Deadly virus spread by deer tick kills 1, hospitalizes 2, Wisconsin officials say
A deadly virus, transmitted through tick bites, killed one and hospitalized two others as of June, Wisconsin health officials said.
Details about where and how the three individuals contracted Powassan virus in the state were not shared, however the Wisconsin Department of Health Services is recommending health care providers quickly test patients with symptoms of the 'rare' disease.
'POWV is rare, but there has been an increase in the number of cases reported in recent years,' officials said in a June 24 email to health care providers in the state. 'This increase could be from more people becoming infected with POWV, improvements in testing and diagnosis, or some combination of both.'
Powassan virus is transmitted through the bite of an infected blacklegged (deer) tick, officials said. The ticks contract the disease when they bite an infected animal, then pass it onto a human as they latch onto them.
As of June 17, seven cases of the virus have been reported nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cases were reported in Wisconsin, New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
In 2024, 57 human cases were reported, the most since 2004, according to the CDC.
Infection can present asymptomatically, according to the health department, or through a 'non-specific' illness or neurological disease.
'Initial symptoms commonly include fever, headache, vomiting, and generalized weakness. The disease can progress to encephalitis, meningoencephalitis, or aseptic meningitis,' officials said.
The virus can later progress into seizures, speech problems or paralysis, among other symptoms.
Deer ticks spread other diseases, including Lyme disease and anaplasmosis, health officials said.
Experts with AccuWeather recommend long sleeves in areas where there may be ticks, such as woods or tall grass, and to check your body after spending time outdoors.
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Axios
21 minutes ago
- Axios
RFK Jr. vaccine panel rolls back recommendation on certain flu shots
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine advisors voted on Thursday to no longer recommend that Americans get flu shots containing a preservative that anti-vaccine activists have suggested is linked to autism. Why it matters: The decision endorsed the widely discredited belief that the mercury-containing compound, thimerosal, is harmful in the level at which it's included in vaccines. The recommendation still has to be approved by the CDC, which lacks a full-time political leader. Kennedy has long promoted the belief that vaccines or other environmental factors have led to increased autism diagnoses in children. Driving the news: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, meeting for a second day in Atlanta, voted to advise that children, pregnant women and adults only get single dose seasonal flu vaccines that are thimerosal-free. All of the recommendations were passed with 5-1 votes with one abstention. The votes followed a presentation on thimerosal by Lyn Redwood, a retired nurse and former president of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group with close ties to Kennedy. The panel separately voted to continue recommending routine annual flu shots for anyone older than 6 months who would otherwise be at risk. Six members voted in favor of the recommendation and one abstained. Between the lines: Vaccines recommended for children under 6 in the U.S. have not contained thimerosal for more than two decades. Flu vaccines are available in single dose vials without thimerosal, and in multidose vials with the preservative. Most Americans who get flu vaccines already receive products without thimerosal. Panel member Cody Meissner, a pediatrician, voted no on all of the recommendations around thimerosol, saying they could limit access to safe and effective flu shots. "Of all the issues that I think we ACIP needs to focus on, this is not a big issue," Meissner said. "The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent, as far as we know, risk from thimerosal," he added later on. "I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only available preparation contains thimerosal. I find that very hard to justify." Committee member Vicki Pebsworth abstained from all the flu vaccine-related votes. She later said that she agrees thimerosal should not be used in vaccines but she objected to how the questions were worded. Friction point: Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, asked if CDC staff scientists would also present evidence on the safety and efficacy of thimerosal for the committee to review. ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff said the panel was open to a variety of views but added, "I think it's inappropriate to to dismiss a presentation just because the person does not have a Ph.D. or an M.D." Catch up quick: The committee voted 5-2 earlier on Thursday in favor of recommending RSV antibodies for infants. Kulldorff also gave a short presentation on the combination measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine that ended with a proposed recommendation that children under 47 months old not get the MMRV vaccine, since a safer alternative exists. He indicated that the committee will discuss and vote on the recommendation at a future meeting. What they're saying: "Although the committee made some correct decisions today, health care providers and insurers should be wary of the decisions from this committee, so long as it's stacked with RFK Jr.'s puppets," Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita of epidemiology at the University of Arizona and a member of advocacy group Defend Public Health, said in a statement.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
New CDC vaccine advisers endorse thimerosal-free flu vaccines, despite no evidence of harm from the preservative
A new slate of vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Thursday to recommend that Americans receive influenza vaccines that are free of thimerosal even though there is no evidence of harm from the preservative. The closely watched vote was among the first for the newly assembled group, which was appointed by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this month after he dismissed the previous panel of 17 experts, claiming that they had conflicts of interest. However, some of the new members of the committee raised serious concerns from the public health community for their approach to vaccines and scientific evidence. The last-minute addition of thimerosal to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' meeting agenda was a signal to vaccine experts that Kennedy – who led an anti-vaccine group called Children's Health Defense – was seeking to sow doubt about vaccine safety. Thimerosal was largely removed from most vaccines about 25 years ago. The US Food and Drug Administration asked manufacturers to remove it out of an abundance of caution, not because of evidence of harm, according to the CDC. All vaccines routinely recommended for young children now are available in doses that don't have the preservative, which contains a form of mercury. Flu vaccines drawn from multidose vials still contain thimerosal in order to prevent bacterial contamination. Only about 4% of flu vaccines given in the United States last year contained thimerosal as a preservative. Still, on Thursday, the committee heard an unusual presentation by Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and former leader of Children's Health Defense, which has advocated against the use of mercury in vaccines. Unlike most other presentations given at the meeting, Redwood's was not vetted or read by a working group or outside experts in vaccine science before it was voted on, according to Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Colorado who has been a liaison member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. 'This selective use of data and omission of established science undermines public trust and fuels misinformation,' O'Leary said in a statement made on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recently announced that it would no longer participate in ACIP meetings because of the changes to committee membership and what's being discussed. In a series of three votes Thursday, the ACIP members voted 5-1, with one member abstaining, to recommend that only single-dose flu vaccines be given to children, adults and pregnant women in the United States. Single-dose shots are free of thimerosal. Drs. Robert Malone, Joseph Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi and Joseph Pagano voted yes on the thimerosal recommendations. Dr. Cody Meissner voted no. Dr. Vicky Pebsworth, volunteer director of research and patient safety at the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that emphasizes risks around vaccines while downplaying their benefit, abstained from the vote because she objected to its wording. In justifying his vote, Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, said he was worried that expressing a preference for single-dose vials might keep people from getting doses from multidose formulations in situations in which those shots may be the only option. 'That might limit the availability of the influenza vaccine for some people,' he said. 'My point is, the risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent — as far as we know — risk from thimerosal, so I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine,' Meissner said. 'I find that very hard to justify.' Six members of the committee voted to continue to recommend that everyone 6 months and older receive an annual flu vaccine. Pebsworth abstained. Vaccines with thimerosal are still approved by the FDA. The ACIP recommendation now goes to the CDC director or potentially to Kennedy, as CDC nominee Dr. Susan Monarez is still awaiting Senate confirmation. However, ACIP recommendations are tremendously influential in how vaccines are used in the US, with implications for insurance coverage and state policies. The advisers also voted 5-2 on Thursday to recommend the use of a new shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus, adding an additional tool against the most common cause of hospitalization in infants. The shot, called clesrovimab and given the brand name Enflonsia, is made by Merck and joins two other interventions already on the market to protect babies against severe disease from RSV, a common virus that can be especially dangerous for infants. One, like clesrovimab, is an antibody shot, and the other is a vaccine given during pregnancy. Data presented at the meeting showed that the approved interventions were safe and dramatically reduced hospitalizations among babies from RSV in the last respiratory virus season. 'As a pediatrician, I mean, people need to understand what a spectacular accomplishment these results are,' Meissner said at Wednesday's ACIP meeting. They 'will have an enormous influence on public health.' The new drug was approved this month by the FDA, and the CDC committee's recommendation was the next step in making it widely available for the coming RSV season, which typically begins in the fall. The vote came after Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, raised questions Thursday morning about whether there were safety signals that arose in clinical trials of the antibody shots that deserve further scrutiny. Representatives from both the FDA and Merck emphasized the safety of the product and the rigor of the clinical trials. Meissner also expressed how thoroughly the CDC panel's work group on RSV examined the data. 'We went through the details very, very carefully, and I appreciate Dr. [Levi's] careful review of the records, but the work group is comfortable with the results from the different clesrovimab trials,' he said. Levi voted against recommending the Merck shot, joined by Pebsworth. However, the group voted unanimously Thursday that the Merck shot should be included in the Vaccines for Children program, which provides free vaccines to children whose families may not be able to afford them. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement Thursday, 'The members of this committee are respected experts who take their responsibility to public health seriously. What they did today, just as Secretary Kennedy appointed them to do was review the evidence, debate it with scientific rigor and deliver recommendations rooted in data and medical integrity. The public deserves nothing but this.'
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Heart attack deaths have plummeted in US, but new cardiovascular threats emerge
Print Close By Melissa Rudy Published June 26, 2025 Heart attack deaths have plummeted in recent years — but other types of cardiovascular disease still pose a major threat. A new study by the American Heart Association (AHA) found that overall heart disease-related death rates have declined by 66%, and heart attack deaths have dropped by almost 90%. While heart attacks are no longer the most fatal form of heart disease, there have been increases in other types — heart failure, arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) and hypertensive heart disease (long-term high blood pressure). CANNABIS USE RAISES RISK OF HEART ATTACK AND STROKE MORE THAN COCAINE, OTHER DRUGS, MAJOR REVIEW SUGGESTS The findings were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Heart Association. In the study, researchers analyzed more than 50 years of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), focusing on heart disease deaths among adults aged 25 and older. In 1970, heart attacks — also known as ischemic heart disease — represented more than half (54%) of all heart disease deaths, the study found. As of 2022, only 29% of heart disease deaths were caused by heart attacks. Other types of heart disease deaths — such as heart failure, hypertensive heart disease and arrhythmia — have risen during that timeframe, however. EXPERIMENTAL CHOLESTEROL PILL CUTS HEART ATTACK RISK WITH 'CONVENIENT' ONCE-DAILY DOSE In 2022, these other types were responsible for 47% of heart disease deaths, up from just 9% in 1970, the study found. "This distribution shift in the types of heart disease people were dying from the most was very interesting to us," said the study's first author, Sara King, M.D., a second-year internal medicine resident in the department of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine in Stanford, California, in the release. "This evolution over the past 50 years reflects incredible successes in the way heart attacks and other types of ischemic heart disease are managed," she went on. "However, the substantial increase in deaths from other types of heart conditions, including heart failure and arrhythmias, poses emerging challenges the medical community must address." "The increase in other types of heart disease leading to death has offset the wins from deaths from heart attacks declining." Arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats, happen when electrical impulses to the heart are too fast, slow or erratic, according to the AHA. One common example of an arrhythmia is atrial fibrillation (AFib), which begins in the upper chambers of the heart. Heart failure is defined as a "chronic condition where the heart is unable to pump enough blood to meet the body's needs for blood and oxygen." Hypertensive heart disease describes damage to the heart caused by long-term, unaddressed high blood pressure, the AHA stated. Sadiya S. Khan, MD, a cardiologist and associate professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, was not involved in the study but commented on the "important analysis." "Fortunately, this study suggests important progress in a preventable cause of death — heart attacks," she told Fox News Digital. STANFORD RESEARCHERS DEVELOP 'GAME-CHANGING' STROKE TREATMENT THAT DOUBLES EFFECTIVENESS "Unfortunately, it suggests that there is a smoldering crisis of other types of heart disease deaths that may be in part related to heart attacks, but speak to the growing burden of obesity that results in more heart failure and arrhythmia-related deaths." "The increase in other types of heart disease leading to death has offset the wins from deaths from heart attacks declining." Why the decrease in heart attacks? The researchers presented several possible reasons for the decrease in heart attack deaths, primarily advancements in treatment for sudden and acute cardiac events. "From the establishment and increased use of bystander CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to treat cardiac arrest outside the hospital setting, to the creation of systems of care that promote early recognition of and quick procedural and medical intervention to treat heart attacks, there have been great strides made in helping people survive initial acute cardiac events that were once considered a death sentence," King said in the release. The researchers also touted several other medical advancements, including coronary artery bypass grafting, cardiac imaging and many new heart disease medications. Healthy lifestyle modifications, such as quitting smoking, exercising regularly and managing cholesterol and blood pressure, have also contributed to the reduced heart attack deaths, the AHA report stated. Khan added, "It is important to note that this doesn't mean the heart attack may still not have been the driver, if someone with a heart attack developed heart failure and that is now called a heart failure death." Risk factors remain Despite the improvements, the researchers cautioned that several other heart disease risk factors — including obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and physical inactivity — are still fueling cases. Obesity in particular has risen from 15% to 40% during the study timeframe, and type 2 diabetes affects nearly half of U.S. adults, according to the report. Increased life expectancy is another factor — as people are living longer, a larger aging population is more likely to experience various types of heart disease. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "We've won major battles against heart attacks; however, the war against heart disease isn't over," King said. "We now need to tackle heart failure and other chronic conditions that affect people as they age." "The next frontier in heart health must focus on preventing heart attacks, and also on helping people age with healthier hearts and avoiding chronic heart conditions later in life." The AHA calculates heart health based on an individual's score for what it calls "Life's Essential 8." Those who score high in those eight areas are, on average, six years younger biologically than their actual age. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER The eight lifestyle behaviors for optimal heart health are listed below. Eat better Be more active Quit tobacco Get healthy sleep Manage weight Control cholesterol Manage blood sugar Manage blood pressure Potential limitations The researchers pointed out several limitations of their study, including that they did not analyze data by age, sex, race, ethnicity, region or urbanization. There could also be potential inconsistencies and "miscoding" of data over the years, they noted. "We've won major battles against heart attacks; however, the war against heart disease isn't over." It's also possible that the "true burden" of heart attacks is "underestimated" in the findings, according to the researchers. "Certain conditions including heart failure, cardiomyopathy and arrhythmias — and, in particular, ventricular arrhythmias and cardiac arrest — may be overly simplistic," they wrote. "Many of these cases likely have underlying causes that cannot be precisely differentiated using current or past ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes." For more Health articles, visit Khan pointed out that despite the decrease in direct heart attack deaths, heart disease overall is still the leading cause of mortality in the U.S., accounting for more than 900,000 deaths in 2022. Print Close URL
