Tom Scriba

HPV vaccination: How the world can eliminate cervical cancer HPV vaccines offer a rare opportunity to effectively eliminate one type of cancer. By taking this opportunity, it’s possible to save hundreds of thousands of women each year.

Some positive stories 👇🏾

“Countries with widespread HPV vaccination and regular cervical cancer screenings are already seeing dramatic reductions in cancer rates. They demonstrate that it’s possible to effectively eliminate the disease”

@scientificdiscovery.dev

ourworldindata.org/hpv-vaccinat...

@bengern.bsky.social et al. show that the early interplay between #neutrophils & CD4 T cells is pivotal in determining #TB pathology, and that depleting neutrophils can improve outcomes even at late timepoints, which has therapeutic relevance rupress.org/jem/article/...

YouTube video by World Health Organization (WHO) WHO's Science in 5 - The truth about vaccine safety - 30 April 2025

Are vaccines safe?
What’s actually in them?

In this episode of Science in 5, WHO’s Dr. Kate O’Brien breaks down how vaccines are tested, approved, and monitored even after they reach the public. She also explains what happens if a safety concern is flagged.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqur...

Every country is warming.

Every country is experiencing more extreme weather events because of climate change, mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. www.ShowYourStripes.info

Time to #ShowYourStripes and start climate conversations to prompt actions to reduce emissions, personally & collectively.

Meet the antivax whisperer fighting the vaccine slump Professor Elizabeth Whittaker convinces reluctant parents to get their children jabbed — and has seen the horrors that unchecked diseases like measles inflict

Meet the antivax whisperer trying to turnaround Britain's child vaccine slump one family at a time. How does she do it? What does she say?

Interview with Professor Elizabeth Whittaker:
www.thetimes.com/article/26a8...

Seminar Mark Hatherill 18 June Century of TB vaccine Development

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‪Wednesday 18 June 2025: Professor Mark Hatherill, SATVI Director, to present seminar titled "A century of TB vaccine development" at Wolfson Pavilion, at the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine
@cidri-africa.bsky.social; @tomscriba.bsky.social
idm.uct.ac.za/events/idm-c...

This is a research ethics emergency 🚨 on the scale of those we know from history - the Tuskegee syphilis study, Nazi “scientific”atrocities. The impact on the global clinical research field is immense. Will we (scientists, participants, communities, ethics committees) ever trust funders again?

This graph on UK childhood vaccine uptake from the article (source @ukhsa.bsky.social ) is quite alarming.

I wonder how impactful this move with health visitors will be, but I guess vaccine hesitancy is multi factorial, so it's well worth trying multiple strategies.

#IDSky #vaccination #MedSky

Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺

The remarkable benefit of exercise was just extended to improved survival after cancer in a randomized trial
@nejm.org
nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Some basic facts about international students, who they are and who they are not

Please pass on the message

@shashikalb.bsky.social

In today’s newsletter @miamalan looks at why the health department is snubbing the very #HIV same scientists they relied on during #COVID19. mailchi.mp/bhekisisa.or...

A screen shot of the declaration, called "defending the national climate assessment" with 130 signatures.

I love that over a hundred climate activists - oh no excuse me, Environmental and Natural Resource Economists! - are objecting to the "quiet cancellation of this important leadership initiative & critical public resource," calling it "as shortsighted as it is unlawful."

Read more: support-nca.org

PhD position in structural biology and infectious diseases - IPBS-Toulouse We are currently looking for highly motivated PhD student with a strong interest in structural[…]

🚨 PhD opportunity in Toulouse!
Join a dynamic team to study membrane proteins & transporters of therapeutic interest using cryo-EM, enzymology & biophysics.

📅 Deadline: June 19, 2025
🔗 Funded by @frm-officiel.bsky.social

#StructuralBiology #MicroSky

More details 👇
shorturl.at/OaVMI

Please share broadly. We all need to rise up for #NSF75 thank you @marvimatos.bsky.social for your leadership in the National Science Board. If not now, when?!?! 🧪

NIH’s key vaccine center slammed by contract cuts Antibody and vaccine work is slowed after the National Institutes of Health loses as many as 2200 contract workers

The National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center has lost dozens of contractor staff. scim.ag/4dckdNn

It took decades to build America’s research infrastructure

It’s destruction is happening in a matter of weeks

🥺😢😔

BCG Revaccination for the Prevention of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection | NEJM In a previous phase 2 trial, bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG) revaccination was not shown to provide protection from primary Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection but prevented sustained M. tuberculosi...

BCG Revaccination for the Prevention of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

The potential impact of reductions in international donor funding on tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries Background Tuberculosis services in many settings rely heavily on international donor funding. In 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled, and other countri...

#Tuberculosis prevention and care relies heavily on international donor funding in many settings. In our latest preprint, we examine the potential impact of reductions in international donor funding for #TB - by the US and by other major donor countries. 1/8

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

“termination of USAID funding may lead to 420 500 excess tuberculosis deaths by 2035. Further reductions in funding in line with current announcements by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany may lead to an additional 699 200, 63 100, 50 500, and 30 500 TB deaths, respectively”

We were asked for more details on our study @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social. Sadly, unable to stratify by age, sex or TB disease severity.

Lower IL-6 signalling protects from TB, but to work out how, need better phenotyping & IL-6 blocking interventions
#TBSky #IDSky #ImmunoSky @gushamilton.bsky.social

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

I don't get how anyone can possibly be okay with ending the WHI. This study has accrued decades of data from 42000 women and it is still going. It helps to address critical research gaps that have been allowed to go unfilled because of durable misogyny and provides invaluable insight into aging.

We do the sums: The NIH funds $350-million (R6.65-billion) of research in SA - Bhekisisa R6.65-billion — or $350-million. That’s how much South Africa receives in annual funding from the US government’s National Institutes of Health. If the country loses all of its NIH funding, the countr...

Interested in the magnitude of US NIH funding for biomedical research in South Africa? It’s been very significant indeed with major advances and enormous impact! But, also highlights the potential (astronomical) impact of targeting South Africa in NIH funding cuts!
bhekisisa.org/health-news-...

Wonderful to see these excellent results from a large, multi-country evaluation of tongue swabs for TB diagnosis!

Diagnostic accuracy of swab-based molecular tests for tuberculosis using novel near point-of-care platforms: A multi-country evaluation

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is figure 2, which shows SBP and DBP in the intervention and usual care groups over the 48 months of follow-up.

Reducing high blood pressure substantially lowers the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment without dementia, according to the results of a clinical trial published in Nature Medicine. go.nature.com/44z6kGy #medsky 🧪

Really nice visualisation of a lagged health outcome over decades (in contrast to the delays over days/weeks we typically see for acute infectious diseases like COVID)

Performance of 2 Finger-Stick Blood Tests to Triage Adults With Symptoms of Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Prospective Multisite Diagnostic Accuracy Study Two finger-stick blood tests to triage people with symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by measuring 3 host proteins (multibiomarker test) or 3 host RNA tran

Very happy to share our latest publication evaluating not 1, but 2 fingerstick blood screening tests for TB: Cepheid 3 gene test and a 3 protein test using lateral flow technology. Coming soon: evaluation in children and household contracts. Stay tuned...
academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

These kinds of cuts are taking place when #TB rates are rising, including in the US. They dovetail with USAID cuts to #TB programs.

WHO launches an update on the consolidated guidelines to diagnose #tuberculosis
createsend.com/t/d-CCE83795...

I’ve just received my final, delayed payment for work done for #USAID. Sadly, this is me shaking USAID’s hand for the final time to say “Thank you, we achieved so much together.