Latest news with #smallpox
Medscape
5 days ago
- Health
- Medscape
EMA Launches Review of Tecovirimat Effectiveness for Mpox
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has initiated a review of Tecovirimat SIGA, also called TPOXX, a medicine used to treat mpox. This follows emerging clinical trial data suggesting a lack of effectiveness. The mpox virus is an orthopoxvirus, a class that includes the smallpox virus. Tecovirimat SIGA was originally approved in the US to treat smallpox. The EMA and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the UK authorized its use in January 2022, at the start of an mpox outbreak in Europe, for the treatment of smallpox, mpox, cowpox, and vaccinia complications following smallpox vaccination, in adults and children weighing at least 13 kg. The drug is an oral medicine that interferes with a protein called VP37 found on the surface of orthopoxviruses, preventing them from reproducing normally and thus slowing the spread of infection. No other treatments are authorized for mpox or cowpox infections, which may in rare cases be fatal. European Cases Linked With Risky Sexual Behaviors Mpox is a zoonotic infection occurring mainly in West and Central Africa, with most cases in Europe before 2022 either imported from countries where mpox is endemic or from contacts with documented epidemiological links to imported cases. The outbreak in the EU and UK has been transmitted between humans mainly through sexual contact. It primarily affects gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men and who have multiple sexual partners, participate in group sex, or attend sex-on-premises venues. Transmission occurs primarily within interconnected sexual networks. Symptoms of mpox typically appear 1-3 weeks after infection and include fever, headache, chills, physical weakness, lymph node swelling, back pain, and muscle aches, along with a distinct, fast-spreading papular rash on the skin and mucosal sores in the mouth, nose, throat, or digestive tract that then turn into fluid-filled vesicles. Mild-to-moderate symptoms usually last 2-4 weeks and are followed by full recovery, though some people develop permanent scars. During outbreaks, the case fatality of mpox ranges from 0% to 11%. People who are immunocompromised, including those with HIV infection or AIDS, are at a higher risk for severe disease. Exceptional Circumstances Approval During Outbreak Approval for Tecovirimat SIGA was granted under 'exceptional circumstances' provisions, based only on pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic studies, because the disease is rare and sporadic, so human studies were not available. A condition of such authorization is that the company marketing Tecovirimat SIGA is required to provide an annual update on benefits and risks. The EMA's review is a postauthorization procedure that involves a scientific assessment by the agency on behalf of the EU aimed at resolving issues such as concerns over the safety or benefit-risk balance of a medicine or a class of medicines. In the case of Tecovirimat SIGA (tecovirimat), the review was initiated at the request of the European Commission. The review follows publication of preliminary results from two clinical trials. In the randomized, placebo-controlled PALM007 trial involving 597 children and adults with laboratory-confirmed clade I mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), results reported in April in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that the drug did not reduce the duration of mpox lesions (median time to resolution, 7 vs 8 days). The overall mortality among enrollees, regardless of whether or not they received the drug, was 1.6% — much lower than that generally reported in the DRC, but this was attributed to hospitalization and high-quality supportive care within the trial. The other trial, STOMP, involved people from multiple countries with mild-to-moderate laboratory-confirmed or presumptive clade II mpox. Again, the active drug did not demonstrate efficacy in time to skin and mucosal lesion resolution compared with placebo. The EMA said that similar results had recently been obtained from another study, UNITY, which also did not indicate faster skin lesion resolution on tecovirimat compared with placebo. Further analyses from ongoing or recently completed studies are still awaited and will also inform the EMA's final assessment.
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Study finds that colonization destroyed 90% of all food sources in Burrard Inlet
A new study from the University of B.C. and the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation found that smallpox, overfishing and rapid industrialization devastated the traditional foods of First Nations in the area. Study co-author Michael George said his people went from hearing stories of abundance to "nearly nothing" while his daughter and another co-author Michelle said it shows the need for habitat restoration.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Measles cases are surging in Europe and the US. This is what the anti-vax conspiracy theory has brought us
It's easy to say in hindsight, but also true, that even when the anti-vax movement was in its infancy in the late 90s before I had kids, let alone knew what you were supposed to vaccinate them against, I could smell absolute garbage. After all, Andrew Wakefield, a doctor until he was struck off in 2010, was not the first crank to dispute the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. There was a movement against the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine in the 1970s in the UK, and a similar one in the US in the early 1980s. The discovery of vaccination in the first place was not without its critics, and enough people to form a league opposed the smallpox rollout in the early 1800s on the basis that it was unchristian to share tissue with an animal. So Wakefield's infamous Lancet study, in which he claimed a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, going as far as to pin down the exact mechanism by which one led to the other, was new only in so far as it had all the branding of reputable research, when in fact it was maleficent woo-woo, a phenomenon as old as knowledge. It was noticeable, though, that it fell on parched ground – a lot of people were very keen for it to be true. That was partly simple news appetite: vaccines are inherently boring. Devised by humans co-operating with one another, motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire to help the species – and indiscriminately, no one baby more worthy of protection than any other – there is no animating conflict here, nothing hidden, no complexity. Is there anything more tedious than humanity at its finest? So wouldn't it be at least piquant if it turned out to be a giant mistake? Alongside that, there was a perception that autism diagnoses had gone through the roof, and that wasn't wrong. The increase in recorded incidence was 787% between 1998 and 2018, and no amount of, 'Steady on, guys – it might just be because we've got better at understanding what we're looking at' would deter people from wishing for one simple answer. Wakefield also landed his bogus study just as performative parenting was getting under way – a new understanding of child-rearing, in which parenting well became the summit of moral excellence, and the way to prove your credentials was to be excessively cautious about absolutely everything. It seemed pretty Calvinist – the fundamentals of parenting superiority were mysterious, but you could spot the Chosen Parent by the fact that they never ran with the herd. The depressing thing about the anti-vax timeline is that the collective global mind worked as it should and yet didn't work at all. Other scientists tried to replicate Wakefield's results, and couldn't. The right questions were asked and he was discredited. The lie might have gone around the world, but when the truth finally did get its pants on, it won a decisive victory. Yet a generalised distrust of vaccination as a concept had been spawned, ready to meet any fresh infectious disease. That didn't delay the Covid vaccine rollout – it's hard to see how it could have been faster – but did sully the triumph with the loud disquiet of a minority who thought they were being deliberately poisoned by the state. The effects of the MMR controversy, specifically, are revealing themselves now, nearly 30 years later: measles cases in Europe are at the highest levels in 25 years; in the US, cases are at a 33-year-high; last week a child in Liverpool died having contracted measles. It's unknown whether the child was vaccinated (no vaccine can guarantee complete immunity) and it doesn't matter – it wouldn't make it any less tragic if that child's parents had been caught in the swirl of misinformation, or any more tragic if they hadn't. And it wouldn't be germane anyway: everybody is better protected when everybody is vaccinated. This is never a decision you are making just for yourself. It's probably the most depressing conspiracy theory there is, not because the impacts are so much graver than some cranks who believe the Earth to be flat, but because vaccination is the most concrete proof of how much we rely on one another's care and rationality. That's true beyond disease – we also need each other for democracy, science, culture, civic life and everything – but in no other area can you see that, count it and put it on a graph. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Measles cases are surging in Europe and the US. This is what the anti-vax conspiracy theory has brought us
It's easy to say in hindsight, but also true, that even when the anti-vax movement was in its infancy in the late 90s before I had kids, let alone knew what you were supposed to vaccinate them against, I could smell absolute garbage. After all, Andrew Wakefield, a doctor until he was struck off in 2010, was not the first crank to dispute the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. There was a movement against the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine in the 1970s in the UK, and a similar one in the US in the early 1980s. The discovery of vaccination in the first place was not without its critics, and enough people to form a league opposed the smallpox rollout in the early 1800s on the basis that it was unchristian to share tissue with an animal. So Wakefield's infamous Lancet study, in which he claimed a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, going as far as to pin down the exact mechanism by which one led to the other, was new only in so far as it had all the branding of reputable research, when in fact it was maleficent woo-woo, a phenomenon as old as knowledge. It was noticeable, though, that it fell on parched ground – a lot of people were very keen for it to be true. That was partly simple news appetite: vaccines are inherently boring. Devised by humans co-operating with one another, motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire to help the species – and indiscriminately, no one baby more worthy of protection than any other – there is no animating conflict here, nothing hidden, no complexity. Is there anything more tedious than humanity at its finest? So wouldn't it be at least piquant if it turned out to be a giant mistake? Alongside that, there was a perception that autism diagnoses had gone through the roof, and that wasn't wrong. The increase in recorded incidence was 787% between 1998 and 2018, and no amount of, 'Steady on, guys – it might just be because we've got better at understanding what we're looking at' would deter people from wishing for one simple answer. Wakefield also landed his bogus study just as performative parenting was getting under way – a new understanding of child-rearing, in which parenting well became the summit of moral excellence, and the way to prove your credentials was to be excessively cautious about absolutely everything. It seemed pretty Calvinist – the fundamentals of parenting superiority were mysterious, but you could spot the Chosen Parent by the fact that they never ran with the herd. The depressing thing about the anti-vax timeline is that the collective global mind worked as it should and yet didn't work at all. Other scientists tried to replicate Wakefield's results, and couldn't. The right questions were asked and he was discredited. The lie might have gone around the world, but when the truth finally did get its pants on, it won a decisive victory. Yet a generalised distrust of vaccination as a concept had been spawned, ready to meet any fresh infectious disease. That didn't delay the Covid vaccine rollout – it's hard to see how it could have been faster – but did sully the triumph with the loud disquiet of a minority who thought they were being deliberately poisoned by the state. The effects of the MMR controversy, specifically, are revealing themselves now, nearly 30 years later: measles cases in Europe are at the highest levels in 25 years; in the US, cases are at a 33-year-high; last week a child in Liverpool died having contracted measles. It's unknown whether the child was vaccinated (no vaccine can guarantee complete immunity) and it doesn't matter – it wouldn't make it any less tragic if that child's parents had been caught in the swirl of misinformation, or any more tragic if they hadn't. And it wouldn't be germane anyway: everybody is better protected when everybody is vaccinated. This is never a decision you are making just for yourself. It's probably the most depressing conspiracy theory there is, not because the impacts are so much graver than some cranks who believe the Earth to be flat, but because vaccination is the most concrete proof of how much we rely on one another's care and rationality. That's true beyond disease – we also need each other for democracy, science, culture, civic life and everything – but in no other area can you see that, count it and put it on a graph. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Washington Post
14-07-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
There's no vaccine for this
The simplified, somewhat apocryphal story I was taught about the origins of vaccines is this one: In 1796, at the height of the smallpox epidemic, physician Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox, a related but milder illness, appeared to be immune to the more severe disease, which killed 30 percent of the people who caught it. Jenner took a cowpox sample from an infected milkmaid and injected it into the arm of a willing subject, and the subject became immune, and smallpox became eradicated, and we never looked back.
