News Scan for Oct 30, 2013

News brief

UNICEF: Militants caused 350,000 Pakistani kids to miss polio vaccine

At least 350,000 Pakistani children could not be given a polio vaccine because of opposition from militant groups during a national immunization campaign in September, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) officials told The News International, a Pakistani newspaper.

UNICEF data showed that 664,000 children were not vaccinated during the drive, about 309,000 of them because they were not home when vaccinators visited. Most of the rest missed the immunization because of bans and threats by militants, mainly the Taliban, the story said.

It said 290,000 children in North and South Waziristan have gone unvaccinated since a ban was imposed there in July 2012 by Taliban-linked groups. About 65,000 children missed the immunization because their parents refused it. That includes more than 16,000 refusals in Karachi, where the Taliban influence has grown, according to an expert quoted in the story.

UNICEF has counted 53 polio cases in Pakistan so far this year, according to the story. It said 22 people—17 health workers and 5 security personnel—have been killed in 27 attacks on vaccination teams.
Oct 30 News International story

Study finds much drug resistance in effluent from pharma plants

Researchers studying wastewater from pharmaceutical plants in India found that 86% of bacterial strains they tested were resistant to at least 20 antibiotics, with one strain resistant to 36, according to a study yesterday in PLoS One.

The team in 2007 collected samples from a wastewater treatment plant near Hyderabad, India, that receives effluent from 90 regional bulk drug manufacturers. They identified 93 different bacterial strains and tested them against 39 antibiotics from 12 different classes.

They found that 86% of the strains were resistant to 20 or more antibiotics.

"Although there were no classically-recognized human pathogens among the 93 isolated strains," they wrote, "opportunistic pathogens such as Ochrobactrum intermedium, Providencia rettgeri, vancomycin resistant Enterococci (VRE), Aerococcus sp. and Citrobacter freundii were found to be highly resistant.

"One of the O intermedium strains (ER1) was resistant to 36 antibiotics, while P rettgeri (OSR3) was resistant to 35 antibiotics."

The investigators said their study "provides insight into the mechanisms behind and the extent of multi-drug resistance among bacteria living under an extreme antibiotic selection pressure."
Oct 28 PLoS One study

Flu Scan for Oct 30, 2013

News brief

Google Flu Trends adjusts how it tracks data

Google Flu Trends has adjusted the modeling it uses so that it can more accurately predict US activity after it overemphasized flu severity last season, Google engineer Christian Stefansen said in a blog post yesterday.

The tool predicts influenza activity based on Google search terms, and it tracked with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data fairly well from the end of the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic till early this year, Stefansen wrote. In January, after Google Flu Trends experts noticed differences between its estimates and weekly CDC reports, they examined the cause.

"We found that heightened media coverage on the severity of the flu season resulted in an extended period in which users were searching for terms we've identified as correlated with flu levels," Stefansen wrote. "In early 2013, we saw more flu-related searches in the US than ever before."

After examining several options to fix the model, "We determined that an update using the peak from the 2012-2013 season provided a close approximation of flu activity for recent seasons," Stefansen said. "We will be applying this update to the US flu level estimates for the 2013-2014 flu season, starting from August 1st."

The new model will forecast lower flu levels than last year's model did at a similar point, Stefansen said, which should better approximate CDC data.

A study published about 2 weeks ago found fault with the reliability of Google Flu Trends, saying it missed the first wave of the 2009 pandemic and greatly overestimated the 2012-13 epidemic.
Oct 29 Google blog post
Google Flu Trends home page
Oct 18 CIDRAP News item on study of Google Flu Trends

CDC: Newest H7N9 cases raise no new alarms

The two cases of H7N9 avian influenza in China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in October, the first since Aug 11, are not unexpected and do not change the current risk assessment for the virus, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an Oct 28 update.

The agency points out that after the initial surge of cases at the outbreak's start in April, sporadic cases have continued to occur and that, with the purported seasonal variation in circulation of avian flu viruses, infections in both birds and people may increase as the weather becomes cooler. Forecasting the number of cases is not possible, however, says the agency.

The most recent case, reported by the WHO on Oct 24, involved a 67-year-old farmer who had contact with live poultry, the main source of exposure to date. No sustained human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 virus has been reported from China, nor has the epidemiology of the virus changed, the CDC said.

The WHO's global H7N9 count stands at 137 cases and 45 deaths.
Oct 28 CDC update
May 13 CDC article "H7N9: Is This Flu Something to Worry About?"

$5.5 million from NIAID for adjuvanted pandemic flu vaccine

NanoBio Corporation, an Ann Arbor, Mich., biopharmaceutical company, announced yesterday that it has been awarded initial funding of $5.5 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for support of NanoVax-Panflu, a vaccine that combines the company's proprietary non-emulsion (NE) adjuvant with a plant-based recombinant H5 pandemic influenza antigen.

The adjuvanted vaccine will elicit both systemic and mucosal immunity, the latter crucial in protecting against such pathogens as respiratory viruses that enter the body through mucosal surfaces, says the release.

NanoBio has recently tested NE-adjuvanted vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus and type 2 genital herpes. Says company CEO David Peralta in the release, "The results of these studies very clearly demonstrate the ability of the NE adjuvant to elicit mucosal immunity and the important role this type of immunity plays in protecting against disease."

The total contract is valued at $10 million if all options are exercised, and it includes a future option for work on an NE-adjuvanted vaccine against HIV.
Oct 29 NanoBio press release