About the public’s health
Major coronavirus vaccine trial is paused to investigate unexplained illness: One of today’s top news stories. “A major coronavirus vaccine trial is on hold as an independent committee investigates whether a case of spinal inflammation in a single British participant is linked to the vaccine — a step that several experts said is a sign of the protections in place to ensure the safety of products ultimately used in millions of healthy people.
The hold on human testing of the vaccine candidate being developed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford was confirmed by the company in a statement Tuesday evening, calling it a ‘routine action.’”
Woodward book: Trump says he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and worse than the flu while intentionally misleading Americans: Another top news story. The headline speaks for itself. The evidence comes from recordings of interviews.
LabCorp to launch single home swab test spanning COVID-19, flu, RSV: “LabCorp announced plans to launch a new at-home COVID-19 diagnostic that allows people to also get tested for the flu and respiratory syncytial virus from a single sample.
The combined test is currently offered through doctors’ offices, hospitals and other healthcare providers, while the future, home-based version will be made available through LabCorp’s Pixel service, pending the FDA’s review and authorization.”
Operation Warp Speed promised to do the impossible. How far has it come?: A good overview of the progress of this initiative covering vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.
Sanofi France chief sees coronavirus vaccine priced below 10 euros: “A coronavirus vaccine that Sanofi is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline is likely to be priced at less than 10 euros ($11.80) per shot if it is approved for use…” Companies can afford to offer low prices because the volumes are guaranteed to be very high.
The Importance of Careful Patient Selection in the Use of Follow-up Bone Mineral Density Testing: An excellent review of this topic. The “bottom line” is that routine repetition every 2-3 years is not more predictive than baseline testing.
About health insurance
AMA announces new CPT codes as COVID-19 advancements expand: ”For quick reference, the two new Category I CPT codes and long descriptors are:
99072 Additional supplies, materials, and clinical staff time over and above those usually included in an office visit or other non-facility service(s), when performed during a Public Health Emergency as defined by law, due to respiratory-transmitted infectious disease
86413 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19]) antibody, quantitative”
Association of Race, Health Insurance Status, and Household Income With Location and Outcomes of Ambulatory Surgery Among Adult Patients in 2 US States: “The study’s findings indicated that Black patients and patients with public health insurance were less likely to receive surgery at freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.”
About pharma
First trial of personalised care for children with asthma suggests benefits of prescribing according to genetic differences: Selecting treatments according to genetic differences could help children and teenagers with asthma, according to research presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress…
The research involved 241 children aged between 12 and 18 years who were all being treated for asthma by their GPs. The children were randomly assigned either to receive treatment according to existing guidelines, or to receive treatment according to particular genetic differences (their genotype), an approach known as personalised medicine…using a test that costs less than €20.
The researchers were testing for a small difference in the gene that contains instructions for making the beta-2 receptor and they were looking for children who had either with one copy of the altered gene or with two copies of the altered gene…
Previous research suggests that the majority of children with asthma will benefit from standard treatment with an asthma preventer called salmeterol in addition to their regular steroid inhaler. However, around one in seven children have a small genetic difference that means using this medication could actually result in these children having more asthma symptoms.
In this trial, children in the personalised medicine group who had this genetic difference were treated with an alternative asthma medicine called montelukast.
Researchers followed the children for a year to monitor their quality of life, with a score between one and seven according to how their symptoms were, whether their normal activities were limited by their asthma and how their asthma made them feel.
They compared the average score of the group of children who had their medication decided on the basis of their genetics with the average score of children who were treated according to current practice that does not involve any genetic testing, and found only a small improvement of 0.16 with those who received personalised care.
However, when the researchers looked specifically at the children who were found to have two copies of the altered beta-2 receptor gene, they found a greater benefit, with children experiencing an average 0.42 improvement in their quality of life score. The researchers say this would translate to a noticeably better quality of life for the children with two altered gene copies…”
About healthcare IT
Association of Electronic Health Record Use Above Meaningful Use Thresholds With Hospital Quality and Safety Outcomes: “These findings suggest that advanced levels of electronic health record implementation are not consistently associated with patient satisfaction, spending, and safety, and in some cases depend on the outcome quantile.”