Viki Male

The Path Forward for Vaccine Policy in the United States | NEJM The former members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices consider paths forward for U.S. vaccine policy in the wake of their dismissal by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in...

The original ACIP members writing in @nejm.org:

“The ACIP cannot be replaced, but it may be possible to limit the damage. In this vacuum, it is urgent that other organizations step forward to reassert an evidence-based, expert approach to vaccine recommendations… Families are counting on us.”

Bivalent prefusion F vaccination in pregnancy and respiratory syncytial virus hospitalisation in infants in the UK: results of a multicentre, test-negative, case-control study In the real-world setting of the first season of vaccine implementation in England and Scotland, maternal RSVpreF vaccination was effective and equivalent to trial settings in reducing the risk of hos...

🇬🇧 The first UK data on the effectiveness of #RSV #vaccines in #pregnancy is in!

👶🏽 391 babies with RSV vs 146 controls

🧪 RSV vaccination in pregnancy was 72% effective at preventing RSV in babies, if given >2 weeks before delivery

#MedSky #ImmunoSky #ObGynSky

Can you post the link to the claim? I am interested to try and figure out what they (think they?) are referring to.

I also can’t find any such paper. Whereas I do know of five that have looked for evidence of spike protein crossing the placenta following COVID vaccination, and not found any (links under q6…)

drive.google.com/file/d/1_wHI...

If this were a biological effect, we might expect greater severity of hypertension and worse outcomes in the vaccinated cohort, which wasn't the case.

So this may be down to imperfect matching between the cohorts (remember, this is a *simulated* trial). But still, one for continued monitoring. 4/4

Slide from the CDC presentation, showing an increased risk of hypertension (1.09), pre-eclampsia (1.12) or gestational hypertension (1.10) but not eclampsia or HELLP (0.77) in the vaccinated cohort.

The simulated trial did find a slightly increased risk of high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia associated with RSV vaccination, but the severity of these (when they occurred) was the same in both groups, and birth outcomes were the same. 3/

Bivalent Prefusion F Vaccine in Pregnancy to Prevent RSV Illness in Infants | NEJM Whether vaccination during pregnancy could reduce the burden of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)–associated lower respiratory tract illness in newborns and infants is uncertain. In this phase 3, d...

This was reassuring, because in the clinical trial there was a (non-significant) increase in preterm births in the vaccinated group.

This was likely due to chance and only affected South Africa, but nonetheless enhanced monitoring of preterm birth was warranted. 2/

www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

A slide from the CDC presentation of the simulated trial. Among 13,966 vaccinated individuals, the preterm birth rate was 4.0%. Among 13,966 unvaccinated individuals, the rate was 4.5%.

👀 As for all new vaccines, the safety of the #RSV #vaccine is being closely monitored.

👩‍🔬 The CDC did a simulated trial of 13,996 vaccinated in pregnancy vs 13,996 matched unvaccinated controls

👍 No increased risk of preterm birth, stillbirth, small babies

1/

www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa...

Are you an immunologist working towards your first R01?

Please join @aai.org and take advantage of programs like our Grant Review for Immunologists Program www.aai.org/Careers/GRIP

We pair early career principal investigators with established mentors. Send me a chat for more info

Maternal Immunization Social Media Toolkit Access ACOG’s maternal immunization social media toolkit for ready-to-use messages, graphics, and resources promoting COVID-19, flu, RSV, and Tdap vaccines for pregnant patients.

You are going to hear misinformation about vaccines and miscarriages, infertility and stillbirths today and in coming months.

Many resources from acog.org are here #MedSky + #IDSky + #ObGynSky.

Evidence based resources...

www.acog.org/programs/imm...

Today's ACIP meeting is usually a time where experts come together to inform the future of vaccines. That is not what today will be. That is not what we can stand behind. The AAP will continue to recommend its own childhood vaccine schedule -- just as we have since the 1930s

Now we have an update on the safety of maternal RSV vaccination:
www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa...

I should give a bit of background first-

The US Dept of Health and Human Services cited three safety studies to justify their recommendation that #CovidVaccines no longer be offered in #pregnancy.

The problem? None of those studies showed what HHS said they showed.

One didn’t even look at pregnancy 🤦🏻‍♀️

I spoke to @factcheck.org…

UK sickle cell patients ‘get worse care than sufferers of similar disorders’ Study commissioned by NHS finds that sickle cell disease care lags behind that for conditions such as cystic fibrosis People living with sickle cell disease face substandard care as its treatment significantly lags behind advances relating to other genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, a report has found. The study, commissioned by the NHS Race and Health Observatory and carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, analysed various measures of care for sickle cell disease between 2010 and 2024, including clinical trials, approved drugs and reviews of existing studies. Continue reading...

UK sickle cell patients ‘get worse care than sufferers of similar disorders’

With congratulations to authors Emilie and Daniel (not on Bluesky) and thanks to their funders, Action Medical Research and @bornecharity.bsky.social!

Decidual macrophages as therapeutic targets in preterm labour The initiation of labour in humans remains poorly understood, although there is mounting evidence for a role for decidual macrophages. These may trigg…

🤰🏽 Emerging evidence suggests that decidual #macrophages are attractive targets in #PretermLabour

👩🏻‍🔬 But understanding how macrophage subsets differ in their origin, function and localisation will help us to do this better!

📃 Our forum on this is out now!

#ReprodSky #ObGynSky #ImmunoSky #MedSky

a man with a beard says that 's a name i ve not heard in a long time Alt: Obi Wan Kenobi. “That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.”

Real footage of me remembering I can solve a student’s problem using the Central Limit Theorem

I will look out for it!

PhD student Abigail Goodship with her crowdsourced poster on how health changes over the menstrual cycle.

This weekend, @abigailgoodship.bsky.social and I spent a total of 18 hours talking to more than 100 people about their menstrual cycles at the Great Exhibition Road Festival!

Pink and purple are positive aspects, green and blue are negative.

Can we see a pattern? 🤣

#ReproSky #GERF2025

#BookSky

I’ve often wondered about that but I didn’t know much had been done on it. I’d love to read the papers you mention, if you are able to share the links?

A google search asking about "robs vs robins". The AI overview says that "Robs refers to a risk of bias tool, specifically the Cochrane Risk of Bias tools. Robins refers to bird species, like the American Robin or European Robin."

Thanks AI overview. That's very helpful

On a podcast I was asked about how prepared we are for the next pandemic.

I said that in terms of the science, we have never been in a better position. In terms of actualizing it and getting people to participate- that's where the work is.

And now we're also throwing away the science.

🤣

That’s not an entirely unfair summary 🤦🏻‍♀️

😊 🙏

Czech data doesn't show COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility Fertility rates are influenced by many variables, such as age and education. A preprint finding fewer births in vaccinated women didn't account for confounding factors. Published studies didn’t find a...

I know of 13 studies that have looked at #fertility following mRNA #CovidVaccination, all finding no effect.

Yet misinformation that COVID vaccination harms fertility is *still* circulating!

I spoke to @sciencefeedback.bsky.social

#MedSky #ReproSky #VaccineSky #IDSky

Effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines on maternal and perinatal outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis Objective To assess the effects of COVID-19 vaccines in women before or during pregnancy on SARS-CoV-2 infection-related, pregnancy, offspring and reactogenicity outcomes.Design Systematic review and ...

… to which the presenter refers in this clip. These studies found COVID vaccination effective during pregnancy, and with no safety concerns emerging.

gh.bmj.com/content/9/4/...

The original RCTs had a handful of pregnancies, and there was later an RCT of ~400 ppl vaccinated in pregnancy, but it didn’t meet its recruitment goal. So the RCTs were small and the best data is from the 1.8 million ppl vaccinated in pregnancy during the general rollout…

Waldo/Wally being led away by two police officers.

decades-long manhunt finally ends