Flu activity ‘elevated’ in US but showing signs of abating, CDC data shows
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(NEW YORK) — Flu activity remains “elevated” in the United States but is starting to show signs of abating, according to new federal data published Friday.
The 2024-25 flu season was classified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a “high” severity season overall and for all age groups, making it the first high severity season since 2017-2018.
During the week ending Feb. 15, 6.8% of visits to doctors’ offices were for flu-like illness, down from 7.7% of visits over the previous two weeks, CDC data shows.
Emergency department visits for flu also fell to 6.4% during the week ending Feb. 15 from more than 8% for the two weeks prior.
Additionally, 26.9% of tests came back positive for flu during the week ending Feb. 15. This is higher than the peak of 18.2% last flu season but lower than the 31.4% recorded over the previous two weeks.
The CDC estimates there have been at least 33 million illnesses, 430,000 hospitalizations and 19,000 deaths from flu so far this season
At least 86 pediatric flu deaths have been recorded so far, with 18 reported the week ending Feb. 15.
It comes as overall respiratory illness activity is listed as “high” nationwide, CDC data shows.
As of Friday, nine states are listed as having “very high” levels of respiratory virus activity and 14 states are listed as “high.” The remaining states are listed as having “moderate” or “low” levels.
Comparatively, 12 states were listed as “very high” and 20 states were listed as “high” last week.
Meanwhile, although COVID-19 activity is “elevated” in many areas of the U.S., CDC data shows emergency department visits are at low levels and the number of laboratory tests coming back positive is stable.
Respiratory syncytial virus activity was also described as “elevated” but declining in most areas of the U.S., according to the CDC.
Public health experts have recommended children and adults receive the flu and COVID vaccine as well as older adults receive the RSV vaccine, but coverage is “low,” according to the CDC.
As of Feb 8, only 45.3% of adults were vaccinated against the flu and 23,1% were vaccinated with the updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, just 46.7% of adults ages 75 and older have received the RSV vaccine, according to CDC data.
Nearly half of all children are vaccinated against the flu at 45.8%, but just 12.1% have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
(NEW YORK) — Respiratory illness activity – a measure of how often conditions like the common cold, flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus are diagnosed – is currently “high” in the United States, according to an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently, New Hampshire is listed as having “very high” respiratory virus activity, and 11 states – Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – are listed as having “high” activity, CDC data shows.
Meanwhile, 29 states are listed as having “moderate” activity, and the remaining states are listed as having “low” activity.
Particularly, COVID-19, seasonal flu and RSV activity are increasing across the country with a rising number of people visiting emergency departments and the number of tests coming back positive for one of the three conditions, the CDC said.
The CDC estimates that there have been at least 3.1 million illnesses, 37,000 hospitalizations and 1,500 deaths from flu so far this season; these figures are based on the latest date for which data is available, which is the week ending Dec. 21.
Five pediatric deaths were reported during the week of Dec. 21, bringing the total number to nine so far during the 2024-25 season.
The CDC says levels of the COVID-19 virus being detected in wastewater are increasing, as are the number of emergency department visits and laboratory test positivity rates.
“Based on CDC modeled estimates of epidemic growth, we predict COVID-19 illness will continue to increase in the coming weeks as it usually does in the winter,” the CDC said in a statement.
For RSV, the CDC said emergency department visits and hospitalizations are increasing among children and hospitalizations are increasing among older adults in some areas.
Flu and COVID-19 vaccines are available for both children and adults, and RSV vaccines are available for certain groups of adults. However, vaccination coverage remains low, meaning “many children and adults lack protection from respiratory virus infections provided by vaccines,” according to the CDC.
As of Dec. 21, only 41.9% of adults were vaccinated against the flu and 21.4% were vaccinated with the updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, just 43.7% of adults ages 75 and older have received the RSV vaccine, according to CDC data.
Nearly half of all children are vaccinated against the flu at 42.5%, but just 10.3% have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
(NEW YORK) — A personalized mRNA vaccine may reduce the risks of pancreatic cancer returning after surgery, according to a preliminary study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, with a typical survival rate of only about a year after the diagnosis according to the study.
While the findings are encouraging, the vaccine is still in early testing and will likely take years before it becomes widely available — assuming ongoing trials continue to show success, according to Dr. Vinod P. Balachandran, lead investigator of the trial and senior author of the study.
In this small, preliminary trial of 16 patients, half had a strong immune response to the vaccine. Most of these responders remained cancer-free for more than three years, much longer than those who didn’t respond.
The vaccine works by training specialized immune system cells, known as T cells, to recognize and attack the cancer.
Researchers couldn’t track tumor shrinkage because all patients had surgery to remove visible cancer before vaccination. However, they found that the vaccine produced long-lasting T cells that may keep fighting cancer for years.
“This is one way through which you can make lots of T cells, and you can make these T cells such that they can persist for a long time in patients and retain their function,” Balachandran said.
Balachandran said “to be able to get an immune response has been very challenging,” especially when an illness like pancreatic cancer typically does not respond to vaccines, which highlights the significance of these findings.
A larger trial is now underway to confirm the results. If successful, this approach could lead to new ways to treat or even prevent pancreatic and other advanced cancers.
Overall, Balachandran said this study can “provide some important clues on how you would be able to develop vaccines more broadly for other cancers.”
“Hopefully this information that we will learn from these clinical trials will give us information to know apply vaccines in other settings, such as primary prevention, meaning preventing cancers from occurring even before they occur, with vaccines or perhaps also using it to treat patients who have more advanced disease,” Balachandran said.
(NEW YORK) — From a pig kidney transplant to restoring genetic deafness, 2024 was a year full of medical breakthroughs.
The breakthroughs include the discovery of a cause of an autoimmune disease, the development of a “game-changing” drug and potential hope for those experiencing end-stage organ failure.
Here are five of the biggest highlights in medical achievements this year:
Gene therapy restores hearing in children
Children with hereditary deafness regained their hearing thanks to a type of gene therapy, according to the results of a clinical trial published in the medical journal The Lancet in January.
Investigators from Mass Eye and Ear, a specialty hospital in Boston, examined six children who had a form of genetic deafness called DFNB9, which is caused by a gene mutation that interferes with the transmission of sound signals from the ear to the brain.
Gene therapy involved the use of an inactive virus carrying a functioning version of the gene, which was introduced into the inner ears of the six children.
After 26 weeks, five of the six children recovered their hearing and could even conduct “normal conversation.”
“Children with this genetic hearing loss…the only treatment option for them until now is [a] cochlear implant,” Dr. Zheng-Yi Chen, an associate scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass Eye and Ear and study co-investigator, told ABC News. “And of course, [a] cochlear implant can help them tremendously, but it’s with its own limitations.”
“But with this gene therapy, the children regain hearing, and they were able to speak. So, in a way, the life is totally transformed,” he continued. “This study really opened up the whole field that, in the future, we’ll be able to develop a treatment for other [types] of genetic hearing loss, for which there is no treatment at all at the moment.”
Groundbreaking animal organ transplant
Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) conducted the world’s first genetically-edited pig kidney transplant into a living human in March 2024.
During a four-hour procedure, a surgical team connected the pig kidney’s blood vessels and ureter – the duct that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder – with those of 62-year-old Richard Slayman, a man living with end-stage kidney disease.
“For patients with kidney failure, we know that transplantation is the best treatment option, but unfortunately, we face an immense organ shortage,” Dr. Leonardo Riella, medical director of kidney transplantation at MGH, told ABC News. “So, we have over 100,000 patients waiting for a kidney transplant in the U.S., and more than 17 patients die every day on the waiting list.”
“So, the idea here is, how can we overcome this organ shortage barrier? And having kidneys from another species that could be delivered in a timely manner for these patients once they develop kidney failure could be game-changing for the entire field,” he added.
Slayman passed away in May of this year, but there is no evidence it was the result of the transplant, according to MGH.
Riella said over the course of Slayman’s care, much was learned about how to best deliver care when using animal organs for transplants in the hopes of making the treatment more widely available to patients waiting for a new organ.
A cause of lupus discovered
A team at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Northwestern Medicine said they have discovered a cause of the autoimmune disease lupus and a possible way to reverse it.
Lupus sees the body’s immune system mistakenly attack its own healthy cells and tissues, which can cause inflammation and damage in organs or systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a study, published in the journal Nature in July, researchers compared blood samples from 19 lupus patients to 19 patients without the condition and found imbalances in the types of T-cells lupus patients produce.
T-cells are a certain type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in the body’s immune response to the disease.
“We’ve identified a fundamental imbalance in the immune responses that patients with lupus make, and we’ve defined specific mediators that can correct this imbalance to dampen the pathologic autoimmune response,” co-corresponding author Dr. Deepak Rao, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and co-director of its Center for Cellular Profiling, said in a press release at the time.
1st new class of schizophrenia drug in more than 3 decades
In September, the FDA approved the first new class of drug to treat people with schizophrenia in more than 30 years.
The pill, called Cobenfy – manufactured by Bristol Myers Squibb – combines two drugs, xanomeline and trospium chloride, and is taken twice a day.
Clinical trials showed the combination helped manage schizophrenia symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thinking.
Dr. René Kahn, chair of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said it took many years to develop the first medications for schizophrenia, which are effective in preventing psychosis and work by blocking dopamine receptors.
“Blocking the dopamine receptor directly or indirectly is very unpleasant. Sometimes for patients, they can have unpleasant side effects. It can decrease their energy, it can make them feel depressed, and it can give them Parkinsonian side effects,” Kahn told ABC News.
He described Cobenfy as “game-changing in the sense that this is the first drug that doesn’t directly – with the emphasis on directly – influence the dopamine system and certainly doesn’t block dopamine receptors. So that’s very important, because it may show that we don’t have to directly block or affect the dopamine system but can do that through a different mechanism.”
Kahn said the next step will be monitoring the drug as it is prescribed to thousands of schizophrenia patients to ensure it works and that side effects are minimal.
1st over-the-counter combo flu and COVID test outside of emergency use
The FDA authorized the first over-the-counter combination COVID-19 and flu test outside of emergency use in October.
The Healgen Rapid Check COVID-19/Flu A&B Antigen Test can be purchased at a pharmacy or other stores without a prescription.
While there are other over-the-counter combination tests currently available, this is the first to be marketed to consumers using the traditional approval pathway outside of a public health emergency, according to the FDA.
