MONDAY, Sept. 14, 2020 (Healthday News) — Oxford University has announced that final-stage testing of a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with drug maker AstraZeneca will restart following a pause last week after a serious side effect showed up in a volunteer. “The independent review process has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review committee and the U.K. regulator… the trials will recommence in the U.K.,” the university said in a statement released on Saturday. No further details were given on the results of the review. Media reports have said the person who had the suspected adverse reaction had been volunteering in a trial based in the United Kingdom. The volunteer was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. The AstraZeneca vaccine is considered a frontrunner among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world, the Associated Press reported. The university said in large trials “it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety.” Globally, some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far, the AP reported. Two other vaccines are in final testing in the United States, one made by Moderna Inc. and the other by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.…  read on >

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2020 (Healthday News) — In a sign that Americans are becoming more wary about the safety of a new coronavirus vaccine, a new poll shows a majority of adults don’t trust what President Donald Trump has said on vaccine development. More than half (52%) of adults said they don’t trust the president’s vaccine comments, the NBC News/Survey Monkey poll found, while just 26 percent say they do. Twenty percent said they were “not aware” whether they trust what the president has said about a vaccine, NBC News reported. Those polled were also more skeptical about whether they or their families would get a government-approved coronavirus vaccine if one became widely available, NBC News reported. The poll’s latest data show that just 39% said they would get it, 23% said they wouldn’t and 36 percent say they weren’t sure. Just a month ago, 44% of Americans said they would get a government-approved vaccine, 22% said they wouldn’t, and 32% said they weren’t sure. The highest level of confidence in a coronavirus vaccine came during the week of Aug. 17 to Aug. 23, when 45% polled said they would get a vaccine. Despite public hesitancy, President Trump has promised a “safe and effective vaccine this year,” and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised states to prepare for “large-scale” vaccine distribution…  read on >

New research may have people with asthma breathing a little easier: Doctors found the airway disease doesn’t raise the risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19. The researchers also noted that people with asthma weren’t more likely than people without it to need a ventilator to help them breathe. “A lot of people with asthma think they have a predisposition to severe COVID, and they worry a lot about going out. They should take precautions like using their masks, but they may not need to worry so much,” said study author Dr. Fernando Holguin. He’s director of the Asthma Clinical and Research Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in Aurora. Holguin said the proportion of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with asthma was around 6%. “For most places, that’s an asthma prevalence that is at or lower than the asthma prevalence in the general population. To compare, with influenza [flu], we typically see about a quarter of those in the hospital have asthma,” he said. When the pandemic first began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that people with asthma had a higher risk of hospitalization and other severe outcomes. People with asthma do have a significantly higher risk of complications with flu, another viral infection. In the new study, the researchers reviewed 15 studies on COVID-19 infections to see how…  read on >

About 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, but experts say early detection can be a lifesaver. “Prostate cancer that is detected early, typically while it is still within the prostate gland, has a better chance of being successfully treated,” explained Dr. Alexander Kutikov, chief of the Division of Urologic Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “Some types of prostate cancer are aggressive. However, most cancers are quite slow-growing, and a significant portion can be monitored without aggressive treatment,” he said in a Fox Chase news release. Men aged 55-69 should consider prostate cancer screening, the American Urological Association says. “Much debate has centered around screening for prostate cancer. Given the risks and benefits of screening, not every man should be screened for prostate cancer,” Kutikov said. “Men should talk to their health care provider about their risk factors, options and preferences. Together, they can make a decision.” In the early stages, prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms. More advanced prostate cancer may cause: difficulty urinating, including a slow or weak urinary stream or the need to urinate more often, especially at night; blood in urine or semen; pain or burning during urination; discomfort in the pelvic area; bone pain, or trouble getting an erection. “Many of these symptoms can be caused by something other than prostate cancer. However, you…  read on >

Flu and pneumonia vaccines lead to fewer hospital deaths among heart failure patients, a new study finds. “Our study provides further impetus for annual immunizations in patients with heart failure. Despite advice to do so, uptake remains low,” said study author Dr. Karthik Gonuguntla, of the University of Connecticut. In heart failure, your heart can’t pump blood as well as it should. This leads to fluid buildup in the lungs that causes shortness of breath, coughing and reduced quality of life. Respiratory infections like pneumonia and the flu make heart failure worse, so annual vaccinations are recommended for patients. However, few studies have compared outcomes among heart failure patients who have and haven’t received these vaccinations. In this study, the researchers looked at nearly 3 million heart failure patients, average age 70, in the United States who were hospitalized between 2010 and 2014. Only 1.4% of the patients had received the flu vaccine and just 1.4% had received the pneumonia vaccine. Rates of in-hospital death were much lower among patients who received the flu and pneumonia vaccines (just over 1% for each) than among those who didn’t receive either vaccine (almost 4%), the researchers found. The study findings were released Friday and scheduled for presentation at the European Society of Cardiology virtual annual meeting. “Pneumonia and flu vaccines are vital to preventing these respiratory infections…  read on >

Older Americans with depression have held up well to the threat of COVID-19, a new study finds. Researchers saw no increase in their depression and anxiety during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. And they said these seniors showed resilience to the stress of physical distancing and isolation. “We thought they would be more vulnerable to the stress of COVID because they are, by [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] definition, the most vulnerable population,” said study co-author Dr. Helen Lavretsky, professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But what we learned is that older adults with depression can be resilient. They told us that coping with chronic depression taught them to be resilient,” she said in a university news release. The researchers, from UCLA and four other universities, interviewed people older than 60, average age 69, during the first two months of the pandemic. Participants lived in Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and were enrolled in studies of treatment-resistant depression. The study was funded by the University of Pittsburgh. The researchers found that the volunteers’ depression and anxiety levels, or risk of suicide, were the same before and during the pandemic. In general, participants were more concerned about the risk of contracting the coronavirus than the risks of isolation. Also, while all maintained…  read on >

As the number of coronavirus cases in the United states passed the dubious milestone of 6 million on Sunday, a new report shows COVID-19 is now spreading at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public. The troubling data, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, comes just as schools and universities around the country are reopening for fall classes. Since the start of the summer, every state in the country has witnessed an increase in the number of young people who have tested positive for coronavirus. In late May, about 5 percent of the nation’s cases were recorded in minors, the The New York Times reported. By Aug. 20, that number had risen to more than 9 percent. Young children seem to catch and transmit the virus less often than adults, but Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, told the Times that community spread in many parts of the United States this summer has corresponded with more infections among children. After reports of outbreaks at summer camps, it is clear that the virus can spread among children under certain circumstances, Dr. William Raszka Jr., a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, told the Times. He worries about opening schools in places where infection rates are high.…  read on >

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Monday that it would extend its flexible free school meals program through the fall, to help keep millions of kids fed as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hold the country in its grip. The program, which allowed parents and caregivers to collect free meals for their kids at any school this summer, was set to expire at the start of September but pressure had been mounting on the agency to continue the program, the Washington Post reported. In mid-August, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that extending the full scope of the free meals for kids program beyond August would go “beyond what [the] USDA currently has the authority to implement and would be closer to a universal school meals program which Congress has not authorized or funded.” However, Perdue said in a statement released Monday that his agency was “extending summer meal program flexibilities for as long as we can, legally and financially.” The statement said the millions of families that rely on the program would be able to do so until as late as the end of the year. “We appreciate the incredible efforts by our school foodservice professionals year in and year out, but this year we have an unprecedented situation,” Perdue said. “This extension of summer program authority will employ summer program sponsors…  read on >

In a finding that should encourage scientists who are racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, a new study out of Iceland suggests that immunity to the disease may not be as fleeting as first thought. Among 30,000 Icelandic residents who were tested for antibodies to COVID-19, researchers discovered the antibodies stayed in people’s systems for at least four months, the study found. Of those who tested positive for the coronavirus, 487 had received multiple antibody tests. In the first two months after a patient was diagnosed, the antibodies that can confer immunity rose significantly. For the next two months, antibody levels remained stable, according to the study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. In a commentary that accompanied the study, scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. National Institutes of Health noted that while the Icelandic research focused on a largely homogeneous population, “this study provides hope that host immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting and may be similar to that elicited by most other viral infections.” Earlier research on coronavirus antibodies had indicated that immunity might be short-lived, leaving people vulnerable to reinfection. But the Icelandic study offers hope that a vaccine that triggers a strong immune response will have a longer-lasting effect than some had believed. Interestingly, the Icelandic researchers also found that women, nonsmokers…  read on >