Tag Archives: COVID-19

Congressman calls for FDA to continue vaccine trials

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D’Andre Henderson, ABC News: December 29, 2020.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WRIC) — Americans are hopeful that the COVID-19 vaccines will make 2021 a better year than 2020. However, there are concerns that Pfizer and Moderna will stop their clinical trials and immediately treat everyone in their placebo group.

Some scientists, doctors and now a Congressman argues that can be dangerous because they said there is still so much unknown about the vaccines.

Rep. Llyod Doggett of Texas wrote a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urging for the clinical trials to continue.

“the continuation of clinical trials is critical to our understanding of the efficacy and length of immunity the vaccines offer,” Doggett wrote.

In the letter, Doggett said while the initial results received from Pfizer and Moderna are showing positive results, it’s not definitive given the limited data.

[…]

“Clinical trials have suffered from a lack of diverse participant enrollment and evaluation of subpopulations,” Doggett said. “Including individuals with comorbidities, children, pregnant and breastfeeding patients, long-term care residents and individuals with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.”

Diana Zuckerman, President of the National Center for Health Research, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C., agrees that the clinical trials should continue. She said healthcare workers who volunteered for the clinical trials should have immediate access to the vaccine if they want it.

“Like most public health experts, I’ve been very concerned that Pfizer and Moderna told the FDA that they want to stop their clinical trials of the COVID vaccine and instead immediately inoculate everyone in their placebo groups,” Zuckerman said. “While I understand the desire to reward the clinical trial volunteers for their service, it would be a huge loss of information from a public health point of view. Losing the placebo group means we’d have no way to scientifically determine which of the vaccines – if any — have 95% efficacy rates that last more than 2 or 3 months. Or how long the vaccine works on people over 75.”

Zuckerman added the people who volunteer for the clinical trials shouldn’t be vaccinated before those in priority groups such as teachers, essential workers, etc.

“Since many of the study volunteers are young and healthy, it also seems unfair for them to “cut in line” for a vaccine while healthcare workers and others at high risk are still waiting their turn,” she said.

[…]

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Covid-19: Should vaccine trials be unblinded?

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Jeanne Lenzer, BMJ: December 29, 2020.

The lack of planning for how to treat participants in covid-19 vaccine trials is a bad precedent, with the loss of potentially valuable safety and efficacy data, say research experts. Jeanne Lenzer reports:

 

In October the US Food and Drug Administration issued non-binding guidance to manufacturers of covid-19 vaccines urging them to devise a method to allow volunteers in their studies’ placebo arms to receive the vaccine while also maintaining the integrity of ongoing scientific data collection.1 Emergency use authorisation was not “grounds for stopping blinded follow-up,” said the agency.23

The companies say they have an ethical obligation to unblind volunteers so they can receive the vaccine. But some experts are concerned about a “disastrous” loss of critical information if volunteers on a trial’s placebo arm are unblinded.45

To try to tackle the problem the FDA invited Steven Goodman, associate dean of clinical and translational research at Stanford University, for a recommendation that could balance the right of volunteers to find out whether they were in the placebo arm and the simultaneous need to preserve scientific data.

Goodman recommended a study design endorsed by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: a blinded crossover study in which placebo recipients would be given the vaccine, and vice versa.235 That would ensure that all volunteers receive the vaccine but would be unaware of which shot they received at which time. This would allow ongoing surveillance of safety issues and more time to observe any waning effects of the vaccine and the possible need for booster doses.

But the companies said that the demands of a blinded crossover design were “onerous” and might not be feasible.6 And even before the FDA advisory committee meeting on Moderna’s vaccine on 17 December, the company notified volunteers that they could learn their status if they chose to receive the vaccine.

Pfizer also sent a letter to its trial participants one week after its vaccine was authorised on 10 December.7 It told them that, on request, they could learn whether they were in the placebo arm so they could receive the vaccine as it became available and according to recommendations of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Asked by The BMJ whether the FDA had set any baseline requirements for the companies regarding the removal of blinding, the agency declined to answer, referring the journal to the respective companies for their plans.

Pfizer told The BMJ that the “move from the placebo group to the vaccine group would be completely optional, and participants would be encouraged to remain blinded throughout the full study duration.” Moderna failed to respond to several requests for comment.

Loss of data

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, told The BMJ that the FDA could have demanded that companies use the blinded crossover design for them to win full approval for their vaccines. She said that failure to do that meant the loss of future reliable data, which is especially concerning given that preliminary data are insufficient to determine efficacy.

“I’m especially concerned that Pfizer’s vaccine trials included only five people aged 75 and older who were diagnosed with covid-19, with an unspecified number of those defined by Pfizer as severe cases,” she said. “That makes it impossible to determine how effective the vaccine is for frail elderly patients.”

Although the FDA has granted the vaccines emergency use authorisation, to get full licence approval two years of follow-up data are needed. The data are now likely to be scanty and less reliable given that the trials are effectively being unblinded.

Consumer representative Sheldon Toubman, a lawyer and FDA advisory panel member, said that Pfizer and BioNTech had not proved that their vaccine prevents severe covid-19. “The FDA says all we can do is suggest protection from severe covid disease; we need to know that it does that,” he said.

He countered claims, based on experience with other vaccines, six weeks of follow-up was long enough to detect safety signals. Six weeks may not be long enough for this entirely new type of “untested” [mRNA] vaccine, Toubman said.

Goodman wants all companies to be held to the same standard and says they should not be allowed to make up their own rules about unblinding. He told The BMJ that, while he was “very optimistic” about the vaccines, “blowing up the trials” by allowing unblinding “will set a de facto standard for all vaccine trials to come.” And that, he said, “is dangerous.”

Footnotes

  • Correction: On 30 December we amended the final paragraph to clarify Steven Goodman’s comment.

This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage

References

  1. ? Food and Drug Administration. Emergency use authorization for vaccines to prevent covid-19: guidance for industry. 2020. https://www.fda.gov/media/142749/download.
  2. ? Food and Drug Administration. Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting December 10, 2020. 2020. https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download.
  3. ? Food and Drug Administration. Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee December 17, 2020 meeting briefing document. 2020 https://www.fda.gov/media/144434/download.
  4. ? WHO Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Next Steps for Covid-19 Vaccine Evaluation. Placebo-controlled trials of covid-19 vaccines—why we still need them. N Engl J Med2020. doi:10.1056/NEJMp2033538.
  5. ? Weiland CZ. Noah. Many trial volunteers got placebo vaccines. Do they now deserve the real ones? New York Times. 2 Dec 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/health/covid-vaccine-placebo-group.html.
  6. ? Karlin-Smith S. Covid-19 vaccine sponsors want US FDA to find alternatives for control-arm data after first EUA. Pink Sheet. 2020. https://pink.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/PS143143/COVID-19-Vaccine-Sponsors-Want-US-FDA-To-Find-Alternatives-For-Control-Arm-Data-After-First-EUA.
  7. ? Tanne JH. Covid-19: FDA panel votes to approve Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. BMJ2020;371:m4799.  doi:10.1136/bmj.m4799 pmid:33310748 FREE Full TextGoogle Scholar 

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FDA Panel To Lay Regulatory Groundwork For COVID-19 Vaccine

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Noel King and Sydney Lupkin, NPR: October 22, 2020

NOEL KING, HOST:

There are several COVID-19 vaccines in development. But before they are approved, they have to be safe. It’s the FDA’s job to ensure that. Today an FDA advisory panel is meeting for the first time about the coronavirus vaccine. It’ll be making recommendations based not on politically motivated timetables, but on data.

Sydney Lupkin covers the pharmaceutical industry for NPR. Good morning, Sydney.

SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: Good morning.

KING: So what is the deal with this FDA panel? Who’s on it? What are they going to be doing?

LUPKIN: Well, the FDA regularly turns to committees of outside advisers for guidance. Most often, these panels are asked to evaluate specific drugs or health products, and that helps the agency to decide whether to approve these products. Today’s meeting of the committee that looks at vaccines is going to be a little different.

KING: How?

LUPKIN: Like everything else in this pandemic, it’s a bit unusual. The big difference is that the committee isn’t going to be sifting through data for a specific coronavirus vaccine like it normally would. The meeting will be a broader discussion of how the agency should think about safety and effectiveness of these new kinds of vaccines, particularly safety. Dr. Paul Offit is a committee member who works at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

PAUL OFFIT: How robust should safety data be? How long, for example, after the first or second dose should patients be followed or participants be followed for any possible safety issue?

LUPKIN: They’ll be discussing FDA’s existing guidance to companies, which includes some of that information. They’ll also discuss how studies should continue after the first vaccine is given the green light. What do you do for patients who got a placebo once a vaccine is widely available? Of course, the FDA usually heeds the advice of these committees, but it doesn’t have to.

KING: So since there’s no vaccine to review, I would think that in ordinary times, we would not know about this meeting. It would not be news at all. It’s very clear that the FDA wants to make public that this is happening. Why do they want to do that?

LUPKIN: Well, I mean, it gives the American public a window into the process. There’s been so much discussion around whether the FDA will put politics ahead of science. So it’s important to see what’s going on. And the FDA has questions that it wants answers to. Here’s Dr. Miles Braun, a former FDA epidemiologist.

MILES BRAUN: There is a level of humility that the FDA is coming to its advisers with. And I think that’s a good thing. And if they find out they’ve missed some important things, they’ll address those.

LUPKIN: Committee members will hear presentations from scientists at the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The public will also have an opportunity to weigh in. Diana Zuckerman is the president of the National Center for Health Research, an advocacy group slated to speak.

DIANA ZUCKERMAN: We’ve seen the guidance of what they’re telling companies they’re supposed to be studying. Frankly, they’re not very stringent, so we are concerned about them.

LUPKIN: She hopes the meeting will delve into making sure the clinical trials are diverse, for example. She also questions whether the study approach the FDA suggested to manufacturers is long enough to assess vaccine safety.

[…]

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“We Can’t Ever Go to the Doctor with Our Guard Down”: Why Black Women Are 40% More Likely to Die of Breast Cancer

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Maria Aspan: Fortune Magazine June 30, 2020

Racism kills Black Americans, and has long before COVID-19. But its toxic combination with sexism has particularly vast and disastrous consequences for the health of Black women.

While Black people in the U.S. are dying from the COVID-19 pandemic at a disproportionately high rate, this national health crisis underlines an even grimmer status quo: Black Americans are also much more likely to die from far more common and longstanding health problems every day. Black women are at particularly high risk of heart disease and strokes, and are at least three times as likely to die as a result of childbirth as white women, contributing to the overall alarmingly high maternal mortality rate in the United States.

Then there are the shocking statistics around breast cancer, which affects one in every eight women and is the most common non-skin cancer affecting women. Black women are less likely to develop it—but 40% more likely to die from it than white women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The reasons behind this awful disparity are wide-ranging, and include systemic problems both within healthcare and far beyond it. Now the disproportionately high toll of COVID-19 on the Black population in the U.S. and the simultaneous national reckoning over racism are drawing new attention to the racial inequities hurting Black women—and amplifying the voices of doctors, scientists, and public health experts who have long sounded the alarm.

[…]

Women of all races could be legally omitted from government-funded clinical trials before 1993, and are still often under-represented in most research studies of conditions that affect them. Pregnancy and menstrual cycles are thought to “complicate” the results of trials that are mostly conducted on white men, who are seen as the “norm.”

This can obviously backfire. In 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sharply cut its recommended dosages of Ambien for women, after years of complaints about grogginess and falling asleep while driving, when followup tests showed that women metabolized the active ingredient in sleeping aids much more slowly than men.

When it comes to clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies, “the FDA encourages but does not require diversity in clinical trials,” says Diana Zuckerman, a scientist and president of the National Center for Health Research. “Worse, the agency frequently approves drugs and devices for all adults, even if they were primarily studied on white adults.”

One treatment that the FDA approved in April, for the “triple-negative” type of breast cancer that disproportionately affects Black women, was approved after being tested on 108 patients. Eight of them, or 7%, were Black. Another breast-cancer treatment was approved last year after being tested on 234 patients; seven of them, or 3%, were Black.

[…]

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What People With Cancer or Compromised Immune Systems Need to Know about Coronavirus (COVID-19)

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National Center for Health Research: Updated November 15th, 2022

The coronavirus can infect anyone, young or old, healthy or frail. People with cancer and other serious health conditions, and their loved ones, need to be especially careful. Here’s what you need to know.

Some cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and radiation, can weaken the immune system and possibly cause lung problems. People who have weakened immune systems or lung problems are more likely to have serious symptoms if they become infected with this virus. Anyone with cancer in the lungs (whether lung cancer or cancer that has spread to the lungs) is especially at risk if they develop COVID-19.

What is coronavirus?

Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that can cause respiratory illness. The new (novel) coronavirus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the illness it causes is called coronavirus disease 2019, which is why it’s abbreviated as COVID-19.  Since it is new, nobody has immunity from it.

How does COVID-19 spread between people?

The virus usually spreads through close contact with other people, especially through droplets when a person coughs or sneezes – or even when they breathe normally. These droplets can travel through the air and can be inhaled or get into the noses, mouths, or eyes of people nearby.

It is most contagious when the person has symptoms, but it is possible to catch the virus from infected people who have no symptoms at all. In addition, these droplets (as well as fecal matter containing the virus) can end up on surfaces where it can survive for short periods of time.

Symptoms tend to start between 2 and 14 days after coming into contact with the virus. Although some people have compared the symptoms to a cold or flu, not everyone with COVID-19 has those types of symptoms. In fact, some people (especially children, teens, and younger adults) have very mild symptoms or none at all, which is why getting tested is so important before you spend time with others. These symptoms have been reported in people with COVID-19:

·       Fever or chills

·       Cough

·       Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

·       Fatigue

·       Muscle pains

·       Headache

·       New loss of taste or smell

·       Sudden confusion (delirium)

·       Skin rash, redness on toes/fingers

 ·       Chest pains

·       Sore throat

·       Congestion or runny nose

·       Nausea or vomiting

·       Diarrhea

·       Skipping meals

·       Abdominal pains

·       Sneezing

·       Changes in the mouth or tongue

Studies out of the United Kingdom show that the most common symptom associated with COVID-19 is a sore throat, with fever and loss of smell becoming rarer in patients. Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, reported that “COVID starts in two-thirds of people with a sore throat,” which is something to keep an eye out for if you think you may have COVID.

Most people who are infected with this coronavirus have mild symptoms and can recover at home in about 2 weeks. However, symptoms can become severe. These are the ones that require immediate medical attention:

  • Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
  • Persistent chest pain or pressure
  • Confusion or inability to awaken
  • Blueish color in the lips or face

People who are older than 60 or with other medical conditions are more likely to develop severe illness and complications from COVID-19. The most serious complications include pneumonia, stroke, blood clots, organ failure, and death.

How can I protect myself and others?

If you live in the U.S., the best way to protect yourself and others it to get one of the 3 vaccines available. The vaccines are widely available throughout the U.S. in multiple locations from community health centers to local pharmacies. Treatment options for COVID-19 do not cure the virus but FDA has designated treatments can help prevent hospitalization and death. The FDA has approved one drug treatment for COVID-19 and granted emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for 12 drug treatments, two of which were later rescinded. However, several of the remaining 10 treatments are now rarely used. Details about available treatments are described here.

What if you are pregnant?  Research shows that COVID infection is dangerous to pregnant women and that vaccinating pregnant women is safe.  For example, a study of more than 24,000 newborns, of whom almost 17,000 were exposed to a mRNA COVID vaccine in the first or second trimesters when their mothers were vaccinated, found no differences in preterm birth rates, neonatal hospitalizations, congenital abnormalities or infant mortality.  A small study found that most infants born to COVID-vaccinated mothers had persistent antibodies at 6 months, compared with infants born to mothers who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

In contrast to vaccination, a COVID infection increases the chances of serious harm for pregnant women.  A retrospective study of more than 14,000 pregnant women found that those with COVID infections were more likely to die or have serious illness related to hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, postpartum hemorrhage, or infection other than SARS-CoV-2 compared to pregnant women who did not have a COVID infection (13% vs 9%).  All 5 maternal deaths in the study were women who were infected with COVID.

What should I do if I develop symptoms?

If you develop more than one of the symptoms listed above, get tested for COVID, using an at-home test. That’s the fastest way to get results, but keep in mind that the rapid tests (whether at home or anywhere else) are not as accurate as the PCR test. If you have symptoms but your rapid test is negative, test yourself again a day or 2 later, because the tests get more accurate after a few days of symptoms.

If you have symptoms that worry you, call your doctor whether or not you test positive. If you have severe symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, persistent chest pain or pressure, confusion or inability to awaken, or blueish color in the lips or face, you need to call 911. Tell the 911 operator that you think you have COVID-19 so the responders can take the necessary precautions to protect themselves.

People who experience mild symptoms can usually stay home and will recover in about 2 weeks. People are discouraged from simply showing up at the doctor’s office with symptoms: Call them first so you have tell them about your symptoms and any other health problems so that they can help decide what to do. If you do become sick, you can take the following steps to protect others:

  • Get tested for COVID-19, ideally with a PCR test to confirm the results (positive or negative) of your at-home test
  • Wear a face mask
  • Stay home, unless you need essential medical care
  • Stay away from others in your home as much as possible
  • Cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, properly dispose of tissues, and wash your hands
  • Monitor your symptoms and temperature

If you were not tested for COVID-19, you should follow those steps until at least one or two weeks have passed since you first noticed symptoms or your fever or other symptoms go away for 3 full days without medicine. If you have been diagnosed with COVID-19 based on test results, you should follow those same steps until you have 2 negative test results taken 24-hours apart, and your symptoms improve.

What if my cancer treatment is delayed?

When a person is diagnosed with cancer, they are likely to want treatment as soon as possible.  Treatment or testing may seem more urgent than it really is, especially with cancers that often grow slowly, such as prostate cancer or breast cancer. And, if you don’t have COVID-19, you don’t want to be exposed to it during cancer surgery, testing, or follow-up appointments.  Talk to your doctor about what is the best strategy to get the treatment you need when it is safe to do so.

Questions?

We are here to help by answering your questions.  We do not provide medical care.  If you have questions contact info@center4research.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.