Articles related to ALERTS/WARNINGS/ADVISEMENT

Reports on the Vaccine Safety Datalink flagged the need to investigate a potential increased risk those 65 years of age and older, for ischemic stroke in the first 21 days after receiving the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech booster. FDA has parallel monitoring systems to confirm or fail to validate a safety signal. In this case, those other systems did not confirm the Vaccine Safety Datalink flag.

Should COVID continue to be treated differently than other respiratory viruses? CDC and ID physicians note that COVID is more highly transmissible than other URIs we have more history with, and the outcomes of severe illness and long COVID are important differences as well. And the US is still seeing some 300 deaths per day from COVID.

According to the researchers who published their findings in JAMA Network Open, the percentage of chronic pain patients using non-drug therapies without opioids remained relatively stable at 20% from 2011 to 2016, but it then increased quickly, reaching 40% in 2019. Non-opioid therapy is preferred for treating chronic pain, according to CDC guidance. However, neither the use of opioids alone nor in combination with non-drug treatments for chronic pain significantly decreased following the 2016 guidance. In fact, while about 3% to 15% of patients used opioids alone, their use increased slightly between 2016 and 2018 (from about 10% to 15% of patients).

The controversial 2016 CDC opioid guideline for chronic pain is updated and replaced by the new guidance, which addresses acute, subacute, and chronic pain for primary care and other clinicians. Some organizations misapplied the 2016 guideline, which was perceived as imposing strict opioid dose and duration limits. As a result, the guideline authors clarified their recommendations in 2019.

The new guidelines have drawn criticism and many or most hospitals are sticking to state guidelines, which generally mandate masking. Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, of Brown University tweeted that CDC’s logic “escapes me,” as it pertains to society’s “most health-vulnerable” people in a setting with a higher-than-average risk of COVID positivity.

In its alert, the CDC warned doctors that these viruses circulate in the summer and fall and that they should be considered as a potential infection in an infant with fever, sepsis, or neurological symptoms.