Study uncovers reasons Americans did not get booster vaccines

More than 80% of the people who were eligible to receive a COVID-19 booster last fall did not. New research is identifying the reasons why.

2023-10-03

(Press-News.org) The paper, “Understanding low bivalent COVID-19 booster uptake among US adults,” was published in the journal Vaccine.

“Our results indicate that we have a lot more work to do in terms of educating the public and health care providers about the importance of staying up to date on COVID-19 boosters,” said first author Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the Zuckerman College of Public Health, who led the research with associate professor of epidemiology Kristen Pogreba-Brown, PhD, MPH.

Nearly 40% of survey participants reported they did not get a booster shot because of a prior infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The second-most common reason was concern about vaccine side effects (31.5%), followed by believing that the booster would not provide additional protection over the vaccines already received (28.6%) or that it would not protect from SARS-CoV-2 infection (23.1%).

Some of the answers provided differed by characteristics such as age, ethnicity and education, suggesting that a variety of strategies may be needed to improve vaccination rates.

This project was conducted through Arizona CoVHORT, a longitudinal study launched in May 2020 that tracks the acute and long-term impacts of SARS-CoV-2 infection among Arizonans. The researchers sent a questionnaire to CoVHORT participants asking if they had gotten the booster and, if not, to select the reason or reasons for not having done so.

As the next COVID-19 booster rolls out this fall, the investigators hope the results can help design interventions to ensure that more people are protected from the latest SARS-CoV-2 variants.

“Our results indicate that many people don’t know that a booster provides additional protection even if they have already been infected or that the effectiveness of prior boosters wanes over time due to new variants,” Jacobs said. “So it’s important to get another booster as we head into the fall and winter.”

The Arizona CoVHORT study is continuing to enroll participants in conjunction with a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the prevalence and symptoms of long COVID.

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

Study uncovers reasons Americans did not get booster vaccines 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Texas engineers land semiconductor grants through CHIPS Act-backed NSF program

2023-10-03

A pair of Cockrell School research teams are part of a massive semiconductor grant program from the National Science Foundation that includes funds from industry leaders and the federal CHIPS Act. The projects are part of the NSF Future of Semiconductors (FuSe) program through a public-private partnership between NSF and four major tech companies: Ericsson, IBM, Intel and Samsung. FuSe aims to enable rapid progress in new semiconductor technologies and manufacturing as well as workforce development. Altogether, the program will support 24 research and ...

Gut bacteria found in wild wolves may be key to improving domestic dogs’ health

2023-10-03

BEND, Ore. – Gut microbes found in wild wolves may be the key to alleviating a debilitating gastrointestinal condition common to domestic dogs, according to a study led by researchers at Oregon State University – Cascades. In a paper published in Applied Microbiology, the authors report a novel strain of Paenibacillus bacteria with characteristics of a probiotic – an organism that conveys a health benefit to the host. In this case, the benefit would be to head off canine inflammatory ...

Host genetics helps explain childhood cancer survivors’ mortality risk from second cancers

2023-10-03

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – October 02, 2023) The population of childhood cancer survivors in the U.S. is increasing, with an overall childhood cancer survival rate greater than 85% five years after diagnosis. However, survivors can still be at increased risk of various health conditions, including second cancers. Using data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study (St. Jude Life), scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified a genetic ...

How floods kill, long after the water has gone – global decade-long study

2023-10-03

With New York declared a state of emergency following flash flooding, there is increasing concern such events will become more common globally. Now a study led by Monash University scientists in Australia has found that people impacted by a flooding event are at significantly increased risk of dying – including heart and lung problems – in a crucial window between three and six weeks after the event, even after the flooding has dissipated. The study, published today in the BMJ, found that the risk of dying increased and persisted for up to 60 days (50 days for cardiovascular mortality) after a flooded day - increasing by for 2.1% for all-cause deaths, 2.6% for cardiovascular ...

USC joins LA-area stem cell institutes in forming a regenerative medicine consortium

2023-10-03

USC is partnering with seven of Los Angeles’ leading regenerative medicine institutes to form the Los Angeles and surrounding area regenerative medicine consortium (LA-RMC), with the goal of fulfilling the promise of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM): to develop laboratory discoveries into treatments for patients with unmet medical needs. CIRM, the voter-created agency that provides public funding for stem cell research in California, is dedicated to advancing regenerative medicine, which uses stem cells and related approaches to treat disease and disorders. Regenerative ...

When cells go boom: study reveals inflammation-causing gene carried by millions

2023-10-03

Australian researchers at WEHI have found that a genetic change that increases the risk of inflammation, through a process described as ‘explosive’ cell death, is carried by up to 3% of the global population. The study may explain why some people have an increased chance of developing conditions like inflammatory bowel disease or suffer more severe reactions to infections with bacteria like Salmonella. At a glance MLKL is a gene essential to triggering necroptotic cell death – a natural process that protects our body from infection. In some people this process can go awry and ...

Study from Fukushima shows even low doses of radiation may contribute to diabetes

2023-10-03

New research to be presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), suggests that exposure to low doses of radiation may contribute to an increased risk of diabetes. The study by Dr Huan Hu and Dr Toshiteru Ohkubo from the Japanese National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health involved more than 6,000 out of around 20,000 emergency workers who responded to the radiation accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was hit by a huge tsunami in March 2011. Substantial amounts of radioactive materials were released into the environment following explosions at the ...

Worldwide audit finds testosterone replacement improves blood sugar control in men with type 2 diabetes

2023-10-03

Real-world data from an ongoing international audit of testosterone deficiency in men with type 2 diabetes, being presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), suggests that testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) improves glycaemic control for up to 2 years. The early data from 37 centres across 8 countries who have so far joined the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD) audit [1], suggest that the reason that HbA1c (a measure of average blood sugar levels over the past 2-3 months) continues ...

Semaglutide significantly improves blood sugar control and weight loss in adults with type 2 diabetes for up to 3 years in real-world study

2023-10-03

New research presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), shows that treatment with the drug semaglutide significantly improves blood sugar control and weight loss in adults with type 2 diabetes for up to three years. “Our long-term analysis of semaglutide in a large and diverse cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes found a clinically relevant improvement in blood sugar control and weight loss after 6 months of treatment, comparable with that seen in randomised trials”, says Professor Avraham Karasik from the Institute of Research and Innovation at Maccabi Health Services ...

Drinking dark tea every day may help control blood sugar to reduce diabetes risk

2023-10-03

Drinking dark tea every day may help to mitigate type 2 diabetes risk and progression in adults through better blood sugar control, suggests new research at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct). The study, by researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Southeast University in China, found that compared with never tea drinkers, daily consumers of dark tea had 53% lower risk for prediabetes and 47% reduced risk for type 2 diabetes, even after taking into account established risk factors known to drive the risk for diabetes, including age, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5