By The Defender Staff
The CDC’s Next Chief Will Face Thorny Vaccine Politics. Here Are 3 Potential Picks.
The White House may pick a former governor, a state health director or a cardiologist who has been critical of repeated coronavirus boosters to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Former Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher, Mississippi health director Daniel Edney and Johns Hopkins cardiologist Joseph Marine are being considered to lead the nation’s preeminent public health agency, according to several administration officials and others familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Administration officials say their search for a CDC director is not over and President Donald Trump’s eventual pick may ultimately be a different choice.
Lyme Disease Vaccine Shows 70 Percent Efficacy, Pfizer Says
Four doses of an experimental vaccine to protect against Lyme disease reduced the number of tick-borne infections by more than 70 percent, according to Pfizer and Valneva, the pharmaceutical companies developing the shot.
Pfizer said in a statement the companies are “confident in the vaccine’s potential” and plan to submit the data to regulatory authorities, even though it missed a statistical cutoff for success. If approved, it could become the only Lyme disease vaccine available for people — although it would not be the first.
A previous Lyme disease vaccine, called LYMErix, was approved in 1998. But it became controversial because of reports of adverse events following vaccination, and it was pulled from the market four years later due to poor sales.
FDA Approves Higher-Dose Wegovy to Help People Lose More Weight
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A stronger version of the popular weight loss drug Wegovy is on the way after federal regulators signed off on a higher dose. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a 7.2-milligram dose of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy. Until now, the highest approved dose was 2.4 milligrams, taken as a weekly shot.
The new version, called Wegovy HD, went through an accelerated review and was approved just 54 days after the application was accepted, the agency said. Novo Nordisk said the higher-dose shot is expected to be available in the U.S. in April, when the price is to be announced. The higher dose was tested in a study that tracked people for nearly 17 months. Participants who took the stronger dose lost about 19% of their body weight, or about 47 pounds on average. Folks taking the lower dose lost about 16% (or roughly 39 pounds).
Researchers said that the higher dose may help people who don’t see enough results with the 2.4-milligram version. And while the current dose works for many, The Associated Press reported, “some individuals do not reach their therapeutic goals,” according to findings published earlier in the journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
Like other weight loss drugs, the higher the dose, the more a person is likely to deal with side effects.
How AI Is Reshaping Clinical Trials
When a drug fails, it’s not always because it doesn’t work. In many cases, the problem is linked to a limitation in trial design. This is especially true in mental health research, where studies of conditions like depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, rely on subjective symptom ratings, not objective measures such as tumor size or blood markers — a challenge that can introduce bias.
Symptom ratings are sometimes inflated by investigators who may be eager to help a patient meet study criteria, according to research published in Journal for Clinical Studies. Tweaking these numbers may boost enrollment, but could lessen the chances a drug will succeed. When baseline scores are artificially high, it becomes harder to see the actual difference between the drug and the control group, said Gary Zammit, founder of Clinilabs, a central nervous system-focused clinical research organization.
This long-held hurdle to improving outcomes is one of the many issues in clinical trials AI is being tapped to fix. “AI models not only seem to be more accurate in their ratings, but they help to eliminate the biases that investigators might bring to assessment,” Zammit said.
White House Expands TrumpRx With Three New Drugs
The White House said Friday it’s adding three drugs for diabetes and lung disease to the self-pay platform TrumpRx, as the administration works to expand the site as part of its push to lower drug prices.
The drugs, from German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim, are Jentadueto and Jentadueto XR, for Type 2 diabetes, as well as the COPD drug Striverdi Respimat.
According to the White House, the diabetes drugs list for about $525 but are priced on TrumpRx starting around $55, while the COPD drug is listed at about $35, down from roughly $276.
One of the diabetes drugs, Jentadueto, has a generic version that is typically cheaper. For the other drugs, discount prices listed on GoodRx tend to be higher.
The post The CDC’s Next Chief Will Face Thorny Vaccine Politics. Here Are 3 Potential Picks. + More appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.
IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More
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