prevent future infections.”

According to lead author Jianxuan Wu, PhD, “the new vaccine strategy attempts to ‘teach’ the bladder to more effectively fight off the attacking bacteria. By administering the vaccine directly into the bladder where the residual bacteria harbour, the highly effective vaccine antigen, in combination with an adjuvant known to boost the recruitment of bacterial clearing cells, performed better than traditional intramuscular vaccination.”

The study found that mice immunised in this way effectively fought off infecting E. coli, eliminating all residual bladder bacteria. This suggests that the site of administration could be important for determining vaccine effectiveness.

“We are encouraged by these findings, and since the individual components of the vaccine have previously been shown to be safe for human use, undertaking clinical studies to validate these findings could be done relatively quickly,” Prof Abraham said.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Jianxuan Wu el al., “Local induction of bladder Th1 responses to combat urinary tract infections,” PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026461118

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

US Rollout of Johnson & Johnson Vaccine As It Gets FDA Approval

On By ModernMedia

Johnson & Johnson’s single shot COVID vaccine is set to roll out in the US after its approval, but concerns linger as to the public’s perception of its relative effectiveness.

The vaccine received an emergency use authorisation (EUA) on Saturday from the FDA, and received approval from the CDC the following day. On Sunday night White House officials stated that distribution of 3.9 million doses of the J&J vaccine would begin immediately, with J&J expecting to deliver some 16 million more doses by the end of March. These vaccines will be allocated proportionally, as per the procedure for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

At a Saturday media briefing, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, reiterated issues raised by the FDA advisory committee, that the J&J product’s lower efficacy number (70% vs 95%) may cause people to think it is less effective than the alternatives. She said that wasn’t necessarily so, urging Americans to “take the vaccine they are able to access.”

“All these vaccines meet our standards for effectiveness. They were not studied in head-to-head trials, so [they’re] difficult to compare … due to differences in development programs,” she said. (Preventing moderate-to-severe COVID illness was the J&J endpoint, whereas in the Pfizer and Moderna studies the endpoint was all symptomatic COVID.)

“We need to be clear on our messaging regarding comparisons with other vaccines,” said Jason Goldman, MD, of the American College of Physicians. “As a primary care physician, many of us are eager to vaccinate” patients and this vaccine will be “helpful in achieving that goal.”

Macaya Douoguih, MD, of J&J’s Janssen unit where the vaccine was developed, talked about the potential advantages of a one-dose vaccine, referencing the company experience with the Ebola vaccine

“For an outbreak setting, a single dose has a tremendous advantage in terms of being able to rapidly roll out mass vaccination” without the complexity of following up for a second dose, she said.

Dr Douoguih addressed the company’s planned two-dose study, saying that while a two-dose regimen might be “more immunogenic and lead to durable efficacy,” she thought there was room for both options. The two-dose option would be preferable in an ‘everyday’ COVID setting. The company was trying to enroll 16-17 year olds for additional data in a study starting next week, Dr Douoguih said.

The CDC researchers discussed preliminary data on asymptomatic infection, which assessed seroconversion between days 29 and 71. Those data showed vaccine efficacy against seroconversion was 74% (95% CI 48%-87%), but the CDC urged caution as the data was only preliminary.

“Our level of confidence in asymptomatic infection is tempered by low numbers and that is important for us to remember,” said Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices committee member Sarah Long, MD, of Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. “I appreciate the workgroup concluding the confidence is not that high.”

Source: MedPage Today

Categories : Immunology VaccinesTags :

Discovering Antibodies That Are Safe And Effective Against Zika

On By ModernMedia

The Zika outbreak of 2015 and 2016 left lasting consequences for children who were in the womb when their mothers were infected with the virus, and now researchers are investigating a safe vaccine that will not negatively interact with certain other viruses.

Zika is a flavivirus, a family which includes dengue, West Nile, and yellow fever virus. In order to protect against these and other pathogens, “we have the ability to make a huge diversity of antibodies, and if we get infected or vaccinated, those antibodies recognise the pathogen,” explained first author Shannon Esswein, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology.

However, when getting sick with a virus a second time, the body’s own immune response can worsen the situation. Known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), this is when the antibodies stick to the outside of the virus but not neutralising its ability to lock onto cells. This can inadvertently help the virus to infect more cells by letting it enter cells the antibodies are sticking to. A recent study sought to investigate whether this could happen with monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID.

In order to prevent ADE when creating a vaccine, knowing how antibodies adhere to a specific virus is crucial for scientists. In the case flaviviruses, this is especially important as antibodies that protect against one flavivirus may also stick to, but not protect against other flaviviruses, raising the risk of ADE. Antibodies generated in response to a Zika virus vaccine could trigger ADE, if that person is exposed to other flaviviruses such as dengue.

To understand this, the researchers looked at a portion of the flavivirus called the envelope domain III protein, which has been shown to be an important target for protective antibodies fighting flavivirus infections. They studied how those antibodies changed over time as they matured and became better able to adhere to the Zika virus. They also looked at how the antibodies cross-reacted with other flaviviruses, including the four dengue virus types. Their results showed that the Zika antibodies also tightly stick to and defend against dengue type 1, but only weakly stick to West Nile and dengue types 2 and 4. “The weak cross-reactivity of these antibodies doesn’t seem to defend against those flaviviruses, but also doesn’t induce ADE,” Esswein said. These results suggest that the envelope domain III could be a useful basis for a safe vaccine. They also described structures demonstrating how two antibodies recognise Zika and West Nile envelope domain III.

The study results demonstrate how the body mounts “a potent immune response to Zika virus,” said Esswein. Insights gained on the antibodies involved in this immune response will aid the development of new vaccines.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Shannon R. Esswein et al. Structural basis for Zika envelope domain III recognition by a germline version of a recurrent neutralizing antibody, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1919269117

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

Why It’s So Hard to Compare Vaccines

On By ModernMedia

While the world is looking to vaccinations to end the COVID pandemic, a MedPage Today article explains that even with vaccines that have high efficacy, ending transmission is not guaranteed, and there are a lot of differences between simple figures like 94% for Pfizer and 95% for Moderna vaccines.

Firstly, asymptomatic cases are not tracked, simply because assembling tens of thousands of people for a clinical trial is a monumental logistic task, and in the current pandemic, a race against time.

Internist Jeffrey Carson, MD, who managed the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine trial’s site at Rutgers University in New Jersey, explained to MedPage Today that it would be difficult but not impossible to create a vaccine trial that provided rapid data about asymptomatic cases.

“You might have people swab themselves every couple days, or every week. You’ll be picking up a lot of disease that way, and you’ll be able to see if the vaccine prevents asymptomatic disease,” Dr Carson said. The current Novavax trial, for example, only asks participants to test themselves for COVID with provided swabs if they believe they are developing symptoms. The Novavax vaccine had also prompted alarm as it was only 49.4% effective against the B501Y.V2 variant, its efficacy reduced by the low rate of protection for HIV positive participants.

The New York Times explained that efficacy is merely how well a vaccine did in a clinical trial, effectiveness is how well it performs in the real world.
Vaccine statistics are difficult even for medical experts to grasp. An infectious diseases expert wrote in a letter to the Lancet explaining that they had misunderstood what 94% to 95% efficacy means for Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and asymptomatic spread.

“It does not mean that 95% of people are protected from disease with the vaccine — a general misconception of vaccine protection.” Instead, it “means that in a population such as the one enrolled in the trials, with a cumulated COVID-19 attack rate over a period of 3 months of about 1% without a vaccine, we would expect roughly 0.05% of vaccinated people would get diseased [with symptomatic infections]. … Accurate description of effects is not hair-splitting; it is much-needed exactness to avoid adding confusion to an extraordinarily complicated and tense scientific and societal debate around COVID-19 vaccines.”

A further problem for scientists is that viral diseases can spread to people unaware that they are infected, something they are still working on understanding. “It makes a lot of sense for survival of the invaders, if you think about it. Humans who feel unwell are not going out to meet up with others, but ones who feel fine will continue along with their daily schedules, allowing the infection to spread,” Bryn Boslett, MD, an infectious disease physician at the University of California San Francisco, told MedPage Today.

Regardless of how well vaccines interrupt the transmission of COVID, it’s important that mask-wearing, social distancing and disinfecting habits are maintained.

“One major worry going forward is that vaccinated people will change their behaviour and stop taking COVID-19 precautions,” Dr Boslett said. “It’s very tempting to do so, very understandable. However, the stars are not yet aligned for us to go back to ‘normal.’ There is still a lot of COVID-19, and most of us are still vulnerable. We need to continue to focus on behavior to reduce new cases of COVID-19.”

Source: MedPage Today

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions Paediatrics VaccinesTags :

Researchers Say New Vaccines Needed for Childhood Pneumonia

On By ModernMedia


Research in Australia on new pneumonia vaccines show that while pneumonia in children is being suppressed,  empyaema is increased.

The research, which was led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), examined the impact of the new 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (13vPCV) on childhood pneumonia and empyaema.
Empyaema, which is the collection of pus in the lungs, occurs in about 1% of children with pneumonia. In children, empyaema is far less fatal than it is in adults, but it does extend hospitalisation, requiring antibiotics and surgery or installation of a drain.
The findings of the study showed that while 13vPCV resulted in a 21% drop in childhood pneumonia hospitalisations, there was a contemporaneous 25% rise in empyaema hospitalisations.

According to senior author Professor Adam Jaffe, Head of the School of Women’s and Children’s Health at UNSW Medicine & Health, said the findings suggested an emergence of non-vaccine serotypes—those which 13vPCV does not cover.

13vPCV was introduced to cover the 13 most common serotypes that cause invasive pneumococcal infection, adding six more serotypes over the seven serotypes covered by its predecessor, 7cPCV.

Prof Jaffe said: “Although we found a substantial reduction in serotype 1, serotype 3 is now the predominant organism which causes childhood empyema—in 76% of cases—so, efforts must be made to create a vaccine which is more effective against serotype 3.

“In fact, Australia recently changed the vaccination dosage schedule to try and improve the effectiveness of 13vPCV against serotype 3, but we need to continue monitoring patients using molecular techniques to see if this change has had an impact.

“Childhood bacterial pneumonia and empyema are potentially preventable diseases through vaccination. So, if Australia can develop an effective vaccine, we could prevent children from being hospitalized with pneumonia and empyema.”

The researchers conducted a similar study over four years during the 7vPCV era.   

“Our new study had two parts,” Prof Jaffe said. “We analysed national hospitalisations for childhood empyaema and childhood pneumonia, then we conducted an enhanced surveillance study on children with empyaema.”

The first part of the research used publicly available hospitalisations data to find out if the introduction of 13vPCV changed how many children were admitted to hospital with pneumonia and empyaema.

The enhanced surveillance study involved the collection of blood and lung fluid samples from 401 children  with empyaema, followed by molecular testing on these samples and comparing the results to their previous study undertaken during the period of 7vPCV.

Prof Jaffe said research with a larger sample was ongoing, and 13vPCV monitoring was needed.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Roxanne Strachan et al. Assessing the impact of the 13 valent pneumococcal vaccine on childhood empyema in Australia, Thorax (2021). DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-216032

Categories : Diseases, Syndromes and Conditions VaccinesTags :

TB Vaccine Shown to Protect Against Common Infections

On By ModernMedia

The tuberculosis (TB) vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) could protect newborns against a variety of common infections, such as upper respiratory tract infections, chest infections, and diarrhoea, according to a new study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

It has been known that BCG protects against diseases other than TB, offering protection against non-tuberculous mycobacteria infection like leprosy and Buruli ulcer. It is also used in the treatment of superficial carcinoma of the bladder.

However, this is the first research to rigorously investigate the full range. The results suggest that vaccinating all babies with BCG on their day of birth could save lives by reducing neonatal infections in areas with high rates of infectious disease.

The study involved a randomised control trial of 560 newborns in Uganda, who were monitored for a range of illnesses. After six weeks, infection rates from any disease were 25% lower in the group that received the vaccine at birth, compared to the group that had not yet received the vaccination. The most protected appeared to be vulnerable groups such as low birth weight babies, and boys. Importantly, BCG appeared to protect against even severe infections.

Sarah Prentice, the lead author from LSHTM, said: “Nearly a million babies die every year of common infections so we urgently need better ways to protect them. Our research suggests that ensuring that BCG is given at birth could make a big difference in low-income countries, potentially saving many lives.”

The newborns were randomly assigned to receive BCG either at birth or at six weeks of age. They were followed-up by doctors, blinded to the intervention, for 10 weeks, who looked for any type of illness or infection.

The research team then compared how often infants in the two groups presented to doctors with infections of any kind, except TB, to see whether having BCG made a difference. They also took blood samples from both groups, to look at differences in their innate immune system, the body’s first line of defense against infections.

Infants vaccinated with BCG at birth presented to doctors with any kind of infection 25% less often than infants who had not. BCG seemed to protect against all kinds of infections, such as common colds, chest infections, and skin infections.

After the delayed group had been vaccinated, the rates of infection were identical between the two groups: the delayed group’s immunity ‘brought up to speed’ when they received BCG.

Study co-author Prof Hazel Dockrell, LSHTM, said: “It’s very exciting to think that BCG vaccination might help keep newborns safe against other dangerous infections, in addition to providing protection against TB. Although BCG is recommended at birth in many countries, it is often delayed due to logistical difficulties. Ensuring that the vaccine is given on day one, in areas with high rates of infectious disease, could have a major impact on infections and deaths in the newborn period.”

Though the study could not definitely determine whether the BCG vaccine was responsible for the lowered rate of infections, there is nonetheless great interest in applying the vaccine as a protection for novel disease outbreaks, such as COVID or Ebola, before a specific vaccine can be developed.

Dr Prentice said, “Since the findings show that BCG seems to offer wider protection against a range of infections, our study also raises hopes it might be useful in protecting the general population against COVID-19 and future pandemics – though we will need to see the results of other, more specific studies to know for sure.”

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Prentice, S., et al. (2021) BCG-induced non-specific effects on heterologous infectious disease in Ugandan neonates: an investigator-blind randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Infectious Diseases. doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30653-8.

Categories : COVID Medical Industry VaccinesTags : 1 Comment

Johnson & Johnson is Behind on Vaccine Production

On By ModernMedia

Despite releasing promising data on its COVID vaccine, Johnson & Johnson may fall up to two months behind on its vaccine production schedule, Politico reported. The company is still committed to releasing the trial data on its 45 000 participants by the end of January to pave the way for approval.

If approved, as seems likely, the vaccine would be extremely beneficial for vaccination efforts as it would only require a single dose to confer protection and also would not require sub zero refrigeration, greatly simplifying vaccination efforts.

The company’s effort is part of the Operation Warp Speed initiative to vaccinate the US population as fast as possible, with a goal of vaccinating 80% of the country’s 330.7 million population by the end of June. The previous goal to distribute 20 million doses by the end of 2020 had already fallen short owing to insufficient production.

The co-director of Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, hinted at a production slowdown, telling the media that the company was expecting to produce “single-digit million” doses by the second half of February. “We’re trying to make that number get as close to a double-digit number as possible, and then a larger number in March and a much larger number in April,” he added.

Johnson & Johnson had previously made a pledge to deliver 12 million doses by the end of February and as many as 100 million by June.

Despite the delay, there is good news in that initial data from 400 participants shows that the vaccine is safe and has a 90% efficacy in establishing antibodies, with immunity for most subjects established 29 days after the shot and lasting at least 57 days. Adverse reactions were reported to be be mild, and younger subjects were more likely to report them, with one subject experiencing a brief, mild fever.

Source: Politico

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

Questions Raised over Oxford’s Unusual Vaccine Regimen

On By ModernMedia

The recent announcement of the Oxford’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial being 70% effective up to 90% effective has raised some pointed questions.

The trial had two treatment arms, one receiving two full doses of the AZD1222 vaccine and a half dose plus a full dose, with the doses being administered 28 days apart. The “half dose then full dose”  treatment arm reported the 90% protection. The problem was that the trial was never meant to have such an arm. 

It was noticed that some participants were only receiving a half dose because they were experiencing fewer effects than expected such as arm pain and headache. This was subsequently corrected so that they would still receive the full dose on the second administration.

Of particular concern is that the “90% effectiveness” is based on a much smaller subset of the trial participants, with a correspondingly higher statistical uncertainty. So much so that there is statistical overlap with their lower effectiveness of 62% quoted for the two full doses. Furthermore, the participants were from the initial stages of the vaccine trial, where they were aged 18-55 and therefore have little applicability to the results of the main trial which included older age groups as well. 

The details of exactly why the half-measure doses came to be administered in the first place have not been revealed by Oxford or AstraZeneca. Meanwhile in the US, a Phase III of the trial is being rolled out with 40 000 participants, and the “half dose then full dose” regimen may be included – however, uncertainty about it and whether it isn’t a statistical fluke will have to be cleared up first.

Source: Ars Technica