Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, which highlights some of the week’s most productive health research reports.
“Rattling” with the origins of COVID
Researchers at a high-security laboratory in Paris studied a bat virus in hopes of discovering how its cousin, SARS-CoV-2, has a global risk that has killed millions, the New York Times reported. However, laboratory experiments like this “rekindle a long-standing debate among scientists about the wisdom of messing with viruses that are so similar to a known pathogen,” the paper says.
Proponents say such experiments and the knowledge they produce are imperative to understanding and preventing pandemics, the Times reported. that modified pathogens can infect laboratory personnel and escape the world.
“Our motivation to take a look at the origin of Covid,” Marc Eloit, DVM, PhD, a virologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris who is leading the effort there, told the Times.
One domain of interest for Eloit and his team has been a shape-shifting region of the spike protein known as the furin cleavage site, which has been instrumental to SARS-CoV-2’s good fortune. Instead, mutants have difficulty replicating in the lungs of laboratory animals or spreading to new hosts,” the Times writes.
Eloit and his team conducted laboratory experiments, such as moving viruses from mouse to mouse and infecting a plate of human intestinal cells, with the goal of giving the virus they studied the possibility of expanding new traits, such as a furin cleavage site, the reported times. But they stopped at a safe spot.
“From a purely clinical point of view, we looked to make more than six passes,” Eloit told The Times. “But we didn’t want to open up the threat of adapting a bat virus to humans. “
Although so-called serial passage experiments have been around for more than a century, they have generated controversy, the Times noted. In the past, the United States had disrupted those experiments to expand a new procedure for judging their safety. back in recent years. As the debate continues, some scientists argue that regulations in place lately are not transparent enough, the Times reported.
Doctors who treat patients with monkeypox say tape makes them heavier
Doctors like Roy Gulick, MD, need to provide their ape pox patients with the most productive care imaginable, but Gulick and other doctors find they don’t have enough hours in the day, the Washington Post reported.
The lack of time they face is due to their difficulty in “filling out dozens of pages of documents every time they want to take drugs out of the strategic national reserve,” the Post wrote.
“It’s been a very daunting task,” Gulick, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine, told the Post. “There’s a lot of paperwork, there’s a lot of testing that’s needed, there’s a lot of things that need to be done to give this drug to someone. “
The difficulty doctors face when it comes to prescribing tecovirimat (TPOXX), an antiviral approved to treat smallpox, has been compounded by other disorders in the fight against the spread of monkeypox, adding similar ones to testing and vaccination, the Post reported.
“Some are concerned that the window will close to prevent the virus from taking root permanently in this country, with more than 1400 infections shown in 42 states, and many or thousands of suspected infections, most commonly in the gay and bisexual community. “said the written message.
And the lagging efforts resemble the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Post reported.
As a result, doctors and experts called for easing barriers, such as collecting multiple samples and photographs from each patient and scheduling 4 visits, which limited prescriptions for tecovirimat, the Post reported. The antiviral has been “tested on animals, strictly approved through the FDA and stored in the national emergency reserve,” the Post noted. And CDC officials have imposed restrictions on components so you can examine rare cases until a fix is needed.
“Getting each and every doctor for each and every patient requires hours and hours of documents and back and forth with agencies is not a sustainable approach,” Amanda Jezek, senior vice president of public policy and government relations at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told The Post. “We know that there are many patients who absolutely miss treatment or as a result revel in severe delays in treatment. “
Unnecessary procedures for dialysis patients?
The United States has filed a civil lawsuit against Fresenius Vascular Care alleging that the company performed procedures on dialysis patients at nine centers in New York and Long Island, the Justice Department said.
The complaint alleges Fresenius billed Medicare, Medicaid, the federal fitness program and TRICARE for the procedures, the Justice Department said.
“The alleged conduct in this case is egregious, as Fresenius not only defrauded federal fitness programs, but also subjected vulnerable Americans to medically unnecessary procedures,” Breon Peace, JD, U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. . . ” This will hold health care providers accountable for practices that unnecessarily disclose patients to damages for monetary gain at taxpayer expense. “
Specifically, the complaint alleges that from approximately Jan. 1, 2012, through June 30, 2018, Fresenius performed certain procedures on patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) without sufficient clinical indication that they needed those procedures, the Justice Department said.
Interventions would have included fistulagrams, in which a dye is injected into a patient’s vein or artery to visualize the port and surrounding blood vessels, such as angioplasty, in which wires and balloons are inserted into veins or arteries that have narrowed to repair the patient’s blood. flow, the Justice Department said.
“Fresenius knowingly subjected ESRD patients, which included the elderly, disadvantaged minorities and other low-income individuals, to those procedures to increase their income,” the Justice Department said.
Jennifer Henderson joined MedPage Today as a corporate and researcher in January 2021. He has covered the healthcare sector in New York, life sciences and legal affairs, among other areas.