Up to date with Immunizations
Hello everyone,?
We’re back with our regularly scheduled weekly newsletter. August is?National Immunization Awareness Month?so this week our team sought out news, research and updates around vaccines and immunization.
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Submitted by?Peter
Several routine childhood vaccines require multiple doses to be effective, but a new study finds children are not receiving all of them. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics Wednesday, found one in six toddlers between ages 19 months and 35 months started the vaccine series but didn't complete it, leaving them vulnerable to serious diseases. This includes routine childhood vaccines such as the MMR and chickenpox vaccines. Researchers identified factors for why some children started, but did not complete, the vaccine series including families moving across state lines, number of children in household and lack of health insurance. Vaccine hesitancy, which is defined as delaying or refusing vaccination despite their widespread availability, is a contributing factor as well. We've seen vaccine hesitancy play a role in measles outbreaks in the U.S. including a recent outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, where 85 children were infected. Through vaccine education and providers the hope is to implement vaccine interventions at the clinic level.
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Submitted by?Noah
This week, the FDA approved the first vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for pregnant women, designed to protect infants from the infection. The vaccine, which is called “Abrysvo,” works by co-opting the expectant mother’s immune system, prompting it to produce antibodies against RSV, which are then passed from the placenta to the fetus. This new vaccine has been desperately needed – the U.S. sends 58,000 – 80,000 children under the age of five to the hospital each year, and kills 100-300 young children each year. To ensure Abrysvo’s efficacy, the FDA ran a study involving pregnant women in 18 countries, and the vaccine was 81.8% effective in preventing severe respiratory illness in babies after the first 90 days of birth. These strong results are encouraging, and suggest that Abrysvo will ultimately reduce the frequency of infants and young children contracting and dying from RSV.
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Submitted by?Rachel
Global immunization services reached 4 million more children in 2022 compared to the previous year, as countries stepped up efforts to address the historic backsliding in immunization caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, in 2022, 20.5 million children missed out on one or more vaccines delivered through routine immunization services, compared to 24.4 million children in 2021.?
The early stages of recovery in global immunization have not occurred equally. Progress in well-resourced countries with large infant populations, such as India and Indonesia, masks slower recovery or even continued declines in most low-income countries, especially for measles vaccination. Last year, 21.9 million children missed the routine measles vaccination in their first year of life – 2.7 million more than in 2019 – while an additional 13.3 million did not receive their second dose, placing children in under-vaccinated communities at risk of outbreaks. “Beneath the positive trend lies a grave warning,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Until morecountries mend the gaps in routine immunization coverage, children everywhere will remain at risk of contracting and dying from diseases we can prevent. Viruses like measles do not recognize borders.”
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Submitted by?Megan
If you want to get vaccinated against Lyme disease today, your choices are limited. In fact, you’d have to find a rogue veterinarian willing to experiment on you. The only options on the market are for dogs. This wasn’t always the case. In December 1998, drugmaker SmithKline Beecham Plc (now?GSK Plc) got approval for the first Lyme vaccine for humans, Lymerix. Ads for the shot featured a woman on a verdant lawn who warns: “I got Lyme disease last spring, and I’m being treated for serious health problems. I couldn’t prevent it then, but now you could.” Lymerix was shown to prevent the disease about 75% of the time, which is pretty efficacious; the annual flu shot is between 40% and 60% effective, depending on the year. And Lymerix was an ingenious scientific achievement. It neutralized the bacteria that causes Lyme while it was still in the tick. But?Lymerix faced obstacles. Regulators had given it a?lukewarm endorsement. In the mid-1990s, only about 16,000 cases of Lyme were reported in the US each year, mainly clustered in the Northeast where the black-legged deer ticks that spread the disease were most common. It wasn’t a national concern. One doctor testifying on an advisory committee called it a “yuppie vaccine” for people who “pay a lot of money for their Nikes and their Esprit” and are “going to travel to Cape Cod.”
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Submitted by?Melissa
领英推荐
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with very few effective treatments. But messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are starting to show some promise against the lethal cancer. In a recent early-stage trial, half of pancreatic cancer patients who received a?personalized mRNA cancer vaccine?after surgery did not have a recurrence of the tumor a year and a half later.?
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Submitted by?Kayce
Counter-stereotypical messaging and partisan cues: Moving the needle on vaccines in a polarized U.S.
Research shows that partisans form preferences by following cues from their party leaders (6,?7,?8), a regularity that has grown stronger as the parties have polarized over the last generation (9). This paper reports results from a large-scale randomized controlled trial assessing whether counter-stereotypical messaging and partisan cues can induce people to get COVID-19 vaccines. We hypothesized that messages publicizing Donald Trump’s support for COVID-19 vaccines—support Trump did little to advertise after leaving the White House—might cue some of the vaccine-hesitant among his supporters to get vaccinated themselves.
With 1014 treated counties in all, our estimated treatment effect indicates that the total increase in vaccinations from the campaign was 104,036, resulting in about 1 vaccine per dollar in ad spending. Combining these estimates with those of Barro (13) indicates that our campaign resulted in 839 avoided deaths, costing $115 per life saved. Given plentiful evidence of small, undetectable effects of public messaging in other settings, these results are encouraging and represent a large return on investment.
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Submitted by?Pete
The?“Path to a Bright Future” campaign?was unveiled during the final segment of a weeklong seminar series featuring medical and public health experts, along with HPV-cancer survivors and parents, discussing challenges around HPV vaccination and possible solutions.? Path to a Bright Future, which will include fact sheets, infographics, posters, and social assets available to partners nationwide, will kickoff in the southeastern United States where HPV vaccination coverage remains?well below national averages.
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There’s quite a bit out there on this topic. This overview from the Rockefeller Foundation is quite illuminating. For instance, 72% of people of color want to get vaccinated – BUT – 63% don’t know where they’ll get the vaccine. They offer?20 action steps to help ensure vaccine equity?that have been developed through research and real-world learning.
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Other news of note:
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August 25, 2023 | 5.21