Anvisa (Brazil's drug regulator) has just announced it has denied the request to import Sputnik V vaccine because of absence of data & issues with the development of the vaccine, including vax quality. g1.globo.com/bemestar/vacin… Meeting still streaming ..1/n
...Unanswered questions about the vaccine include basic biological data about its actions in the body, data on adverse events (including questions about thromboembolic events) ...2/n
...I think with all the focus on Lancet paper for phase 3, people forget how little study there had been of this vax: eg only 38 people in phase 1/2 trial version with lots of problems. (absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2020/09/11/pha…) Assessing a vaccine isn't only about the phase 3 trial results...3/n
...They pointed to issues with reporting of adverse events in the phase 3 trial (I wrote about this here: absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2021/03/16/com…). Remember: deficiencies in a trial/study program are not the same as deficiencies in a vax, but they affect how certain we can be about the vax...4/n
..*So* wishing I understood Portuguese properly right now! Big thanx to @gutoaqui who's translating these slides as I post them.
Here pointing to uncertainties around vax efficacy because of biases that could arise from the way they ascertained & determined cases of Covid-19..5/n
... This is depressing. Basically, the developers have failed to provide enough data to back up their claims of efficacy & have left a string of open questions about te vaccine's development. ...6/n
...Questions about quality control of manufacturing. (I'm now at the point I'm glad I don't understand enough Portuguese - this is too depressing) ...7/n
...Distilling some of the fundamental issues lacking here: assurance of potency of the formulation (if I understand that correctly) & basic issues about how replication for the adenoviral vectors in both shots...8/n
...The catalog of what's missing to explain the action of these vaccines continues: here basics about spike protein & replication of the Ad26 component (the 1st dose of Sputnik V). (I'm only including some of the slides, not all of them) ...9/n
...Onto trying to establish the credentials of the manufacturing sites: couldn't, if I'm understanding this correctly.
I've seen enough. This seems very thorough work again from Anvisa. For those who want to see more, a reminder it's here 10/10
PS: The adenovirus in Covid vax is not supposed to replicate (it's supposed to be just a carrier). Specific critical detail on Anvisa's Sputnik V evaluation I missed: replicating adenovirus was identified in every lot of the vax inspected coronavirus.atarde.com.br/diretoria-da-a… HT @swiftshoes
Important PPS: the Ad26 vax lots (first Sputnik V shot) not yet analyzed - this is what was identified in every lot of the Ad5 vax (2nd shot) HT @Dereklowe
FDA report on the Novavax vaccine questions whether there's a causal relationship for myocarditis/pericarditis after the vax. This 🧵digs into their report, the Novavax response & submission, & rollout data... (1/8)
...FDA report on Friday lists 6 cases in vaxed arms of 2 trials, 4 of which don't have a specific possible alternative cause identified. This was versus 1 in placebo (not injection-related). The 2 trials had ca 27,000 vaxed participants... fda.gov/media/158912/d…
...FDA report expressed concern because a pre-marketing database of ~40,000 had more potential cases, & this hadn't been a pre-marketing safety signal for mRNA vaccines: so to them it raised Q if it could be higher for this vax than for mRNA vaxes...
#tbt This is Toshiko Yuasa, the first woman physicist from Japan. It's 1940 & with her science prospects at home blocked by gender prejudice, she'd managed to get into wartime Paris to do physics research... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiko_Y…
...The drawcard in Paris was Marie Curie's daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie & her husband Frédéric. Yuasa was inspired by their papers on artificial radioactivity.
Here's Toshiko & Irène at the Joliot-Curie home in 1941... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ir%C3%A8n…
...Yuasa was born in downtown Tokyo in 1909, the next-to-youngest of 7 children. Her mother came from a long line of poets, in the family of a renowned 19th century scholar, Tachibana Moribe. Her father was an engineer & inventor who worked at the patent office...
When it hit me that I knew nothing about early women scientists in Ukraine, I went down a mind-blowing rabbit hole...
So hard to pick, but I whittled down to 15 amazing stories of women born before WWII.
Today, part 1, with the first 5 women 🧵 @PLOSabsolutelymaybe.plos.org/2022/04/27/ear…
...This is Maria V. Pavlova (1854-1938), at her desk in the 1920s with fossils. She corrected an error in assumptions about the ancestry of horses...
...Sofia Okunevska-Morachevska (1865-1926) was an activist doctor - the 1st medically qualified woman in the Austro-Hungarian empire, not just Ukraine....
Such terribly sad news: the loss of Chris Del Mar, a giant of the Australian – and global – evidence community.
💔 for Tammy & family.
You'll hear a lot about this wonderful, lovable person & his amazing life ....
...Here's a quick overview from late last year, when Chris was awarded the Order of Australia - one of my faves because of the lovely family photo.... www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/profess…
...I want to add to the remembrances & accolades for Chris, memories of a specific stream of his life - patient empowerment. From back in the early 2000s when we used to use this photo. He was the Chair of the Board of the consumer health information NGO I headed back then...
1st Covid human challenge trial results shows it is feasible: 34 people were inoculated with a very low dose. It was enough to infect 18 people (53%) & 89% of them developed symptoms ...🧵 researchsquare.com/article/rs-112… HT @HelenBranswell
..Viral shedding quantifiable within 40 hours. They concluded up to 44% of infections would happen before virus can be detected. Results support 10-day isolation periods & professionally-administered LFA/RAT was "highly reliable in predicting the disappearance of viable virus"...
...The people were 18-29 years old, & stayed in individual negative pressure quarantine rooms. No safety signals in these first 28 days of follow-up. (They'll follow them for a year)...
Great relief: it's a critical vax for the COVAX supply. Protein subunit vax, with a Dynavax adjuvant & alum. Records on it: zotero.org/groups/2528572… ...1/n HT @lutl88
...The trial has 30,128 participants in Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Belgium. All infections sequenced were variants. Because of vax programs in these countries, not many older people...2/n
...For people without previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, 207 tested positive & 146 of these sequenced so far. 73% were Delta (most of them), Mu, & Gamma...3/n