Good riddance to the Ebola outbreak headlines of 2014. Now a new wave of vaccine research is trickling in to take their place.
|
|
Mix a vesicular stomatitis virus with an Ebola glycoprotein and out comes rVSV-ZEBOV, a promising live-attenuated vaccine for Ebola. The virus got an 'A' on it's final Phase I report card after it was shown to be safe and immunogenic. Well, actually an 'A-', since some participants suffered from fever and arthritis.
NEJM
|
|
We've seen preliminary reports on this data before, so think of this week's news as a polished version of a rough draft. The vaccine is undergoing Phase 2 and 3 testing in the PREVAIL trial in Liberia and the STRIVE trial in Sierra Leone. Interim results from Phase 3 trials in Guinea found rVSV-ZEBOV to be 100% effective when given to cluster contacts of infected persons. Whoa.
|
|
rVSV-ZEBOV may be the most well-studied of the vaccines, but there are other candidates in the pipeline. In the event of a renewed outbreak, a range of manufacturing plants and suppliers would prove useful.
|
|
Outbreaks in West Africa were a worldwide public health emergency. Vaccines offer hope for a less frightening Round 2.
|
|
When your main form of exercise is sprinting to arrests
|
|
You may be on to something. Researchers placed participants on exercise bikes and looked at interval-based short bursts (20 second sprints x 3 cycles over 10 mins) vs. longer but less intense workouts (45 mins at a moderate pace). The interval group saw the same benefits as the paced group – increased peak oxygen uptake, insulin sensitivity, and skeletal muscle mitochondrial content – in a fraction of the time.
PLoS One
|
|
When you find your patient smoking by the fire escape
|
|
Hopefully you're not on the Crohn's unit. A multicenter prospective cohort study of 500 patients with Crohn's Disease found that smokers relapsed more frequently and at earlier timepoints than non-smokers, regardless of disease therapy.
Am J Gastroenterol
|
|
So did England's Royal College of Physicians, who issued a statement advocating for e-cigarettes as an alternative to other tobacco products. The group says e-cigs are more popular than nicotine replacement therapy and contain less harmful chemicals than traditional tobacco. The CDC has taken a different approach and says there is no evidence to support e-cigarette use in smoking cessation.
RCP
|
|
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) pills prevent HIV transmission. Current CDC guidelines recommend daily use to prevent HIV transmission for anybody with HIV-positive partners, men who have sex with men (MSM), inconsistent condom users, those with multiple sexual partners or recent bacterial STDs, and IV drug users. Emtricitabine-tenofovir (Truvada) is currently the only PrEP med approved by the FDA.
|
|
For on-demand PrEP use? Daily use is known to prevent HIV, but some patients don't comply. 2015's IPERGAY showed that high risk MSM who took Truvada before sex had an 86% reduction in new HIV infections, but the trial suffered from low participant adherence. On-demand use has not yet gained FDA approval or been incorporated into formal HIV guidelines.
|
|
Procedure price geography
|
|
Forget delegate maps – there's a United States of medical costs. And, as it stands, a knee replacement is $17,000 less in Miami, FL, than 180 miles north in Palm Bay.
|
|
Not a subscriber? Sign up at MedicineScope.com
|
|
|
|