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Tag: research

Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

VA study: Pfizer COVID booster 68% effective against hospitalization

Published May 2, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on:
By Stephanie Soucheray

A study published earlier this week in Nature Communications using claims data from the US Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System finds protection from the 2024-25 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was 68%, 57%, and 56% against COVID-19–associated hospitalizations, emergency department and urgent care (ED/UC) visits, and outpatient visits, respectively.

However, the authors caution that uptake of the vaccine was extremely low—only 3.7% through November 2024—and the study did not assess waning effectiveness.

The study estimated early BNT162b2 KP.2 (2024-25 formulation) vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 outcomes compared to not receiving the vaccine.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Possible treatments for long COVID at the centre of new Western study

Published April 24, 2025

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Published by: CTV News
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By Bailey Shakyaver

More than 300 patients across four continents are at the centre of a Western long COVID study, which hopes to find an effective treatment for those who struggle with long COVID.

The study will look to trial two anti-inflammatory medicines as potential treatments, and hopes to bring into view people who struggle with the disease outside of North America.

“Despite the global prevalence of long COVID, patients report different symptoms and their presentation can be influenced by where they happen to live,” said Dr. Douglas Fraser, professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. “A study with global reach, tailored to examine each patient’s most severe symptoms, has the potential to bring hope to people well beyond Canada and the U.S.”

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Volunteers needed to test no-needle COVID vaccine made in HamiltonPhoto of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The building features a glass-walled atrium. In the foreground, there are some trees with green leaves. Photo by Captain108 / Wikimedia Commons.
Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

Volunteers needed to test no-needle COVID vaccine made in Hamilton

Published April 21, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: Hamilton Spectator
Published on:
By Joanna Frketich

A made-in-Hamilton COVID vaccine that requires no needles is moving to the next stage of testing and researchers are looking for volunteers to take part.

The vaccine that is inhaled instead of injected will be studied by McMaster University researchers with $8 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Internal budget document reveals extent of Trump’s proposed health cuts

Published April 16, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: The Washington Post
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By Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Rachel Roubein, Joel Achenbach, Lauren Weber

The Trump administration is seeking to deeply slash budgets for federal health programs, a roughly one-third cut in discretionary spending by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a preliminary budget document obtained by The Washington Post.

The HHS budget draft, known as a “passback,” offers the first full look at the health and social service priorities of President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as it prepares to send his 2026 fiscal year budget request to Congress. It shows how the Trump administration plans to reshape the federal health agencies that oversee food and drug safety, manage the nation’s response to infectious-disease threats and drive biomedical research.

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Topic: cognitive issuesView all posts for the topic: cognitive issues

Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors

Published April 14, 2025

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Published by: The Wall Street Journal
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By Sumathi Reddy

Five years after the pandemic’s start, millions of Americans are still struggling with long-lasting symptoms of Covid-19. Cognitive difficulties are among the most troubling and common symptoms in people both old and young.

These ailments can be severe enough to leave former professionals like Ken Todd unable to work and even diagnosed with a form of mild cognitive impairment.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts

Published April 10, 2025

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Published by: Nature
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By Max Kozlov, Chris Ryan

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated nearly 800 research projects at a breakneck pace, wiping out significant chunks of funding to entire scientific fields, finds a Nature analysis of the unprecedented cuts.

The administration of US President Donald Trump began purging NIH-funded studies on topics that it deems problematic less than 50 days ago, continuously expanding its list to include research on topics ranging from COVID-19 to misinformation. Hundreds of the 30,000-plus scientists funded by the NIH yearly have been forced to halt their work after receiving notices that their research “no longer effectuates agency priorities”, and some have had to fire personnel or even shut down their laboratories.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Studies: 1 in 7 US working-age adults report long COVID, with heaviest burden on the poor

Published April 9, 2025

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Published by: CIDRAP
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By Mary Van Beusekom

Nearly 1 in 7 working-age US adults had experienced long COVID by late 2023, and socially disadvantaged adults were over 150% more likely to have persistent symptoms, two new studies find.

Future public health, economic burdens

Yesterday in Communications Medicine, Daniel Kim, MD, DrPH, of Northeastern University, analyzed data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from September and November 2022 and August to October 2023 on more than 375,000 US adults, including nearly 50,000 with self-reported long COVID.

Kim assessed sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors as predictors of long COVID; estimated the risk of unemployment, financial difficulties, and anxiety and depression among working-age adults (ages 18 to 64 years) and those currently experiencing lingering symptoms; and tallied the economic effects of the resulting lost wages.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Tackling the ‘silent pandemic’: breakthrough study puts first long COVID treatment on horizon

Published April 8, 2025

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Published by: WEHI
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Researchers have shown a new drug compound can prevent long COVID symptoms in mice – a landmark finding that could lead to a future treatment for the debilitating condition.

The world-first study found mice treated with the antiviral compound, developed by a multidisciplinary research team at WEHI, were protected from long term brain and lung dysfunction – key symptoms of long COVID.

Researchers hope the unprecedented results could lead to clinical trials and the first treatment for the disease in the future.

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Top scientists pen letter calling for end to ‘assault on U.S. science’

Published April 1, 2025

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Published by: CBC Radio
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By Catherine Zhu

Nearly 2,000 doctors, researchers, and scientists have signed an open letter calling for an end to what they describe as the Trump administration’s “wholesale assault on U.S. science.”

The letter, written by 13 scientists from disciplines including medicine, climate science and economics, urges Americans to demand their Congress protect scientific funding and integrity.

The signatories, all members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, wrote that the Trump administration is “destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.”

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Topic: war on scienceView all posts for the topic: war on science

Rollout of ‘miracle’ HIV prevention drug is threatened by Trump cuts to global AIDS relief program

Published April 1, 2025

Still COVIDing Canada Posts

Published by: STAT
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By Ed Silverman, Jason Mast

The Trump administration’s enormous cuts to a global AIDS relief program threaten to upend the planned rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that was expected to save countless lives.

The medicine, lenacapavir, made by Gilead Sciences, has caused a stir because clinical trial data showed a single set of injections every six months could provide virtually complete protection against infection, a form of prevention known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or (PrEP). The drug, which is under regulatory review, has raised hopes that the deadly infectious disease can be mitigated around the globe. Early data for an even newer formulation suggest it might need to be given only once a year. “This is magical,” UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima declared last year.

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Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines

COVID-19 boosters help avoid breakthrough infections in immunocompromised people, McGill-led study finds

Published March 31, 2025

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Published by: McGill University
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Researchers focused on those with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and other immune-mediated inflammatory diseases

New research findings provide solid evidence that annual COVID-19 vaccine booster doses continue to be advisable for certain immunocompromised people, researchers at McGill University say.

The researchers looked at how often people with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) got COVID-19 despite having received at least three doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. IMIDs – including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis – affect more than seven million Canadians. The medications they take often weaken their vaccine responses, increasing their vulnerability to infection.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

‘Something was wrong with my brain’: How covid leaves its mark on cognition

Published March 27, 2025

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Published by: The Washington Post
Published on:
By Richard Sima

In March 2020, Hannah Davis fell ill, and everything changed. Her respiratory symptoms were mild, but the neurological and cognitive fallout was frightening.

“I could tell very early on that something was wrong with my brain,” she said after getting sick with covid-19.

And Davis had quantitative proof — her score for processing speed on a cognitive test dropped from the 96th percentile right before the pandemic to the 14th percentile after her coronavirus infection.

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Topic: wastewater monitoringView all posts for the topic: wastewater monitoring

Measles ‘inevitable’ in Ottawa, expert warns as Ontario outbreak spreads

Published March 26, 2025

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Published by: Ottawa Citizen
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By Elizabeth Payne

Ottawa Public Health has begun monitoring wastewater for evidence of measles in the city as the highly infectious disease continues to surge throughout Ontario.

That makes Ottawa one of the only communities in the province and across Canada using wastewater as a possible early warning signal for measles. Ottawa Public Health says the tool is promising for detecting measles, but the research is limited and “many unknowns remain”.

There have been no cases in Ottawa so far this year but Dr. Gregory Rose, who is director of infection prevention and control at Queensway Carleton Hospital, warns that it is only a matter of time.

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Topic: wastewater monitoringView all posts for the topic: wastewater monitoring

Amid Canada’s largest measles outbreak in more than a decade, experts say this COVID-era tool could help

Published March 26, 2025

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Published by: CBC News
Published on:
By Jennifer La Grassa

As Canada deals with its largest measles outbreak in more than a decade, health experts say a COVID-era tool could help tame the spread.

Wastewater surveillance, which involves testing sewage samples for viral pathogens, became essential during the pandemic. The data helped overwhelmed health officials map out COVID-19’s path and better predict the trajectory of cases.

At the time, it was praised as a critical public health tool that could serve as a warning system to keep Canadians safe from future harmful infections. And as the current measles outbreak surpasses 500 cases in Canada, experts say this is the moment where leaning into regional wastewater surveillance would be most helpful.

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Topic: pro-virus policiesView all posts for the topic: pro-virus policies

CDC is pulling back $11B in Covid funding sent to health departments across the U.S.

Published March 25, 2025

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Published by: NBC News
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By Brandy Zadrozny

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and international recipients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Tuesday.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”

HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s health. Notices began going out Monday, and awardees have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures. Figures are subject to change.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

COVID-19 vaccination reduces risk of ‘long COVID’ in adults

Published March 25, 2025

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Published by: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
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COVID-19 vaccination reduced the risk of developing ‘long COVID’ by approximately 27% in adults fully vaccinated before infection, according to a literature review carried out…

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Long Covid office ‘will be closing,’ Trump administration announces

Published March 24, 2025

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Published by: Politico
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By Sophie Gardner, Alice Miranda Ollstein

The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO.

The email was sent Monday by Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice. It said the closing is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ reorganization.

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Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID

Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long-term organ damage

Published March 20, 2025

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Published by: CBC Radio / Quirks and Quarks
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By Sonya Buyting

COVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues.

“There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,” says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.

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