Reasons For Receiving Or Not Receiving Bivalent COVID-19 Booster Vaccinations
Bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccines, developed to protect against both ancestral and Omicron BA.4/BA.5 variants, are recommended to increase protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe disease. Relatively few eligible U.S. adults have received a bivalent booster dose, however, and reasons for low coverage are unclear. As indicated in the January 20, 2023 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, an opt-in Internet survey of 1,200 COVID-19–vaccinated U.S. adults was conducted to assess reasons for receiving or not receiving a bivalent booster dose. The most common reasons cited for not receiving the bivalent booster dose were lack of awareness of eligibility for vaccination (23.2%) or of vaccine availability (19.3%), and perceived immunity against infection (18.9%). Participants who still had not received the booster dose most commonly reported being too busy to be vaccinated (35.6%). To help increase bivalent coverage, officials should use evidence-based strategies to convey information.
Mortality In The United States, 2021
A new Data Brief (No. 456--December 2022) from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) presents final 2021 U.S. mortality data on deaths and death rates by demographic and medical characteristics. Among the findings are the following: Life expectancy for the U.S. population in 2021 was 76.4 years, a decrease of 0.6 year from 2020. The age-adjusted death rate increased by 5.3% from 835.4 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 2020 to 879.7 in 2021. Age-specific death rates increased from 2020 to 2021 for each age group one year and older. Nine of the 10 leading causes of death in 2021 remained the same as in 2020. Heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19 remained the top three leading causes. The infant mortality rate was 543.6 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021. The change in infant mortality from 2020 was not statistically significant.
HEALTH TECHNOLOGY CORNER
Passive Monitoring By Smart Toilets For Precision Health
Precision health is an approach to prevent, diagnose, and monitor disease using data gleaned from an individual’s biological information. Passive monitoring in a smart home setting, where appliances and devices are connected and controlled automatically, may provide such information. As described in the February 1, 2023 issue of Science Translational Medicine, of the possible locations in a smart home, the bathroom, and more specifically the toilet, is particularly well suited for such passive sensors. A “smart toilet” not only can monitor standard health characteristics, including temperature, heart rate, and oxygenation through sensors in the toilet seat, but also can collect biological samples (i.e., urine and stool) that contain useful health information. Yet, a reluctance to discuss excreta openly hampers the development and acceptance of smart toilets, which hold the potential to integrate urine and stool analyses seamlessly as part of routine toileting events and to serve as a gateway to the “digitalization” of health care in the home.
Use Of Peptide 3D-Printing Inks To Advance Regenerative Medicine
Is it possible to build complex structures for housing cells using a material as soft as Jello? Scientists at Rice University believe that 3D printing represents a primary fabrication strategy used in biomedical research as recent efforts have focused on the 3D printing of hydrogels to create structures that better replicate the mechanical properties of biological tissues. As described in a study published on January 4, 2023 in the journal Advance Materials, these investigators envision that eventually the goal is to print structures with cells and grow mature tissue in a petri dish. These tissues then can be transplanted to treat injuries, or used to learn about how an illness works and to test drug candidates. There have been other attempts to 3D-print using other self-assembling peptides, but this effort is the first time that any self-assembling peptide system has been used to 3D-print such complex structures successfully. The structures were printed with either positively charged or negatively charged multidomain peptides.