Healthcare & Laboratory News

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Reuters (5/8, Lapid) reports authors of an analysis published a research letter in JAMA Thursday stating that “between February 28 and April 8, the NIH canceled 694 grants” worth $1.81 billion in medical research funding “in response to the Trump administration’s policy shifts and its efforts to shrink the federal budget.” The figure “included 128 grants administered by the National Institute of Mental Health and 77 administered by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.” Overall, cuts at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities “accounted for nearly one-third of its previously active funding.” Meanwhile, the “terminated funding was highest for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at nearly $506 million.” The report also found that “across 210 recipient institutions, Columbia University saw the highest number of terminated grants, at 157.”

CNN (5/7, McPhillips) reported data from the CDC and state health departments show that at least 1,002 measles cases have been reported in the US this year. This marks “only the second year cases have been this high since the disease was declared eliminated in the US a quarter-century ago.” Across the country, at least 12 outbreaks, defined as three or more related cases, have contributed to the surge. More than 800 cases “are associated with an outbreak centered in West Texas that has expanded to New Mexico, Oklahoma and possibly Kansas.” As of May 2, the CDC “was reporting 935 measles cases nationwide,” but the agency “publishes data on measles cases each Friday.” The last year there were more than 1,000 annual measles cases was 2019, when 1,274 cases were reported, “driven by large outbreaks in New York City and a nearby suburb.”

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Reuters (5/8, Deng Bior) reports the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Thursday that Sierra Leone reported 384 confirmed mpox “cases in a week, representing 50.7% of all of Africa’s cases.” Africa CDC official Ngashi Ngongo said in an online briefing that “Sierra Leone, which declared mpox a public health emergency in January, has seen a 63% jump in confirmed cases in just one week.” He explained that “funding was the main issue, but added that contact tracing and laboratory capacity also needed to be improved.”

Infectious Disease Advisor (5/7, Basilio) reports a study found that Rebyota (fecal microbiota, live-jslm) “is safe and efficacious against recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in patients with immunocompromising conditions.” Researchers observed that “in the 8 weeks following RBL administration, 44.7% of immunocompromised patients and 48.0% of immunocompetent patients experienced” treatment-emergent adverse effects (TEAEs). Patients with immunocompromising conditions “exhibited lower rates of infection but higher rates of severe TEAEs during this period when compared with those who were immunocompetent.” Overall, immunocompromised and immunocompetent patients “achieved similar rates of treatment success (75.7% and 73.3%, respectively) and sustained clinical response through 6 months (88.7% and 91.6%, respectively). Moreover, the researchers noted comparable efficacy outcomes across the subgroups.” The study was published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The New York Times (5/7, Zimmer) reports a study published in the journal Cell compared “the evolutionary story of SARS” with COVID-19 some 17 years later. The researchers “analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals.” In both cases, they argue “a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.” The study comes a month after the Trump Administration launched a website “asserting that the pandemic had been caused not by a market spillover but by an accident in a lab in Wuhan, China.” Public health experts fear “the incendiary language” between the US and Chinese governments may “make it difficult for scientists to investigate – and debate – the origin of Covid.”

Infectious Disease Advisor (5/7, Basilio) reports a study found that “among new broad-spectrum antibiotics with gram-negative activity, ceftazidime-avibactam and ceftolozane-tazobactam are the most commonly prescribed among inpatients. However, uptake of new gram-negative antibiotics remains lower than that of older agents such as piperacillin-tazobactam.” Researchers observed that the most frequently prescribed new antibiotic among hospitals in the study “was ceftolozane-tazobactam (42.6%), followed by ceftazidime-avibactam (37.5%), eravacycline (12.4%), cefiderocol (10.9%), meropenem-vaborbactam (4.7%), omadacycline (1.1%), and imipenem-cilastatin-relebactam (0.9%).” They concluded, “Though new Gram-negative antibiotics are not used nearly as frequently as workhorses like piperacillin-tazobactam, their use has largely surpassed less effective and more toxic antibiotics like colistin.” The study was published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.