Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Research Roundup: The Latest Science, Discoveries, And Breakthroughs
People who started taking the antiviral drug ensitrelvir within 72 hours after a household member tested positive for COVID-19 were significantly less likely to be infected, according to results from an international phase 3 clinical trial presented last week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco. (Van Beusekom, 3/19)
Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), including breath control exercises, can improve lung function in long COVID patients after only 4 to 8 weeks, according to a study in Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Disease. (Soucheray, 3/19)
In a Swedish cohort, the risk of long COVID was much lower for vaccinated than unvaccinated participants in the year after infection, even when restricting the analyses to subgroups based on variant, age, sex, and previous infection status, estimates a study published last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. (Van Beusekom, 3/17)
Use of donepezil (Aricept), an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, for 3 weeks failed to demonstrate efficacy in treating fatigue and psychological symptoms of long COVID in a randomized trial from Japan. (Brunk, 3/17)
A research team has found that lecanemab was probably less effective in females than males in its Phase 3 trial. However, there was insufficient evidence to say the drug was totally ineffective in females. (McGill University, 3/18)
One dose of the Jynneos vaccine was 58% effective against mpox infection overall and 84% in people without HIV, but only 35% in those with HIV, according to an observational combined study published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. (Van Beusekom, 3/19)
A new survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania shows that 56% of US adults know that drinking unpasteurized, or raw, milk is less safe than drinking pasteurized milk, but there have been no significant changes in public perceptions of raw milk in the past 6 month, despite detections of H5N1 avian flu virus in unpasteurized milk. (Soucheray, 3/17)
