COPD World News - 2026
Week of March 22, 2026
CDC studies suggest slumping flu shot protection
Atlanta, GA - These national trends were mirrored in the nation's most populous state, California. This season's influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) rates against outpatient visits and hospitalizations may be lower than last season's, pushed in part by a viral mismatch between the vaccine virus and circulating strains, according to an interim CDC analysis. Based on U.S. surveillance network data from September 2025 to February 2026, estimated VE rates against influenza A- and B-related outpatient visits for adults ranged from 22% to 34%, and 30% to 41% for those ages 65 and older specifically, while rates against hospitalizations reached 30% and 31%, respectively, reported Patrick Maloney, PhD, of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and colleagues. Among children and adolescents ages 6 months to 17 years, VE rates against outpatient visits ranged from 38% to 41%, while rates against hospitalizations reached 41%, they noted in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). During the 2024-2025 season, VE rates against outpatient visits ranged from 40% for those 65 and older to 60% for children ages 6 months to 4 years, while rates against hospitalizations ranged from 41% in those ages 50-64 years to 61% in kids ages 6 months to 4 years. "Influenza vaccination reduced the likelihood of both influenza-associated outpatient visits and hospitalizations, even with a circulating influenza A(H3N2) virus that is antigenically drifted from the vaccine virus," Maloney and colleagues wrote. "These findings support CDC's recommendation for annual influenza vaccination." During the current flu season, 88% of subtyped influenza A-positive specimens have been H3N2, 93% of which have been an antigenically drifted subclade K version that's different from the 2025-2026 flu vaccine virus. In response, the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee this week backed the World Health Organization's flu vaccine recommendations for the 2026-2027 flu season, which includes adding the influenza A(H3N2) subclade K strain. The CDC recommends routine annual flu vaccination for everyone ages 6 months and older who doesn't have contraindications, including pregnant women. By late February, less than half of U.S. children and adolescents (48%) and adults (47%) were estimated to have received a flu vaccination in the latest season. The CDC's interim VE analysis included data from 142,494 people in three surveillance networks. In outpatient settings, 26% to 32% of adults who tested positive for flu were vaccinated, compared with 35% to 40% of flu-negative patients. Among hospitalized adults, 37% of flu-positive patients and 40% of flu-negative patients were vaccinated. Among children and adolescents in outpatient care, 17% to 26% of flu-positive and 22% to 31% of flu-negative patients were vaccinated. Among hospitalized children and adolescents, 20% to 33% of flu-positive patients and 29% to 43% of flu-negative patients had been vaccinated. These national trends were mirrored in the nation's most populous state, California, according to a separate MMWR report by Sophie Zhu, PhD, of the California Department of Public Health, and colleagues. Among 952,765 flu test results from October 2025 through January 2026, California's overall adjusted VE against influenza A or B was 33%. VE varied by age, peaking at 39% among those ages 6 months to 17 years, and declining to 22% in those ages 65 and older. Among children and older adults, interim VE rates also varied by vaccine type. Among children and adolescents eligible for a live attenuated influenza vaccine, VE reached 55%, while those who received a standard-dose inactivated influenza vaccine had a VE rate of 39%. In adults ages 65 and older, VE was 39% with the recombinant vaccine, 22% with adjuvanted and high-dose vaccines, and 16% with standard-dose inactivated influenza vaccines. Limitations in both reports included the use of preliminary data, relatively limited sample sizes, and the potential for unmeasured confounding.
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/4um58teb
Week of March 15, 2026
National Institute on Ageing new vaccine resource
Toronto, ON - The NIA’s new Provincial and Territorial Vaccine One-Pagers for Adults 65+ make it simple to learn which vaccines are nationally recommended, which vaccines are free, where to get vaccines and you can also learn what’s covered in your province or territory. For more information or to download these one-pagers: https://niageing.ca/provincial-territorial-vaccines
Week of March 8, 2026
Low COPD, asthma diagnosis rates found from COVID-19 pandemic start to late 2024
London, UK - The rates of new diagnoses for COPD and asthma between March 2020 and November 2024 in England were less than what was expected based on patterns before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data published in BMJ. “Our findings suggest that there is likely to be a substantial burden of undiagnosed chronic lung disease as a consequence of pandemic-related disruption,” Mark D. Russell, MD, honorary consultant rheumatologist at King’s College Hospital and National Institute for Health and Care Research advanced fellow and clinical senior lecturer at King’s College London, told Healio. “Delays in diagnosis can substantially impact outcomes for patients, which highlights the importance of identifying cases of undiagnosed asthma and COPD where possible,” Russell said. “Strategies could center on addressing backlogs in lung function testing, symptom awareness campaigns and targeted case-finding initiatives/community outreach programs.” In a population-based, observational cohort study, Russell and colleagues analyzed 29,995,025 individuals registered with general practices in England to uncover how the rates of newly recorded diagnoses for 19 long-term conditions had changed since the COVID-19 pandemic via data from the OpenSAFELY-TPP platform between April 1, 2016, and Nov. 30, 2024. During the first year of the pandemic (March 2020-February 2021), researchers found a new diagnosis rate for COPD of 98.8 per 100,000 population, which was less than the expected diagnosis rate of 223 per 100,000 population modelled using data from the years before the pandemic (April 2016-February 2020). When interpreted together, a 55.7% relative decrease in the rate of new diagnoses for COPD in the first year of the pandemic was found. Notably, this reduction was the largest of the 19 conditions studied. Similar to COPD, the observed new diagnosis rate for asthma in the first year of the pandemic was lower than the expected diagnosis rate (237 vs. 346 per 100,000 population) and corresponded to a 31.5% relative decrease in the rate of new diagnoses. After expanding the timeframe from February 2021 to November 2024, researchers again found that the observed new diagnoses rates for COPD and asthma between March 2020 and November 2024 were less than the expected rates (COPD, 841 vs. 999 per 100,000 population [–15.8% difference]; asthma, 1,370 vs. 1,638 per 100,000 population [–16.4% difference]). When extrapolated to the full population of England, the absolute difference in the expected vs. observed diagnoses rates for asthma was –152,900, meaning 152,900 fewer diagnoses were made between March 2020 and November 2024. For COPD, 90,100 fewer diagnoses were made in this timeframe. The study outlined that asthma had the second largest absolute reduction in diagnoses while COPD had the third largest. “There was a large drop in new diagnoses of COPD (56% decrease) and asthma (32% decrease) early in the COVID-19 pandemic in England,” Russell said. “Diagnosis rates gradually recovered to pre-pandemic rates by 2023; however, the cumulative number of new diagnoses between March 2020 and November 2024 remained far lower than expected, with over 150,000 fewer asthma diagnoses than expected and 90,000 fewer COPD diagnoses. “There are likely to be several factors that have contributed to these deficits, particularly the disruption in lung function testing and associated backlog, and other pressures on the health care system,” he said. Reflecting on the study overall, Russell stressed the importance of secure health data platforms, as they “provide a means through which to highlight changes in disease patterns far earlier than previously possible.” “This could help to inform strategies to address diagnostic deficits, and reduce the impact on patients,” he said.
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/ebbzzrn2
Week of March 1, 2026
National Institute on Ageing releases new shingles report
Toronto, ON - As Canada marks National Shingles Awareness Week, the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) released a new report warning that shingles remains a largely overlooked yet preventable health risk for older Canadians. Shingles infections continue to cause unnecessary pain and long-term complications for individuals and avoidable strain on Canada’s health care system. Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) strongly recommends the recombinant zoster vaccine for adults aged 50 and older, as well as immunocompromised adults aged 18 and older. Despite this recommendation, fewer than four in ten Canadians aged 50 and older have received even a single dose of the shingles vaccine. The new report, The Overlooked Issue of Shingles Infections in Older Canadians and How to Address It, estimates that approximately 130,000 new shingles cases occur in Canada each year. The report also estimates an annual health system impact of approximately $67–82 million, driven primarily by the prevalence of shingles among adults aged 60 and older and its associated complications. To download the report: The Overlooked Issue of Shingles Infections in Older Canadians and How to Address It. (2026)
For more information: www.copdcanada.info/shingles
Week of February 22, 2026
Moderna says FDA refused to review mRNA flu shot
Cambridge, MA - The FDA has refused to review Moderna’s application for its messenger RNA-based influenza vaccine, according to the company. In a press release, Moderna noted that the FDA’s rejection of the vaccine, mRNA-1010, did not come with any safety or efficacy concerns. Instead, in a letter to the company, the FDA said the application lacked an “adequate and well-controlled” study. The letter, which was signed by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), cited the comparator used to evaluate Moderna’s vaccine as the primary issue. In this case, the comparator used was the FDA-approved standard-dose seasonal influenza vaccine, which Prasad said “does not reflect the best-available standard of care.” Moderna said Prasad’s letter is “inconsistent with previous written communications from CBER to Moderna” in 2024, when Moderna submitted its phase 3 study protocol for review, as well as in 2025 upon completion of the phase 3 trial. Specifically, CBER told the company in 2024 that “it would be acceptable to use a licensed standard dose influenza vaccine as the comparator,” according to Moderna. It further recommended the use of a vaccine “preferentially recommended” by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for use in older adults, although specified that the inclusion of an informed consent form with the standard dose would be fine. In 2025, CBER requested supportive analyses on the comparator — which were provided by Moderna — be included with submission and indicated that the data would be significant during the biologics license application review. According to Moderna, at no point did CBER indicate there would be a refusal to review the application because of the comparator. Moderna said it has requested a meeting with CBER to understand the basis for the refusal-to-file letter. “The arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the FDA’s decision — after Moderna had already consulted with them regarding the trial’s characteristics — is of major concern,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said. “Companies need predictability if they are going to invest a billion dollars to develop a new product. If the regulatory pathway is subject to arbitrary changes, they will no longer be willing to make such investments.”
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/4khcm9bm
Week of February 15, 2026
Heart attack, stroke risk rises after serious RSV
New York, NY - A recent retrospective self-controlled case study concludes that the level of risk peaked in the week after a hospital admission but lingered through 6 months. Adults hospitalized with an acute respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection may face a sharp risk of cardiorespiratory events such as heart attack or stroke in the weeks afterward. Compared with a control period preceding infection and after 6 months and beyond, patients had myocardial infarction (MI) rates 2.6 to 8.7 times greater during each of the first 3 weeks following an RSV-related admission (P<0.001 for all), with the level of increased risk highest over those initial 7 days, reported researchers led by Caihua Liang, MD, PhD, of Pfizer in New York City. Stroke rates increased 7.4-fold in that first week, while rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or congestive heart failure (CHF) exacerbations were over 23 times and 12 times higher, respectively. Rates of arrhythmia were 16.5 times greater as well (P<0.001 for all), findings in JAMA Network Open showed. Relative risks remained significant even among patients who had no prior history of cardiorespiratory events. Adults 75 and older saw even greater cardiorespiratory event risks, with MI rates 10.1 times greater and CHF exacerbation rates 14.6 times greater in the first week after an RSV-related admission (P=0.01 for both). "Results of our study support a potential role of RSV infection in triggering cardiorespiratory complications in adults, especially older adults, and present a clinical and economic burden beyond the acute phase of the illness," Liang and colleagues wrote. "Additionally, our study highlights the importance of preventive efforts, such as vaccinations, in decreasing the risk of RSV infection and its complications in adults." RSV infection in the U.S. causes an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 hospitalizations annually among adults 60 and older. Of note, the current study was sponsored by Pfizer, which markets a bivalent RSV prefusion F vaccine (Abrysvo), one of the three RSV vaccines to have received FDA approval. The CDC currently recommends a one-time dose for all adults 75 and older, as well as a single dose for those ages 50 to 74 who have an increased risk of developing severe disease. Researchers from Denmark recently reported trial results showing that RSV vaccine recipients were less likely than the unvaccinated to experience all-cause cardiorespiratory hospitalizations. RSV is not alone, as respiratory illnesses such as influenza and COVID-19 have been linked to greater cardiorespiratory risks. For their study, Liang and colleagues used the Optum Market Clarity Dataset to analyze 11,887 adult patients ages 18 and older who had an RSV-related hospitalization and a cardiorespiratory event. Cardiorespiratory events included MI (2,421 events), stroke (1,622 events), COPD exacerbations (5,018 events), CHF exacerbations (4,204 events), and arrhythmia (5,844 events). Patients were their own cases and controls, with two observation periods. The control period included more than 21 days before hospital admission or RSV diagnosis, plus more than 180 days after admission or diagnosis. The case period ran from the date of hospital admission or RSV diagnosis to 180 days after. Patients' mean age was 69 years, 61% were women. Post-hospitalization cardiorespiratory event rates at 180 days fell for all conditions, though they remained significantly greater than the control period for stroke (incidence rate ratio 1.6, P<0.001). The researchers cautioned that the study findings may not be applicable to uninsured populations and that the use of ICD-10-CM codes only to identify cardiorespiratory events may have led to misclassification and bias. In addition, limited RSV testing led to low sensitivity among older adults, which may have excluded some RSV cases with cardiorespiratory events.
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/56t46zwt
Week of February 8, 2026
COPD detected early with AI-powered electrocardiogram interpretation
New York, NY - An AI-powered model that analyzes electrocardiograms was able to accurately detect COPD early in internal testing and external validation, according to data published in eBioMedicine. “I was excited to see that we could diagnose COPD even 6 months to 15 months earlier than normally would come to attention [with the AI-powered model],” Monica Kraft, MD, Murray M. Rosenberg Professor of Medicine, system chair of the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine and associate dean for clinical affairs at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Healio. “In a perfect world, I’d love it to be even more than that, but it’s a good start that the machine learning algorithms were such that we could be able to see changes very early in the disease,” Kraft said. In this study, Kraft and colleagues trained a convolutional neural network model using 208,231 standard 10-second, 12-lead ECGs from 18,225 patients with COPD and 552,771 ECGs from 49,356 age-, sex- and race-matched controls to determine if the model could correctly detect COPD. “COPD is usually diagnosed when a disease is quite advanced because the lung function tests that we use aren’t always available in primary care, so symptoms have to be at a certain point where patients are referred to specialists and undergo testing,” Kraft said. “By then, it’s very late in the development of a disease. “We know that changes in the lung actually affect the way the heart pumps and the electrical system, so certain changes on ECG are consistent with changes in the lung,” she added. “We already know this, but they’re very subtle early on, so applying an AI model with this was the idea so that we can really take into account these subtle changes that aren’t going to be as visible to the human eye.” As Healio previously reported, an AI algorithm had high discriminative ability in identifying pulmonary hypertension-likely patients from control patients at and before diagnosis using ECG data. Compared with ECGs from a set of holdout patients (internal testing), the study reported “robust performance” from the AI-powered model, as demonstrated by an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.8 on a scale of 0.5 to 1. Higher values in this metric signal better performance. Similarly, researchers found elevated AUROCs with use of the model when tested against ECGs from patients from Mount Sinai Morningside (0.82) and with ECGs from patients with COPD within the UK BioBank (0.75) during external validation. Notably, the internal testing cohort included 4,293 patients (57,053 ECGs) with a recorded smoking history of at least 10 pack-years, and in this set of patients, the AI-powered model had an AUROC of 0.8. The model’s “robust performance” continued to be seen in six clinically distinct arrhythmia subgroups — atrial arrhythmias, ventricular arrhythmias, conduction abnormalities, junctional rhythms, paced rhythms and accessory pathways — with an AUROC range of 0.77 to 0.81, according to the study. “This suggests that the model’s discriminative ability generalizes beyond rhythm-specific features and supports its capacity to detect COPD-relevant patterns even in the presence of varying underlying cardiac rhythms,” Kraft and colleagues wrote.
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/342cvd55
Week of February 1, 2026
Scientists find ‘master regulator’ that could reverse brain aging
Albuquerque, New Mexico - Scientists at the University of New Mexico have uncovered an unexpected connection between the immune system and brain health. Their research shows that OTULIN, an enzyme known for regulating immune activity, also plays a major role in producing tau, a protein closely tied to Alzheimer's disease, other neurodegenerative disorders, brain inflammation, and aging. The findings suggest that a single immune related protein may influence several processes involved in how the brain deteriorates over time. In a study published in the journal Genomic Psychiatry, the research team found that disabling OTULIN completely stopped tau production and removed existing tau from neurons. They achieved this by either using a specially designed small molecule or by knocking out the gene responsible for making OTULIN. The experiments were carried out in two types of human cells. One group came from a patient who had died from late onset sporadic Alzheimer's disease. The other came from a commonly used line of human neuroblastoma cells that serve as a standard model in neuroscience research. The discovery could open new avenues for treating Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, according to Karthikeyan Tangavelou, PhD, a senior scientist in the laboratory of Kiran Bhaskar, PhD, a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the UNM School of Medicine. "Pathological tau is the main player for both brain aging and neurodegenerative disease," Tangavelou said. "If you stop tau synthesis by targeting OTULIN in neurons, you can restore a heathy brain and prevent brain aging." The gene that encodes OTULIN (an acronym for "OTU deubiquitinase with linear linkage specificity") provides instructions for making a protein involved in inflammation control and autophagy. Autophagy is the process cells use to clear away damaged proteins and other waste. Researchers were originally studying OTULIN for its role in cellular cleanup when they discovered its unexpected influence on tau production. Tangavelou described the finding as a "groundbreaking discovery that will be helpful to solve a complex puzzle in various neurological diseases and aging of the brain." Under normal conditions, tau helps stabilize microtubules that give neurons their structure. Problems arise when tau undergoes phosphorylation, a chemical modification that causes it to form tangled clumps inside neurons. These neurofibrillary tangles are a defining feature of Alzheimer's disease and more than 20 other neurodegenerative disorders, collectively known as tauopathies. As treatments targeting amyloid beta plaques have shown limited clinical benefit, researchers have increasingly shifted their focus toward tau. Bhaskar's lab has already developed (and is planning to test in patients) a vaccine designed to prevent the buildup of toxic tau proteins. The study also revealed another unexpected result. When OTULIN was deactivated and tau disappeared, neurons showed no signs of damage or stress. "Neurons can survive without tau," Tangavelou said. "They are looking healthy, even with the tau removed."
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/zf4j2m5u
Week of January 25, 2026
Study details worse respiratory symptoms in those exposed to cannabis smoke
Montreal, PQ - This Canadian study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, shows objective evidence of the adverse physiological, imaging and molecular changes in cannabis smoke-exposed small airways that may contribute to long-term respiratory morbidity. The growing popularity of cannabis smoking in an era of legalisation has prompted concerns about respiratory health. The researcher’s objective was to investigate clinical, and airway epithelial transcriptomic features associated with cannabis smoking. This cross-sectional study analysed data from 139 cannabis-smoking participants categorised by joint-year exposure (low: ≤5; moderate: >5–20; high: >20 joint-years) and 57 never-smokers. The researchers evaluated respiratory symptom questionnaire scores, lung function measurements, chest computed tomography and hyperpolarised 129Xenon pulmonary magnetic resonance imaging measurements across groups. They compared the expression of immune response signatures and mucin genes in airway epithelial brushings collected from bronchoscopy. Using air–liquid interface cell cultures, the researchers quantified epithelial mucin 5AC (MUC5AC) protein and correlated its expression with clinical outcomes. They found that among cannabis-smoking participants (48% male, median age of 27 years), 84% reported current or former cigarette smoking or vaping. Cannabis-smoking groups reported worse respiratory symptoms than never-smokers. High joint-year cannabis-smoking participants showed lower pre-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s to forced vital capacity ratio, lower forced expiratory flow at 25–75% of the forced vital capacity, more radiographic emphysema and more ventilation abnormalities than never-smokers. Airway epithelial brushings from cannabis-smoking participants demonstrated an increased type 2 immune response, decreased type 17 immune response and higher MUC5AC gene expression than non-cannabis-smoking participants. Epithelial MUC5AC protein expression in cell cultures correlated with worse clinical outcomes and imaging abnormalities. The researchers concluded that cannabis smoking, particularly at high exposures, is associated with worse respiratory symptoms, lower lung function, functional imaging abnormalities and dysregulated immune responses in the airway epithelium. These observations suggest respiratory harm associated with cannabis smoking and underscore the concerns for future respiratory morbidities related to persistent cannabis use.
For more information: https://bit.ly/4gvZqGf
Week of January 18, 2026
Mortality odds elevated in middle-aged smokers with low vs. high lung function
Boston, MA - Having low lung function as a middle-aged smoker without airway obstruction raised the likelihood for all-cause mortality, according to findings published in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation. “Everyday clinicians can help patients identify their risk of developing COPD and other comorbidities by performing a simple lung function test,” Yohannes Tesfaigzi, PhD, professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, said. “Measure of lung function over 2 years can show how rapid the lung function is declining.” In an analysis of data from the longitudinal Lovelace Smokers Cohort study, Tesfaigzi and colleagues evaluated 830 current and ever smokers aged 40 to 60 years without baseline airway obstruction to uncover how the odds for all-cause mortality at 17 years and the prevalence of comorbidities over this time period differ between smokers with low lung function (baseline FEV1 percentage predicted < 88%; n = 277) and smokers with high lung function (baseline FEV1 percentage predicted > 99%; n = 277). The assessed middle-aged smokers had at least two spirometry measurements over 18 months, according to the study. At baseline, those with low lung function significantly differed from those with high lung function in terms of age (mean, 51 years vs. 49 years), sex (women, 86% vs. 79%), BMI (mean, 30.4 kg/m2 vs. 27.8 kg/m2), pack years (mean, 38 vs. 32) and three lung function measures: FEV1 (mean, 2.33 L vs. 3.28 L), FEV1 percentage predicted (mean, 79% vs. 108%) and FVC (3.02 L vs. 4.09 L). Researchers also looked at outcomes in a 17-year long-term follow-up cohort made up of 87 smokers. This cohort included 26 adults with low lung function (mean age, 50 years; 81% women; mean BMI, 30.6 kg/m2) and 61 adults with high lung function (mean age, 49 years; 79% women; mean BMI, 27.9 kg/m2). Similar to the larger low and high lung function groups, adults in the long-term follow-up cohort with low lung function significantly differed from those with high lung function in terms of FEV1 (mean, 2.22 L vs. 3.24 L), FEV1 percentage predicted (75% vs. 105%) and FVC (2.89 L vs. 4.03 L). At a 10-year follow-up, adults with low vs. high lung function in the long-term follow-up cohort had lower FEV1 (1.91 L vs. 2.7 L),FEV1 percentage predicted (78% vs. 104%) and FVC (2.66 L vs. 3.6 L). Between baseline and this follow-up period, the low lung function group had a drop of 0.23 L in mean FVC and 0.31 L in mean FEV1. In the high lung function group, mean FVC fell by 0.43 L and mean FEV1 fell by 0.54 L. Among those in the overall cohort with low lung function at baseline, the all-cause mortality rate was 16.3%, and researchers reported that this was significantly higher than the 6.5% rate among those with high lung function. Aligning with the above finding, smokers with low vs. high lung function faced significantly elevated odds for all-cause mortality (OR = 2.29; 95% CI, 1.22-4.46). Following adjustment for age, sex, BMI, race, pack-years, current smoking status and comorbidities, researchers continued to find that the low lung function group had a significantly lower survival probability than the high lung function group as years passed since baseline. “The fact that many with low lung function and a rapid decline in lung function were found dead 10 years later was very surprising,” Tesfaigzi told Healio. “This shows that people should consider having lung function testing early in life for all individuals.”
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/5n8p33nv
Week of January 11, 2026
Influenza remains a major health burden despite the use of vaccines.
Honolulu, Hawaii - A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that influenza remains a major health burden despite the use of licensed vaccines. Nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) influenza vaccines have shown promising immunogenicity against influenza and an acceptable safety profile in a phase 1–2 trial. In this phase 3 trial, researchers randomly assigned healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years to receive either a quadrivalent modRNA influenza vaccine (modRNA group) or a licensed inactivated quadrivalent influenza vaccine (control group) during the 2022–2023 influenza season in the United States, South Africa, and the Philippines. The primary end point was relative efficacy, defined by the reduction in the percentage of participants with laboratory-confirmed influenza associated with influenza-like illness at least 14 days after vaccination with the modRNA vaccine, as compared with the control vaccine, and analyzed for noninferiority and superiority. Immunogenicity was evaluated by means of a hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) assay. They assessed reactogenicity within 7 days after vaccination, adverse events through 1 month, and serious adverse events through 6 months. They assessed vaccine efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety in the modRNA group. A total of 18,476 participants underwent randomization: 9225 were assigned to receive the modRNA vaccine and 9251 to receive the control vaccine. The relative efficacy of the modRNA vaccine as compared with the control vaccine against influenza-like illness was 34.5% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.4 to 53.9) on the basis of 57 cases in the modRNA group and 87 cases in the control group, a finding that met the criteria for both noninferiority and superiority. Cases of influenza-like illness were caused by A/H3N2 and A/H1N1 strains but almost no B strains. The noninferiority of the antibody response on HAI assay was shown for influenza A strains but not for B strains. Primarily mild or moderate reactogenicity was observed in both vaccine groups but was reported more frequently in the modRNA group (overall local reactions, 70.1% vs. 43.1%; overall systemic events, 65.8% vs. 48.7%). Fever occurred in 5.6% of the participants in the modRNA group and in 1.7% of those in the control group. Adverse event profiles were similar in the two groups. The researchers concluded that the modRNA vaccine had statistically superior efficacy over the control vaccine, with greater immune responses to A/H3N2 and A/H1N1 strains but was associated with more reactogenicity events.
For more information: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2416779
Week of January 4, 2026
Canada needs a national vaccination registry
Hamilton, ON – This excerpt is taken from an opinion piece, written by Dawn Bowdish*, that appeared in a recent edition of Maclean’s magazine. “Measles is the most contagious virus on earth. It creates scenarios that could have been ripped from science fiction—for example, a woman walks into a room where someone coughed two hours earlier and catches a virus that could permanently damage her brain. As an immunologist, scientist and professor of medicine, my life’s work is understanding how vaccinations can prevent situations exactly like that one and protect health in the long term. You could say I’m the opposite of an anti-vaxxer. After measles broke out in New Brunswick last October, I was hit with a sinking feeling. Its rapid spread either meant that Canada’s health-care system didn’t have the resources it needed to control it, or our MMR vaccine uptake wasn’t as high as it should’ve been—or both. Uptake rates for most childhood vaccinations have been dropping in Canada for years; in the case of MMR, they fall way short of the threshold required for herd immunity. People have blamed the misinformation that ran wild during the pandemic—say, that vaccines are linked to fertility issues—but that’s only part of the problem. In many provinces, kids are still required to be vaccinated for a range of diseases, including measles, before they’re allowed to attend public school. But enforcement for showing proof of vaccination has dwindled. Most provinces also recently added “conscience exemption” to the list of non-medical reasons to opt out of vaxxes—no doctor sign-off required. One of the biggest barriers to vaccinations, however, is tracking. Thanks to the family doctor shortage, many families simply miss their jab appointments without realizing it; they don’t have a medical office to remind them. They struggle to independently navigate Canada’s complex vaccine schedule, which mandates 12 different shots for kids in the first year and a half of their life. It’s no coincidence that we now rank in the top 10 countries globally for measles outbreaks, alongside countries like Yemen and Afghanistan. We’re the only G7 country without a national vaccination registry—and we need one stat.”
For more information: https://tinyurl.com/4ywxuc4c
Dawn Bowdish is a professor of medicine at McMaster University and the executive director of the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health.