Latest news with #NancyLapid
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Wildfire smoke exposure may shorten lung cancer survival
By Nancy Lapid (Reuters) -Exposure to wildfire smoke may increase lung cancer patients' risk of dying from their disease, particularly among non-smokers, but the effect may be mitigated by certain cancer treatments, according to a large California study presented at a major medical meeting on Saturday. Researchers tracked more than 18,000 people with non-small cell lung cancer – the most common kind – between 2017 and 2020. Those living in neighborhoods with the highest levels of wildfire-caused air pollution in the year after their cancer diagnosis were more likely to die from the disease, they found. Patients who inhaled higher levels of tiny particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less that can penetrate deeply into the lungs had a 20% greater risk of dying from lung cancer, researchers reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. People with advanced stage 4 cancer who had never smoked were especially affected, researchers found. Their risk of dying from cancer was 55% higher if they were exposed to high levels of wildfire air pollution. The study used advanced modeling to estimate daily air quality at patients' home addresses, based on data from satellites, weather models, smoke forecasts and air quality monitors. The researchers also found that wildfire smoke exposure did not significantly affect survival of patients with Stage 4 lung cancer with a history of smoking who were treated with an immunotherapy drug. 'This surprising trend suggests that smoke-related changes in the body may interact with certain treatments,' and more study of this phenomenon is warranted, the researchers said. Wildfire smoke is more toxic than normal air pollution. Along with particles of soil and biological materials, it often contains traces of chemicals, metals, plastics and other synthetic materials. 'As wildfires become more frequent and intense in California and other parts of the U.S., we need targeted health strategies to protect cancer patients and others with serious health problems,' said study leader Dr. Surbhi Singhal of UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center in Sacramento, California.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Explainer-How are vaccines tested?
By Nancy Lapid (Reuters) - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to require all new vaccines be tested against a placebo in human trials, and has said that almost no shots used in the United States have undergone such rigorous testing, which is not accurate. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said childhood vaccines are carefully studied in randomized controlled trials — including with placebos — to ensure they're safe and effective. Here is what you need to know about how vaccines are tested and approved in the United States: What has Kennedy said about vaccine testing? In an appearance with television personality Dr. Phil McGraw in April, Kennedy said that "the only vaccine that was ever safely tested in a clinical trial against a placebo was the COVID vaccine... None of the others were ever tested against placebo." He repeated that claim during heated Congressional testimony on Wednesday. What is a randomized controlled trial? In order to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, most new medical treatments must be tested in large trials to confirm their effectiveness and safety. In such trials, participants are randomly assigned to either a group receiving the new medicine or a control group. That ensures that any differences in outcomes can be attributed to the new treatment. In many randomized trials, a new therapy is compared to an older, well established therapy. If no standard therapy already exists, the new treatment is compared to a placebo – an inert sham treatment without any therapeutic or physiological effect. Are new vaccines always compared to placebos? Not always. When a brand new vaccine is developed to protect against a disease that has no preventative therapy on the market, the FDA requires placebo-controlled trials to prove the vaccine is safe and effective. Drugmakers also develop vaccines to improve upon an existing shot, either by updating an already-approved vaccine or by identifying a mechanism for defending against the virus that offers better protection and/or fewer side effects. In those cases, the newer vaccine is compared to an existing vaccine. It is considered unethical to randomly assign volunteers to receive an inert placebo, leaving them – and the unvaccinated people they may come in contact with - vulnerable to a disease when a protective vaccine is available. After successful testing in randomized controlled trials, all vaccines are then monitored in 'real world' studies, which usually include more diverse patient populations and reflect actual use in routine healthcare settings. Have all childhood vaccines been tested against a placebo? No. Childhood vaccines currently recommended for use in the United States that have been tested against placebos include Sanofi's Daptacel, used to protect against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough), Sanofi's immunization against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) Beyfortus, and GSK's Rotarix and Merck's RotaTeq, the two rotavirus vaccines licensed for use in the United States. Some of the currently available vaccines were tested by comparing them to already-approved vaccines. For example, the very first combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), approved in 1971, was compared in randomized controlled trials to a measles-only vaccine and a placebo. But most subsequent MMR vaccines were not compared to placebos because that would have left study participants vulnerable to preventable diseases. What do experts say about Kennedy's proposal? Kennedy's proposal to require that all new vaccines undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials 'is ethically problematic and will slow testing down for no good reason,' Dr. Seema Shah, director of research ethics at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, said in a statement.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Explainer-How are vaccines tested?
By Nancy Lapid (Reuters) - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to require all new vaccines be tested against a placebo in human trials, and has said that almost no shots used in the United States have undergone such rigorous testing, which is not accurate. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said childhood vaccines are carefully studied in randomized controlled trials — including with placebos — to ensure they're safe and effective. Here is what you need to know about how vaccines are tested and approved in the United States: What has Kennedy said about vaccine testing? In an appearance with television personality Dr. Phil McGraw in April, Kennedy said that "the only vaccine that was ever safely tested in a clinical trial against a placebo was the COVID vaccine... None of the others were ever tested against placebo." He repeated that claim during heated Congressional testimony on Wednesday. What is a randomized controlled trial? In order to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, most new medical treatments must be tested in large trials to confirm their effectiveness and safety. In such trials, participants are randomly assigned to either a group receiving the new medicine or a control group. That ensures that any differences in outcomes can be attributed to the new treatment. In many randomized trials, a new therapy is compared to an older, well established therapy. If no standard therapy already exists, the new treatment is compared to a placebo – an inert sham treatment without any therapeutic or physiological effect. Are new vaccines always compared to placebos? Not always. When a brand new vaccine is developed to protect against a disease that has no preventative therapy on the market, the FDA requires placebo-controlled trials to prove the vaccine is safe and effective. Drugmakers also develop vaccines to improve upon an existing shot, either by updating an already-approved vaccine or by identifying a mechanism for defending against the virus that offers better protection and/or fewer side effects. In those cases, the newer vaccine is compared to an existing vaccine. It is considered unethical to randomly assign volunteers to receive an inert placebo, leaving them – and the unvaccinated people they may come in contact with - vulnerable to a disease when a protective vaccine is available. After successful testing in randomized controlled trials, all vaccines are then monitored in 'real world' studies, which usually include more diverse patient populations and reflect actual use in routine healthcare settings. Have all childhood vaccines been tested against a placebo? No. Childhood vaccines currently recommended for use in the United States that have been tested against placebos include Sanofi's Daptacel, used to protect against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough), Sanofi's immunization against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) Beyfortus, and GSK's Rotarix and Merck's RotaTeq, the two rotavirus vaccines licensed for use in the United States. Some of the currently available vaccines were tested by comparing them to already-approved vaccines. For example, the very first combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), approved in 1971, was compared in randomized controlled trials to a measles-only vaccine and a placebo. But most subsequent MMR vaccines were not compared to placebos because that would have left study participants vulnerable to preventable diseases. What do experts say about Kennedy's proposal? Kennedy's proposal to require that all new vaccines undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials 'is ethically problematic and will slow testing down for no good reason,' Dr. Seema Shah, director of research ethics at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, said in a statement.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump administration health research cuts total $1.8 billion, analysis finds
By Nancy Lapid (Reuters) -In a roughly five-week period this year, the U.S. National Institutes of Health terminated $1.81 billion in medical research funding, according to a new analysis. Between February 28 and April 8, the NIH canceled 694 grants in response to the Trump administration's policy shifts and its efforts to shrink the federal budget, the authors of the analysis published on Thursday in JAMA found. That number included 128 grants administered by the National Institute of Mental Health and 77 administered by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The terminated funding was highest for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at nearly $506 million. Cuts at the minority health agency totaling nearly $224 million accounted for nearly one-third of its previously active funding. Last month, researchers sued to secure reinstatement of NIH grants that funded research on topics like LGBTQ health, COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy that were canceled as part of an "ideological purge." One termination letter from the NIH seen by Reuters in mid-March told researchers their study investigating changes in gene functions in different populations was 'incompatible with agency priorities and no modification... could align the project with agency priorities.' Across 210 recipient institutions, Columbia University saw the highest number of terminated grants, at 157, according to the new report. The Trump administration has been at odds with Columbia over what it has said was antisemitic harassment, as well as pro-Palestinian protests, around the school's New York City campus. Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, Emory University, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of California San Francisco and University of Miami each had between 12 and 19 grants terminated. Larger-than-average grants were also more likely to be terminated, the analysis suggested. Although most of the terminated grants were funding research projects, 20% were funding researchers' training or career development. Next year, the White House wants to reduce U.S. health spending by more than 25%. The Trump administration last week proposed to cut the NIH budget by $18 billion, leaving it with $27 billion. The authors of the analysis used the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System database to identify all grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that were terminated since the start of the current Trump administration in January. The NIH falls under HHS purview.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
US at tipping point for return of endemic measles
By Nancy Lapid (Reuters) -The United States is at a tipping point for the return of endemic measles a quarter century after the disease was declared eradicated in the country, researchers warned on Thursday. At current U.S. childhood vaccination rates, measles could return to spreading regularly at high levels, with an estimated 851,300 cases over the next 25 years, computer models used by the researchers suggest. If rates of vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, shot were to decline by 10%, an estimated 11.1 million cases of measles would result over 25 years, according to a report of the study in JAMA. Measles has not been endemic, or continuously present, in the United States since 2000. With vaccination rates dropping for MMR shots as well as for other childhood vaccines, outbreaks of preventable infectious diseases are increasing. There have been 10 reported outbreaks and at least 800 measles cases in the U.S. so far in 2025, including 624 cases and two deaths in one Texas outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many state and national policies are being debated that may substantially reduce childhood vaccination even further, said study leader Nathan Lo of Stanford Medical School. The decline in vaccination among U.S. children in recent years has been fueled by promotion of theories - contrary to scientific evidence - that childhood vaccines are a cause of autism and other health risks. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who now heads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has for decades helped sow such doubts, which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic with politicizing of vaccines for that virus. Drawing on state vaccination, birth and death data and historical data on measles infections, researchers simulated a population that mirrors the U.S. population at national and state levels. Then they estimated how measles would spread under various scenarios if imported from a traveling U.S. citizen who gets infected abroad. If routine childhood vaccinations declined by 50%, the country would see 51.2 million measles cases, 9.9 million rubella cases, and 4.3 million poliomyelitis cases over the next 25 years, Lo said. Under this scenario, Lo said, there would be 51,200 patients with lasting neurologic side effects of measles, 10,700 birth defects resulting from congenital rubella infections, 5,400 cases of paralysis from polio, 10.3 million hospitalizations, and 159,200 deaths. Small increases in vaccination rates of around 5% could keep measles from becoming endemic, the researchers' models suggest. Under current levels of vaccination, vaccine-preventable diseases other than measles are unlikely to become endemic, Lo said. But if vaccination rates drop by 35%, rubella will likely become endemic, while polio, which has long been eradicated in the U.S., has a 50-50 chance of making a comeback if vaccination drops by 40%. No one can forecast exact vaccination and infection numbers, but the precise numbers don't matter, said Dr. Mujeeb Basit, associate director of the Clinical Informatics Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. What matters, Basit said, is the trend revealed by the study: as the vaccination rate declines, the rate of increase in measles cases speeds up. "If vaccination rates go 5% lower, you'll have tens of thousands of infected patients," he said. "Rates just have to be 15% less and you're at millions of cases," he added. "The trend is what people need to know.'
