A look inside the epicenter of the measles outbreak in Texas
A religious community that's traditionally sought alternative medicine. A rural population that's lost trust in the government after the COVID mandates. And a state law that allows for vaccine exemptions for personal reasons among public school children. All these factors play a role in why this corner of Texas is trying to stop a fast-spreading measles outbreak. CNN's Nick Watt reports.
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Used in COVID shots, mRNA may help rid the body of HIV
The technology that powered COVID vaccines may also lead scientists to a cure for HIV. Using mRNA, Australian researchers said they were able to trick the virus to come out of hiding, a crucial step in ridding the body of it entirely. The research, published last week in Nature Communications, is still preliminary and so far has been shown to be successful only in a lab. But it suggests that mRNA has potential far beyond its use in vaccines as a means to deliver therapies against stubborn adversaries. Short for messenger RNA, mRNA is a set of instructions for a gene. In the case of COVID vaccines, the instructions were for a piece of the coronavirus. In the new study, they are for molecules key to targeting HIV. Dr. Sharon Lewin, director of the Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, who led the study, called mRNA a 'miraculous' tool 'to deliver things that you want into places that were not possible before.' Vaccines deploying mRNA instruct the body to produce a fragment of the virus, which then sets off the body's immune response. In the United States, the shots were initially hailed for turning back the pandemic, then viewed by some with suspicion and fear. Some officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have falsely said that they are highly dangerous and even deadly. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services sought to limit the vaccine's availability to pregnant women, children and healthy younger adults. The administration also canceled a nearly $600 million contract with the drugmaker Moderna to develop an mRNA shot for humans against bird flu. 'The fear right now is not rational,' Lewin said, adding that 'mRNA vaccines have been given to millions of people around the world, so we have a very good understanding of their risks.' The new study describes the use of mRNA as a tool to flush HIV out of its hiding places. Other uses could involve providing proteins missing from those with certain diseases or correcting genetic errors. Frauke Muecksch, a virologist at Heidelberg University in Germany who was not involved in the work, called mRNA a 'promising, absolutely powerful technology.' Although most people may have only heard of mRNA's use in science during the pandemic, scientists have been working with it for more than 20 years, she said. 'I think it's not just therapeutically very powerful, but also for basic science, for research, it opens up a lot of avenues,' she added. Potent antiretroviral drugs can now control HIV, suppressing it to undetectable levels. Still, minute amounts of the virus lie dormant in so-called reservoirs, waiting for an opportunity to resurge. A cure for HIV would involve ferreting out all of this virus and destroying it, a strategy that has been called 'shock and kill.' A significant hurdle is that the virus lies dormant in a particular type of immune cell, called a resting CD4 cell. Because these cells are inactive, they tend to be unresponsive to drugs. The few drugs scientists have previously used to rouse the virus in these cells were not specific to HIV and had unwanted side effects. 'It's fair to say the field's been a little bit stuck,' said Brad Jones, a viral immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine who was not involved in the latest research. In 2022, Jones and his colleagues found that the immune boost from the mRNA vaccines awakened latent HIV in people living with the virus. (Other research has shown that mRNA vaccines also activated dormant viruses including Epstein Barr.) 'You get just a little bit of a gentle nudge with some of these vaccines, and it's enough to coax some of these latent viruses out so they can be killed,' Jones said. Lewin and her colleagues had for years experimented with other ways to activate HIV but had no luck in resting cells. Seeing the success of the COVID vaccines, which used lipid nanoparticles — tiny spheres of fat — containing mRNA, her team tested similar particles. They used the particles to deliver two different sets of molecules: Tat, which is adept at switching HIV on, and CRISPR, a tool that can 'edit' genes. The researchers showed that in resting immune cells from people living with HIV, the approach coaxed the virus out of dormancy. 'It's very, very hard to deal with these cells, so I think this really targeting the right population of cells is what makes this paper special,' Muecksch said. It's unclear whether the new approach can successfully awaken all of the dormant HIV in the body, and what side effects it might produce. Lewin said that 'mRNA will almost certainly have some adverse effects, as every drug does, but we will investigate that systematically, as we do for any new drug.' In this case, she said, side effects may be more acceptable to people living with HIV than having to take medications for the rest of their lives. The researchers plan to test the method in HIV-infected animals next, before moving into clinical trials. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
US health secretary dismisses entire vaccine advisory panel
US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced he was dismissing all members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, accusing its members of conflicts of interest -- his latest salvo against the nation's immunization policies. The decision to remove all 17 experts of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was unveiled in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and an official press release. Kennedy cast the overhaul as essential to rebuilding public trust, accusing the panel of being compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies. "Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda," he said in the statement from the Department of Health and Human Services. "The public must know that unbiased science -- evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest -- guides the recommendations of our health agencies." In his op-ed, Kennedy claimed the panel had been "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest" and had become "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He said new members were being considered to replace the outgoing experts, who had been appointed for their recognized expertise and were required to submit conflict-of-interest disclosures. Kennedy has spent the past two decades promoting vaccine misinformation, including the widely debunked claim that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot causes autism. Since taking office, he has curtailed access to Covid-19 vaccines and continued to sow doubts about the MMR shot -- even as the United States experiences its worst measles outbreak in years, with three reported deaths and more than 1,100 cases. Experts warn the number of official cases may vastly understate the true toll of the measles outbreak. ia/aha
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
MSPs to vote on scaled-back social care reforms
It started life with a promise from Nicola Sturgeon that it would be most ambitious reform of the devolution era. But when MSPs vote on the final stage of the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill later, the proposals in front of them will be a shadow of what the former first minister pledged in 2021. At the heart of the revamp of social care services was meant to be a National Care Service - but this was dropped by SNP ministers following widespread opposition to how the shake-up would have worked in practice. However, the planned law to enable this flagship change has lived on and will now deliver changes to social care procurement, family care home visits and a new right to breaks for unpaid carers. When it became clear the National Care Service was not going ahead, the Scottish government was left with a Bill it was trying to get passed that was carrying the same name as its defunct policy. This was solved by renaming it the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill and now the planned law focuses on a series of important, but less high-profile, changes to health and social care across the country. One of the big changes planned under the new law is a legal right to breaks for unpaid carers. This mean councils will have a duty to decide whether a carer is able to take sufficient breaks from their caring role. If they are not, then the local authority will provide support to enable this, such as providing funding for short respite breaks. This policy, given Scotland has around 700,000 unpaid carers, will cost between £196m and £315m by 2035/36, according to the Bill's financial memorandum. However, it remains a fraction of the £13.9bn that unpaid care is currently saving Scotland every year. Improvements to the way information is shared in health and social care - to make it less likely that people will have to repeat their information - as well changes to procurement rules in the sector are also planned. Beefing up the powers that watchdogs can take against failing care providers is also part of the bill. The most high-profile part of the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill is Anne's Law, which allows people in care homes to receive visits from a named loved one even in restricted measures. It is named after Anne Duke, who died aged 63 in November 2021 after being cut off from her family while battling early-onset dementia during the Covid pandemic. Her daughter Natasha Hamilton started a petition about the issue at the height of the pandemic, which attracted nearly 100,000 signatures, and this led to a wider campaign about the rights of people in care homes. "I find it sad that it gained that much traction, it showed it was just not me who was affected, but I felt like I had to do something," she explained. "It was the most vulnerable point of my mum's life, she really needed her family and I still can't believe the separation that happened. "But I'm proud that I did this for my mum and for everyone else who had to endure the torture of isolation during Covid." Changes to ensure people living in care homes have the right to visits from a loved one were introduced by the Scottish government in 2022 via national standards for the sector. If the bill is passed by MSPs, the right to have a designated visitor into care homes to support loved ones will become a legal right instead. The original proposal for a National Care Service, inspired by the NHS, was to take social care provision and staff away from local authorities into a new national agency. That was then dropped in favour of creating a national care board to supervise service delivery and improve consistency - but this failed to win over a growing number of critics. Council body Cosla and trade unions then withdrew their support for the project, while a number of health boards and care organisations also expressed concerns. The plan, which was also subject to a series of delays, was eventually scrapped in January after £30m was spent on the process. Social Care Minister Maree Todd said at the time she was "still committed to the ambitions of the National Care Service" but added the SNP no longer had the support it needed in parliament to pass its original plans into law. What is left of the plans today is the creation of a national care service advisory board on a non-statutory basis which will try and improve social care support services. Government scraps plan for National Care Service Why was Scotland's National Care Service scrapped? Almost £30m already spent on National Care Service
