This Week’s Highlights:

Volume Ten: Air Date 4.25.22. “A Bivalent Vaccine”

Last week, Moderna announced preliminary data that suggest that a booster dose of a new vaccine candidate may provide a superior response against a wider variety of variants. It is called a bivalent vaccine because it stimulates an immune response against multiple antigens.

A bivalent booster shot that the company began working on a year ago, tailored to fight the original version of the virus and the beta variant, increased the level of virus-blocking antibodies against a variety of variants, including omicron, better than a regular booster.

The study, which was published as a preprint before peer review, is an early proof of concept that the approach may work.

Antibody responses were higher against the ancestral strain, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants at 28 days after the bivalent booster than with the single-valent booster, and were higher against the ancestral strain, Beta, and Omicron at 180 days later. The bivalent booster was well-tolerated, with similar incidence of solicited and unsolicited adverse events compared with the authorized booster.

That particular vaccine formula is not likely to ever be used because Moderna’s current lead booster candidate, which is tuned to block the omicron variant and the original version of the virus, is still in human testing, with results expected by the end of June. This omicron bivalent vaccine will include 32 mutations -many more than the beta variant vaccine candidate.

And, of course, research continues in hopes of developing a truly pan-coronavirus vaccine. Dozens of non-profits, government agencies and vaccine makers have made these candidates a top research priority. Leading the charge, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have earmarked $200 million and $43 million, respectively, for R&D into all-in-one coronavirus shots.

Volume Eleven: Air Date 4.27.22. “Long COVID and Cognition”

In our line of work, when I say words like “brain fog,” “brain shrinkage,” “neurodegeneration,’ “memory problems” or “Brain-blood barrier disruption,” you probably think I’m talking about dementia or Alzheimer’s, right? Well, unfortunately, emerging studies on COVID have found these can also be common symptoms of long COVID – and much of it is only just beginning to be understood.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have just published their first findings on COVID and its effects on cognition, and the prognosis isn’t good. One of the lead researchers, Dr. Lucky Checke, was quoted as saying, “Long COVID has received very little attention politically or medically. It urgently needs to be taken more seriously, and cognitive issues are an important part of this. … The impact on the working population could be huge,”

Here’s some of the key findings of the study (excerpts:)

· “Ongoing symptoms were more severe among those who experienced more severe initial infections,

· investigators also found strong correlations between ongoing cognitive impairment and gastrointestinal and cardiopulmonary complications

· this finding may suggest that brain injury is instead a consequence of greater systemic inflammation throughout the body

· hose previously infected with the virus performed worse on memory tasks but not other cognitive domains – specifically verbal memory.

· Those with the most severe symptoms not only had slower reaction times but also recorded fewer correct answers.”

Because of the cyclical nature of long COVID, the researchers included measures that ruled out the effect of having a bad day on the results – demonstrating that those who were infected with COVID consistently performed worse on memory and accuracy tests than those who were not.

At the conclusion of the study findings, the researchers called for greater research in this area, as well as consideration and funding from lawmakers to support the many people who may now be living with long-term cognitive impairments as a result of COVID – especially as this pandemic transitions into the endemic state. To read more, the article link is in the handouts.

Because supporting people with cognitive challenges is a core competency of ours, perhaps, as a field, we should give collective thought to what we can offer, by way of education, training, and adaptive tools, to aid the plight of those suffering from these conditions.