Category: Corona Virus

Scientists have been searching for the optimal coronavirus vaccine since the Covid-19 pandemic started. The mRNA vaccines developed through the federal government's "Operation Warp Speed" program were a massive innovation; however, annually updating those boosters for specific SARS-CoV-2 variants is inefficient for scientists and patients. SARS-CoV-2 is just one member of the Sarbecovirus (SARSBetacoronavirus) subfamily (others include SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002 SARS outbreak, as well as other viruses circulating in bats that could cause future pandemics).

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new vaccine that offers broad protection against not only SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other bat sarbecoviruses. The groundbreaking trivalent vaccine has shown complete protection with no trace of virus in the lungs, marking a significant step toward a universal vaccine for coronaviruses.

We had been working on strategies to make a broadly protective vaccine for a while. This vaccine may protect not just against the current strain circulating that year, but also future variants."

Ravi Kane, Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

They presented their findings in "Broad protection against clade 1sarbecoviruses after a single immunization with cocktail spike-protein-nanoparticlevaccine," published in the February edition ofNature Communications.

Kane and his research group have been working on the technologies to develop more widely protective vaccines for viruses since he joined Georgia Tech in 2015. Although the team didn't specifically foresee Covid-19 arising when it did, pandemics have regularly occurred throughout human history. While the team pivoted their vaccine research to address coronaviruses, they were surprised by how rapidly each new variant arose, making their broader vaccine even more necessary.

Once they realized the challenge inherent in how fast SARS-CoV-2 mutates, they had two options for how to build a vaccine: design one to be widely preventative against the virus, or use the influenza vaccine, which updates annually for the anticipated prevalent variant, as a model.

Making a broad vaccine is more appealing because it enables patients to get one shot and be protected for years. To create their general vaccine, Kane's team capitalized on the key to the original mRNA vaccines -; the spike protein, which binds the virus to healthy cells. Their vaccine uses three prominent spike proteins, or a trivalent vaccine, to elicit a broad enough antibody response to make the vaccine effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants as well as other sarbecoviruses that have been identified as having pandemic potential.

"If you know which variant is circulating, you can immunize with the spike protein of that variant," Ph.D. student and co-author Kathryn Loeffler said. "But a broad vaccine is more difficult to develop because you're protecting against many different antigens versus just one."

Collaborators in the Kawaoka group at the University of Wisconsin tested their vaccine in hamsters, which they had previously identified as an appropriate animal model to evaluate vaccines and immunotherapies against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine was able to neutralize all SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants tested, as well as non-SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses circulating in bats. Even better, the vaccine provided complete protection with no detectable virus in the lungs.

Kane hopes that the vaccine strategy his team identified can be applied to other viruses -; other coronavirus subfamilies as well as other viruses such as influenza viruses. They also expect that some of the specific antigens they describe in this paper can be moved toward preclinical trials. Someday, a trivalent vaccine could comprise a routine part of people's medical treatment.

Source:

Journal reference:

Halfmann, P. J., et al. (2024). Broad protection against clade 1 sarbecoviruses after a single immunization with cocktail spike-protein-nanoparticle vaccine.Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45495-6.

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Scientists develop trivalent vaccine offering broad protection against coronaviruses - News-Medical.Net

The president of a prominent virology research organization often implicated in debates over the origin of COVID-19 will testify in a public congressional hearing next month, a key step in the House investigation into the cause of the virus.

Republicans from the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce committees jointly announced that Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, agreed to testify on May 1 in a public hearing run by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

EcoHealth, an international nonprofit organization with the mission of preventing pandemics, has been the subject of scrutiny from House Republicans since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic over fears that its research projects in China, funded by the National Institutes of Health, may be linked to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

A spokesperson for the Democratic members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic told the Washington Examiner that the funding and reporting practices of EcoHealth have largely been a bipartisan concern.

Testimony and documents reviewed by Select Subcommittee Democrats raise serious concerns that EcoHealth Alliance disregarded federal reporting requirements that ensure grantees are accountable to the American people, the spokesperson said.

In its press release on Daszaks upcoming testimony, Republican leadership accused EcoHealth of having used taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gain-of-function is the process of genetically altering a virus cell to give it a new characteristic that makes it either more likely to spread or present with new symptoms in humans. What scientific experimentation fits the precise biomedical definition of gain-of-function is hotly debated among the scientific community.

EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson John Feigelson told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the committees announcement of Daszaks upcoming testimony continues to misrepresent the work of EcoHealth Alliance and makes several inaccurate allegations about Dr. Daszaks previous public statements.

The public nature of our work and our long-standing collaborations with Chinese scientists made us a target for speculation about the origins of COVID-19, beginning in early 2020 and continuing to this day, said Feigelson, adding that EcoHealths work has direct benefits for the health of the American people [and] strengthens national security.

Feigelson previously told the Washington Examiner that his organization did not support any gain-of-function research at the WIV, saying that any public associations between EcoHealth and gain-of-function are based either on misinterpretation or willful misrepresentation of the actual research conducted.

Republicans are also questioning the veracity of several answers that Daszak provided during his closed-door transcribed interview with the committees in November regarding the funding for a particular EcoHealth project to be conducted at the WIV.

In 2018, EcoHealth, the WIV, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill submitted a grant proposal for coronavirus research to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

During his transcribed interview with the committees, Daszak said the project was supposed to be conducted exclusively at UNC. Documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests, however, revealed Daszak saying in private communications that a significant portion of the work for the project would be conducted in Wuhan.

I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team, Daszak wrote to collaborators Ralph Baric of UNC and Shi Zhengli of the WIV at the time of the project.

The research to be conducted involved manipulation of the spike proteins on various novel SARS-CoV viruses, which would then be injected into humanized mice to assess [the modified viruses] capability to cause SARS-like disease.

When this project was referenced in previous reporting, Feigelson told the Washington Examiner that this project was rejected by DARPA and the team did not attempt to find alternative sources of funding.

The only incontrovertible fact is that the proposal was rejected by DARPA for funding and the work was never done, and there is no evidence to suggest that any other sources of funding were secured, Feigelson told the Washington Examiner.

Feigelson also previously said that, if the project were approved by DARPA, the research would have been carefully overseen by the Department of Defense.

Republican leaders said the discrepancy between Daszaks transcribed interview testimony and the documentation raises serious concerns.

These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview, Republican leaders wrote to Daszak in a letter along with Thursdays announcement of the hearing. We invite you to correct the record.

Feigelson told the Washington Examiner, Dr. Daszak looks forward to answering the [committeess] questions, clarifying the areas of misunderstanding, and informing them about the vital research that EcoHealth Alliance conducts globally.

Republicans are also requesting from EcoHealth all electronic communications and phone records between the organization and the NIH since 2019, as well as all documentation from grant projects from UNC, Georgia State University, and several Chinese institutions since 2014. The committees are also requesting information on any cyberattacks on EcoHealth since 2019.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

This information is expected to be delivered to the committees by mid-April.

The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview, Republican leaders said.

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EcoHealth Alliance president to testify in House hearing on origins of COVID-19 - Washington Examiner

COVID-19 (coronavirus) replaced stroke to become the second-leading cause of death globally in 2021, causing 94 deaths per one lakh population and slashing life expectancy by 1.6 years, an international research published in The Lancet journal has found.

Disrupting more than three decades of consistent improvements in life expectancy and deaths, COVID-19 reversed this long-standing progress to emerge as one of the most defining global health events of recent history, researchers said.

In 2020, deaths around the world rose by 10.8% compared to 2019, and in 2021, they rose by 7.5% relative to 2020. Death rates too followed a similar trend, rising by 8.1% in 2020 and an additional 5.2% in 2021, the study estimated.

Globally, COVID-19 and related deaths were responsible for slashing life expectancy by 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021, even as reduced deaths from infections, stroke, and of newborns, among others, had helped steadily enhance life expectancy between 1990 and 2019, the researchers found.

India lost 1.9 years of life expectancy due to COVID-19, resulting in a net gain of 7.9 years of life expectancy between 1990 and 2021, the study showed. "COVID-19 had a pronounced influence on the reduction in global life expectancy that occurred," the authors wrote.

The researchers forming the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Causes of Death Collaborators estimated mortality and years of life lost from 288 causes of death across 204 countries and territories for every year from 1990 until 2021. Region-wise, death rates from COVID-19 were the highest in the sub-Saharan Africa.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, it was at 271 per one lakh population and almost 200 deaths per one lakh population, respectively. The rate was the lowest in southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania at around 23 deaths per one lakh population, the researchers estimated.

The impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy was found to be wide-ranging in severity, with Andean Latin America seeing a loss of 4.9 years and the southern sub-Saharan Africa seeing a reduction of 3.4 years, to the east Asia, which witnessed almost no change, they said in the study.

The leading cause of death worldwide in 2021 continues to be ischaemic heart disease, as was the case in 2019 and 1990, the researchers found. The disease is caused by a reduced blood flow to a certain body part due to clotting or constricting blood vessels.

Stroke, at the third position amongst the top five causes of death, was found to be followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at fourth, and other pandemic-related mortality at fifth. COPD is a lung condition usually seen to affect heavy smokers.

The GBD study, providing "latest comprehensive estimates of cause-specific mortality," gives insights about the global landscape of disease before and during the first two years of the pandemic, revealing changes in disease-burden patterns that followed, according to the researchers, coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, U.S.

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COVID-19 second-leading cause of death globally in 2021; slashed life expectancy: Lancet study - The Hindu

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Reassigning the Facility Administrator in a Facility | Covid-19 | news-journal.com - Longview News-Journal

(The Center Square) Lawmakers plan to interrogate the head of Eco Health Alliance, the group accused of conducting dangerous coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a public hearing May 1 where Dr. Peter Daszak is expected to testify. Daszak is the president of Eco Health Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit health research company that used taxpayer-funded grants to conduct coronavirus research.

The lawmakers on the committee allege that newly obtained documents show Daszaks previous testimony misled the committee or misrepresented the facts.

These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview, the letter said. The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.

One of those obtained documents appears to show Daszak saying he plans to work with Wuhan researchers.

A federal grant database shows that Eco Health Alliance received millions of dollars from the federal government since 2014 to study coronaviruses that originate in animals and in some cases can transfer to humans, with an emphasis on China.

A key and highly disputed part of the inquiry is whether Eco Health Alliance research included making coronaviruses more dangerous.

Under former President Donald Trump, the federal National Institutes of Health cut all funding to the group in question over the controversy.

Under the Biden administration, funding has been restored, and NIH has emphatically stated that Eco Health Alliance did not play a role in the start of the pandemic.

Unfortunately, in the absence of a definitive answer, misinformation and disinformation are filling the void, which does more harm than good, NIH said in a 2021 statement. NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.

In 2022 and 2023, NIH awarded Eco Health Alliance a total of at least $1,230,594 to research the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.

The idea that the COVID-19 virus began in a Wuahn lab was once denounced as a conspiracy theory but has now gotten more widespread credibility.

The FBI announced last year after its investigation that COVID-19 most likely came from the Wuhan lab. That news came just after the Department of Energy also said the Wuhan lab was most likely the origin of COVID-19, though neither agency expressed a high degree of confidence in that theory.

Other groups have suggested it came from the Wuhan wet market, though no definitive answer has been settled on.

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Wuhan-linked coronavirus researcher to testify before Congress - The Center Square

Elderly hands on a mobility walker.

People born recently in England and Wales can expect to spend fewer years of their life in good health than those born over a decade ago, official figures show.

Covid-19, healthcare delays and an increase in long-term sickness are likely factors in this decline. But the Office of National Statistics figures also reflect deeper social issues like widespread inequality, say experts.

Men born in England from 2020 to 2022 can expect to spend between 62.4 years of their life in good health 9.3 months less than those born from 2011 to 2013.

Women in England can expect to live 62.7 years in good health, which is a drop of 1.5 years in just over a decade.

Wales had the lowest average HLE at 61.1 years for men and just 60.3 years for women.

Men in Northern Ireland saw their HLE increase by more than a year compared to 2011-2013, while women saw theirs fall by 15.3 months.

Women saw the biggest decrease in healthy life expectency across the U.K., with Wales, Northern Ireland and every region of England seeing a decline.

Scotland was not included in the analysis, as figures from its most recent census are not yet available.

The overall drop in HLE is likely driven in part by Covid-19, as there had been minimal change in healthy life expectancy up to 201719, according to Veena Raleigh, senior fellow at health think thank The Kings Fund.

Healthcare delays and a rise in long-term sickness after the pandemic have probably also played a role she added in a statement.

The U.K.s health care system has been struggling to catch up on surgery backlogs that grew sharply during the pandemic. Already on the rise before Covid-19, the number of patients in England waiting for an elective procedure was around 7.58 million in January.

The amount of time people can expect to live healthily differs markedly across the country, the ONS figures show.

A stark north-south divide, Raleigh said, is the product of deep-seated socio-economic inequalities between different communities.

The north of England falls behind than the south on numerous measures including wages, public investment and overall life expectancy. The divide is a frequent target for lawmakers, who have set up projects like the Northern Powerhouse to invest in the region.

The impact of initiatives like these have long come under question, with substantial divisions still clear across the country.

The new HLE statistics lay bare the wide geographical inequalities in England, with healthy life expectancy in the north east being almost seven years shorter for males and six years shorter for females compared with the south east, Raleigh said.

The state of child and adult health in England is poor and declining, she added, which has a devastating impact on individuals, families and communities, and results in significant costs to society and the economy.

Bolder action was needed to help people live longer and healthier lives, she said. And this should be seen by the government as a sound investment and urgent priority, not just as another demand on the public exchequer.

Originally posted here:

Covid-19 Brings Down Healthy Life Expectancy In The U.K. - Forbes

The global life expectancy fell by 1.6 years during the pandemic but Australia is one of 32 countries to record an increase.

Users of a particular COVID-19 test have been warned to take faint lines seriously in a notice from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The TGA said the makers of Fanttest COVID-19 test kits had been made aware of the potential for the kit to display positive test lines of varying faintness.

Users are warned that a faint line appearing in the "control" (C) section is still an indication of a strong positive test for the virus.

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"The Instructions for Use (IFU) state that a valid result occurs when a coloured line appears in the control region (C)," the TGA said in its online notice.

"There is no mention that there is potential for variability in the appearance of the control line.

"However, where strong COVID-19 positive results are obtained there is potential for a faintly appearing control line.

READ MORE: Strongest earthquake in 25 years rocks Taiwan, killing nine people

"This has caused customer confusion and possible misinterpretation that the test result is invalid when it is actually a valid positive result."

The TGA said the manufacturer had updated the IFU for batches manufactured after February 2024 to include information about the potentially faint appearance of the control line.

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Warning over 'faint' COVID-19 test kit results - 9News

A recent study published in Nature Communications explored the association of COVID-19 with long-term allergic conditions.

Study:Incident allergic diseases in post-COVID-19 condition: multinational cohort studies from South Korea, Japan and the UK. Image Credit:wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

The severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in late 2019, and led to the declaration of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in March 2020. It caused over seven million deaths and many times that number of infections and hospitalizations.

Additionally, nearly half of COVID-19 cases have to deal with delayed or chronic morbidity, which may have set in during or after the acute phase of infection. These are called post-COVID-19 conditions or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), otherwise known as long COVID.

Symptoms of PASC, in some cases, include immunologic phenomena that may cause allergic conditions of various kinds.

The study aimed to investigate how ethnicity affects allergic conditions following COVID-19. Researchers formed a synthetic group comprising over 22 million individuals from South Korea, Japan, and the UK, drawing participants from multinational studies to represent these ethnic backgrounds. S

pecifically, the South Korean segment included more than 800,000 people with an average age of 48. From the UK and Japan, the cohorts included over 325,000 and 2.5 million participants, respectively.

Within these groups, approximately 150,000 participants from South Korea, 77,000 from the UK, and 542,000 from Japan had been infected with SARS-CoV-2. This large-scale analysis aimed to shed light on the ethnic variations in post-COVID-19 allergic reactions.

After adjusting for all known variables that could affect the outcome, the researchers discovered that individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed a 20% higher occurrence of allergic diseases compared to those not infected.

This increased risk was consistent for infections from both the original and Delta variants of the virus. Specifically, the likelihood of developing asthma in those infected was more than double, at 2.25 times that in non-infected individuals.

The chance of getting allergic rhinitis was 25% higher in the infected group, though no significant increase was observed for food allergies or atopic dermatitis.

Moreover, while the risk for allergic diseases decreased over time after the infection, it didn't disappear entirely. This decrease in risk varied from country to country.

Moderate-to-severe COVID-19 was linked to a 50% higher risk of overall allergy, compared to 14% among those with mild disease.

Those who had received the vaccine had a 44% higher risk of allergy (with one dose). This was reduced by 20% after two doses of the vaccine. The two-dose cohort had comparable allergy risk as the controls, both overall and for the various allergy subgroups.

Other factors like coexisting morbidity, drinking, body mass index, exercise, and the SARS-CoV-2 strain responsible for the infection, did not show significant correlation with allergy risk.

This is the first study that provides comprehensive evidence for the association between SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent incident allergic outcomes.

It emphasizes the relationship between COVID-19, especially moderate to severe, and subsequent allergy onset. It also indicates that COVID-19 vaccination with at least two doses weakens the risk of new allergies.

The findings broadly corroborate earlier research, but there is a need for more studies on the allergic sequelae of COVID-19 on a larger and more multinational scale.

Multiple pathways have been proposed to account for the observed correlations, including T cell disruption, regulatory T cell (Treg) disturbances, and the cytokine storm in acute severe COVID-19.

Over time, the virus may be slowly cleared from the host, especially if adaptive immunity has been strengthened by vaccination against the virus.

The study underlines a need for persistent health policies to manage the severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection. People with a history of COVID-19 should be aware that they are at higher risk for allergic manifestations in the short-term future, at least.

Journal reference:

Oh, J., Lee, M., Kim, M., et al. Incident allergic diseases in post-COVID-19 condition: multinational cohort studies from South Korea, Japan and the UK. Nature Communications. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47176-w.

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New study reveals increased risk of allergic diseases after COVID-19 infection - News-Medical.Net

Topline

Global life expectancy rose by 6.2 years between 1990 and 2021, driven by reductions in deaths from diarrhea, lower respiratory infections, stroke and ischemic heart diseasebut the world faced significant setbacks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new study by the Lancet.

FILE - Travelers pass a sign near a COVID-19 testing site in Terminal E at Logan Airport, on Dec. ... [+] 21, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

The leading causes of death worldwide remained consistent from 1990 to 2019with ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lower respiratory infections topping the listwith global life expectancy improving in that time period thanks in part to annual reductions in deaths from all causes ranging from .9% to 2.4%.

The Covid-19 pandemic hampered progress, with pandemic-related mortality causing a net reduction in life expectancy of 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021 and Covid-19 becoming the second-leading cause of deaththe first major shakeup of the rankings in decades.

Changes in life expectancy varied significantly by region, the study foundthe so-called super-region consisting of Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania saw the greatest net gain in life expectancy from 1990 and 2021, rising by 8.3 years due to big drops in mortality from chronic respiratory diseases, stroke, lower respiratory infections and cancer, with strong management of the pandemic curbing life expectancy losses due to Covid-19 to just .4 years between 2019 and 2021.

Reductions in deaths from enteric diseaseswhich include diarrhea and typhoidsignificantly contributed to improvements in life expectancy, estimated to contribute an overall increase of 1.1 years globally.

Control of mortality due to diarrheal disease contributed to significant gains in life expectancy in the super region of South Asia, which had the second-highest increase among super regions in life expectancy with 7.8 years, and in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa, which had the highest increase in life expectancy of any local region with 10.7 years.

On one hand, we see countries monumental achievements in preventing deaths from diarrhea and stroke, said Dr. Liane Ong of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations, one of the authors of the study, in a statement. At the same time, we see how much the Covid-19 pandemic has set us back.

31.5%. Thats how much the age-standardized mortality rate for ischemic heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide, dropped between 1990 and 2021. The rate in 2021 was 108.7, with Covid-19 the second-leading cause of death at 94.0.

The largest decline in life expectancy due to Covid-19 was in Latin America and the Caribbean, where it caused a 3.6-year reduction.

The study is the first of its kind to compare deaths from Covid-19 to other leading causes of death, according to the authors. It notes Covid-19 may have had indirect effects on mortality rates as well, with physical distancing measures affecting mortality for other diseases, and deferred care-seeking leading to pandemic-related deaths not attributable directly to Covid-19. Another study published by the Lancet earlier this month previously found the global life expectancy dropped by 1.6 years due to the pandemic, with the United States seeing the highest excess mortality rate when compared to similar high-wealth nations.

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Global Life Expectancy Increased Between 1990 And 2021, But Pandemic Stalled Progress - Forbes

INDIANAPOLIS A large multi-state electronic health record-based study from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDCs) VISION Network has found that COVID-19 vaccines are as effective for adults with anxiety or depression or mood disorders as for individuals without these common diagnoses. This is one of the first studies to evaluate COVID-19 mRNA vaccine effectiveness for those living with mental illness.

While vaccination provided similar protection regardless of psychiatric diagnosis (none, one or multiple conditions), in contrast, unvaccinated adults with any of these conditions had a higher rate of hospitalization for COVID-19 a marker for severe disease than did those without a psychiatric diagnosis.

Both these findings held true whether two, three or four vaccinations were received and for ages 18-49, 50-64 and 65 and older.

Although mental health conditions can tax the immune system, putting stress on the body, we saw similar COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in people with psychiatric diagnoses compared with those without. Thats encouraging, said study co-author Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., Regenstrief Institute vice president for data and analytics.

But we also found that the risk of COVID-19 associated hospitalization is higher among unvaccinated patients with a psychiatric diagnosis, added Dr. Grannis. For patients with a diagnosis of depression, anxiety, or mood disorders who are wondering if the COVID vaccine would be valuable, this paper gives us evidence that the vaccine maintains its effectiveness even in the face of mental illness. So, I would encourage vaccination because it reduces the risk of hospitalization significantly.

Psychiatric disorders have been associated with lower antibody positivity and reduced immune response to other vaccines. Prior to this study, it was not known whether anxiety, depression, or mood disorders influence COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.

While the evidence on vaccine effectiveness for the overall population is well-established, many people still have questions about whether someone like them should get the vaccine or whether people like them benefit from the vaccine, said study co-author Brian Dixon, PhD, MPA, interim director of Regenstrief Institutes Clem McDonald Center for Bioinformatics. Studies like this one help answer those questions for large segments of society. Our network will continue to pursue rigorous studies on important, vulnerable populations. That is, after all, the work we do in public health.

Risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and protection associated with mRNA vaccination among US adults with psychiatric disorders is published in the peer-reviewed journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses. The study was funded by the CDC.

All authors and affiliations:

Matthew E. Levy1,2 | Duck-Hye Yang1 | Margaret M. Dunne1 | Kathleen Miley3 | Stephanie A. Irving4 | Shaun J. Grannis5,6 | Zachary A. Weber1 | Eric P. Griggs7 | Talia L. Spark1 | Elizabeth Bassett1 | Peter J. Embi5,8 | Manjusha Gaglani9,10 | Karthik Natarajan11,12 | Nimish R. Valvi5 | Toan C. Ong13 | Allison L. Naleway4 | Edward Stenehjem14 | Nicola P. Klein15 | Ruth Link-Gelles7 | Malini B. DeSilva3 | Anupam B. Kharbanda16 | Chandni Raiyani9 | Maura A. Beaton11 | Brian E. Dixon5,17 | Suchitra Rao13 | Kristin Dascomb14 | Palak Patel18 | Mufaddal Mamawala9 | Jungmi Han11 | William F. Fadel5,17 | Michelle A. Barron13 | Nancy Grisel14 | Monica Dickerson18 | I-Chia Liao9 | Julie Arndorfer14 | Morgan Najdowski7 | Kempapura Murthy9 | Caitlin Ray18 | Mark W. Tenforde18 | Sarah W. Ball1

1Westat, Rockville, Maryland, USA | 2Helix, San Mateo, California, USA | 3HealthPartners Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA | 4Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland, Oregon, USA | 5Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA | 6School of Medicine, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA | 7Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA | 8Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA | 9Baylor Scott & White Health, Temple, Texas, USA | 10Texas A&M University College of Medicine, Temple, Texas, USA | 11Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, New York, USA | 12New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York, USA | 13School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA | 14Division of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology, Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA | 15Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, Oakland, California, USA | 16Childrens Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA | 17Fairbanks School of Public Health, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA | 18Influenza Division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S. In addition to his role as vice president for data and analytics and research scientist with the Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics, at Regenstrief Institute, Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., is the Regenstrief Professor of Medical Informatics and a professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also an adjunct professor with Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, both at Indiana University-Indianapolis.

Brian E. Dixon, PhD, MPA In addition to his role as the director of public health informatics at the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Indianapolis, Brian E. Dixon, PhD, MPA, is the interim director and a research scientist with the Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics at Regenstrief Institute and a professor of epidemiology at the Fairbanks School of Public Health. He is also an affiliate scientist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center.

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COVID-19 vaccination as effective for adults with common mental disorders as for those without - Regenstrief Institute