GOT (RAW) MILK? DON’T — A fifth of the U.S. milk supply contains fragments of avian flu — which suggests the virus might have spread beyond symptomatic dairy herds, POLITICO’s Emily Cadei, David Lim and Marcia Brown report. The news from the FDA on Thursday night comes as the Biden administration and the dairy industry race to convince the public not to worry. Public health experts say the government should be more transparent about its efforts to expand testing and research into bird flu amid an outbreak in cows across multiple states. The pathogen has been found in at least 33 dairy herds across eight states since first being detected among Texas cattle in late March, and virologists say it could be much more widespread than the data suggests. Federal officials and industry executives maintain the discovery of inactive fragments of the virus strain, known as H5N1, in milk sold to consumers is not worrisome in itself — instead, it’s evidence that the pasteurization process is working to neutralize the virus. Raw milk, however, should be avoided. Other safety caveats: The Biden administration has been careful to say that pasteurization is “likely” to inactivate the avian flu virus in milk but acknowledges the detection of the virus in dairy cows “is a novel and evolving situation” and “no studies on the effects of pasteurization on HPAI viruses (such as H5N1) in bovine milk have previously been completed.” Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, questioned why the FDA did not immediately say it would test milk products and expeditiously culture any potential virus fragments found. “Just from a government credibility standpoint, being transparent about what you're doing, it's important,” Nuzzo said. LONG COVID DATA RELEASED — The NIH released data from more than 14,000 adults involved in federal long Covid research Thursday, making it available to researchers. The NIH, which has been researching long Covid through its RECOVER initiative since 2021, said it had uploaded deidentified data to a cloud-based database to “help investigators identify and explore long COVID connections that may benefit from or inform future studies.” Long Covid is a set of symptoms — ranging from annoying to debilitating — experienced after a Covid infection. Advocates for treatment have criticized federal officials for moving too slowly in researching the condition, with few treatment options over three years into the RECOVER Initiative. Federal officials have defended their pace as necessary. “Sometimes research takes as long as it takes to have results,” Admiral Rachel Levine, HHS’ assistant secretary for health, told Pulse earlier this year. “It takes longer than people want, but we want to make sure that we have robust results that will actually help patients.” Researchers can request data from studies conducted between Oct. 29, 2021, and Sept. 15, 2023. The NIH will add new research regularly. TRANQ USE TIED TO INFECTIONS — A rise in bloodstream infections among people who inject drugs observed at a medical center in Vermont coincided with the rise of the illicit use of xylazine, a horse tranquilizer. A CDC study released Thursday found that, during 2022-2023, the University of Vermont Medical Center saw a substantial rise in people with community-acquired group A streptococcal bloodstream infections, mostly among people who inject drugs. This increase came as xylazine became more prominent in the illicit drug supply, with dealers adding it to synthetic fentanyl. Last April, the White House called the deadly tranquilizer, which can cause a user’s flesh to rot, an “emerging threat.” The president signed a bill at the end of last year to coordinate research into the drug at the NIH. According to the study, 64 cases of bloodstream infections were reported at the Vermont Medical Center during 2022-2023, with 45 cases in the first 10 months of 2023. Seventy percent were among patients known to self-inject drugs. Nearly all those patients who self-injected drugs had wounds consistent with xylazine use — which researchers say could contribute to the entry of bacteria causing bloodstream infections. What’s next? Researchers said the study suggests that introducing wound care services as part of substance-use harm reduction can prevent infections.
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