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Good morning and happy Thursday. FYI: The newsletter is taking a summer break next week, which means today is the last time you’ll hear from me until the 17th. (Rose will still be in your inbox tomorrow with the end-of-week news.) Talk soon!
We finally have an official CDC director again
Erica Schwartz was confirmed as CDC director yesterday, making her the second permanent leader of the agency since the second Trump administration took office. Her confirmation ends a nearly yearlong vacancy in the position after her predecessor was fired.
There’s a lot going on at the agency, including ongoing outbreaks of measles and a foodborne parasite in the U.S. and the second-largest outbreak of Ebola in parts of Africa. The public health world will also be watching to see how Schwartz handles Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aggressive vaccine policy agenda. Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo on how the confirmation vote shook out.
How measles elimination status is evaluated
Speaking of measles: This month, a U.S. committee will meet to go over measles data and make a recommendation to the Pan American Health Organization about the country’s measles elimination status. Today, STAT published a First Opinion essay from the chair of that committee.
“These data are public and show a runaway train,” Noel T. Brewer writes. The case numbers this year are “a stark reminder that public health victories can be reversed.” Read more on how the committee assesses such data, what’s new in this year’s report, and why it’s important.
FDA approves Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine
The FDA yesterday approved mFlusiva, Moderna’s influenza vaccine for older adults and the first licensed flu shot made from mRNA technology. The move caps a saga that began in February, when the agency’s then-head of biologics, Vinay Prasad, issued a rare “refuse-to-file” notice — overruling the recommendations of career staff. A week later — after Moderna disclosed the FDA’s decision as well as its own displeasure over the agency’s position — Prasad’s decision was reversed. Read more from STAT’s Helen Branswell.
A second child dies in a Chinese gene-editing trial
Last month, Science reported that a 6-year-old girl died while participating in a gene-editing clinical trial based in China. Researchers did not disclose the death, instead publishing an article on the therapy’s results in mice. Now, a separate Chinese institution has — belatedly, some argue — acknowledged the death of another child related to gene-editing research. After more than a year of silence on a Duchenne muscular dystrophy study and a monthslong STAT investigation, the company, HuidaGene, disclosed that the trial was shut down when a young boy died after receiving the therapy.
The disclosure raises concerns about the quality and transparency of China’s more lightly regulated pathway for drug trials — a form that has been gaining support in the U.S. The “thing that bothers me is the lack of transparency,” said Kiran Musunuru, a gene-editing researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “There could be many of these events and we have no idea.” Read more from STAT’s Jason Mast and contributor Brian Yang on what this all means.
Poop pills for peanut allergies?
Peanut allergies among children have plummeted in recent years. But many people still live with the clinical aversion, which can be dreadful, and at times deadly. A new, small clinical trial offers hope: a fecal microbiome transplant, delivered via “stool capsules.”
Among 15 participants with the allergy, six showed increased peanut tolerance one month post-transplant, with a few lasting as long as four months. Read more from STAT’s Lauren Chan on what questions remain and where researchers want to go next.
Covid can reactivate dormant viruses, per study
Early research has shown that a Covid-19 infection can reactivate common, chronic viruses like Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus. A study published yesterday in Nature found that, among patients hospitalized with Covid, the reactivation of certain dormant viruses is correlated with the severity of a person’s disease. Additionally, there are temporal patterns to when certain viruses reactivate during sickness.
In a study including longitudinal data from more than 1,100 hospitalized Covid patients, researchers found significant reactivation of two virus families during acute infections: Herpesviridae and Anelloviridae. Reactivation of Anelloviridae in particular was strongly associated with long-term physical disability and long Covid. These reactivations also occurred frequently in “immunocompetent” people, challenging the presumption that this sort of reactivation is concentrated in immunocompromised people, the authors wrote.
What we’re reading
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I traded coffee for energy drinks — and nearly lost my mind, the Wall Street Journal
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The U.S. relies on family caregivers. Millions of them are kids, the New York Times Magazine
- Takeda’s narcolepsy drug approved by the FDA, seen as a boon for new class of treatments, STAT
- How a community in Maine is fighting to save their birthing center, NPR