Articles related to VACCINES/IMMUNIZATION

The 2022 Recommended Adult Immunization Schedule for people over the age of 19 has been released by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The 2022 schedule has also been approved by the CDC and the American College of Physicians (ACP).

At the outset of the pandemic, biotechnology company Novavax was one of the frontrunners to bring a vaccine against COVID-19 to market. But nearly two years later, Novavax’s vaccine has yet to appear. In a compelling article, the BMJ details the repeated delays and setbacks that have torpedoed Novavax’s once-promising vaccine candidate and rendered it unnecessary now that other vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca flood the global marketplace.

This study involved 566 men and women between the ages of 28 and 97 years, who were patients in a preventive cardiology practice. The PULS Cardiac Test measures multiple protein biomarkers, including hepatocyte growth factor, soluble Fas, and IL-16, and uses the results to calculate a five-year risk score for new ACS. All factors more than doubled their prior above the norm level. The 5-year ACS PULS risk score more than doubled as a result.

A new study published in Pediatrics concludes that there is a quick clinical recovery and excellent short-term outcomes for adolescents who develop COVID-19-related vaccination-associated myocarditis (C-VAM). The average age in the study was 15, and close follow-up and further studies are needed to understand the long-term implications and mechanism of these myocardial tissue changes.

BMJ’s investigation findings raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight concerning Pfizer’s vaccine trial. A regional director told the BMJ that Pfizer falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in the pivotal phase III trial.

Evidence is mounting that much of the concern about waning immunity to COVID-19 is overstated and that vaccines provide high levels of protection against the respiratory disease and its variants over the long-term. Immunologically, plasmablast and B-cell response after mRNA vaccination is long-lived and memory B cells increase over at least six months. And in the field, the evidence is that vaccination is doing what it is intended to do: reduce the severity and spread of the infection.