VACCINES
CDC backs maternal RSV vaccine for seasonal use
Pfizer's new shot to protect infants against RSV by vaccinating their mothers late in pregnancy won a limited recommendation Friday from an expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, STAT's Helen Branswell reports. The panel said the vaccine should be given to pregnant women between September and January in order to protect babies born between October and March, when RSV traditionally peaks.
"This is another new tool we can use this fall and winter to help protect lives," CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in a statement.
A monoclonal antibody to protect newborns from RSV was also recently approved — but experts told Branswell earlier this year they were worried the U.S. may not put this new arsenal of tools to good use. Read more about Pfizer's new vaccine.
In the lab
New clues on long Covid
Patients who were hospitalized with severe Covid-19 symptoms were four times more likely to have abnormalities in multiple organs after an MRI scan than people who hadn't contracted the virus, according to a study published Friday in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The research is part of a multi-center MRI follow-up study of 500 Covid-19 patients who had been hospitalized with the virus. Over half of those patients received MRI scans of their heart, brain, lungs, liver, and kidneys an average of five months after being discharged for inclusion in the analysis. One-third showed abnormalities in multiple organs.
Patients who had been sick were on average older and more often had obesity, hypertension, or diabetes than patients in the control group. Still, researchers found a clear connection between Covid-19 hospitalization and later organ damage. Patients who had had Covid were particularly more likely to have abnormalities in the lungs, brain and kidneys, but saw similar risk in the heart and liver as the control group. In a comment published simultaneously with the study, Columbia University physician and researcher Matthew Baldwin wrote that the results may have implications for our understanding of how long Covid forms — suggesting that it can't be explained by a problem in one singular organ, but rather the cumulative effect of multiple damaged organs.
BIOTECH
The biotech comeback that wasn't
After a couple bruising years on Wall Street, 2023 was supposed to bring about a recovery for the biotech industry. Instead, a closely watched biotech stock index has fallen about 10% for the year, dramatically underperforming the broader market and making it that much more difficult for cash-strapped companies to finance their science.
But there's reason to believe the worst is over, STAT's Allison DeAngelis and Damian Garde report. In just the last two weeks, two biotech companies successfully went public, and on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve projected that interest rates will drop next year, welcome news for a sector that had fallen out of favor with risk-averse investors. Venture capitalists are increasingly confident the market will support initial public offerings for biotech companies, and executives are dusting off their long-shelved IPO paperwork. Read more.
Molly Ferguson for STAT
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