Good Day BIO: How to beat the tripledemic

Everyone’s talking about the so-called “tripledemic,” but we already have the tools to beat it. And what’s better than sliced bread? How about climate-resistant wheat? We look at new developments. (715 words, 3 minutes, 34 seconds)

Three-pillar approach can beat the ‘tripledemic’

The “tripledemic” of respiratory diseases we face is new, but the solutions are not: vaccination, testing, and treatment.

How sick are we? Among officially recorded U.S. tests, 17.8% test positive for COVID-19, 14.7% for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and 6% for flu-like respiratory adenoviruses, CDC says. Rhino-enterovirus, parainfluenza, and metapneumovirus are also circulating, Dr. Jamie Deeter of Roche Diagnostics told Bio.News.

Hospitals are reporting overflows in various locations—like Fresno, Calif., where ambulances are now ordered to bring only the most urgent cases to overburdened emergency rooms.

Vaccination is the first of “three pillars to preparing for the upcoming season, as well as any other season,” says Dr. Deeter. “It’s okay that the season has already started. It’s never too late to get that protection.”

The next pillar is testing, which is easy to do at home for COVID-19, but Dr. Deeter recommends visiting your doctor to check for all respiratory illnesses.

The third pillar is treatment. The speedy development of new antivirals for COVID-19, like Remdesivir and Paxlovid, has been as impressive as vaccine development. Effective and long-established therapeutics for influenza include Tamiflu, Relenza, Rapivab, and Xofluza.

If you haven’t already, schedule your COVID and flu vaccines at www.vaccines.gov. Recent breakthroughs make a truly universal flu shot likely, but current shots, based on yearly projections of what will be circulating, are very effective. GSK and Pfizer are making progress with RSV vaccines that could protect us in the near future.

Science has given us the tools to beat the tripledemic—read more here.


More Health News: 

Newsweek (Opinion): Pandemic preparedness is as vital as military readiness
“Our 117th Congress will shortly look to pass, as it has done for the past 60 years, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)…However, there is no similar process for pandemic preparedness policy and funding; and this is somewhat jarring, as COVID-19 has cost more American lives than all U.S. wars combined since the Civil War,” writes Anand Parekh, MD, MPH, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and former deputy assistant secretary of health.

Better than sliced bread: Biotech's climate-resistant wheat

Putting bread on the table will become more challenging as climate change pressures wheat crops, but biotechnology is working on solutions.

Extreme climate is hurting wheat harvests. “Climate change-related compound climate events” recorded between 1982-2020 have been driving wheat yield loss in the United States, says a study published in Nature last week. A heat wave battered India’s wheat crop this year, and NASA predicts major climate impacts on wheat yields by 2030.

Sifting through older wheat for an answer: Scientists at London’s Museum of Natural History are looking at the museum’s collection of 12,000 wheat specimens, spanning back to the 1700s, to identify varieties able to withstand extreme weather, BBC reports.

More productive wheat has been the main focus of breeding efforts since the 1950s, but the London scientists hope to identify hearty strains able to handle hot, dry climates. They are mapping the genome of the most promising candidates to enable DNA improvements of future wheat seeds through cross-breeding or gene editing.

Studying how plant genomes change in response to stress,a Swiss team bred wheat that can withstand weather extremes by accelerating a natural process harnessing transposable elements (TEs), so-called “jumping genes.” The team developed a new way to control TEs, in a project funded by the EU.

Regulatory hurdle: All novel plant breeding methods are heavily regulated under an EU court ruling, but lead Swiss researcher Etienne Bucher hopes necessity will encourage a more science-based approach. “Novel crop breeding methods have enormous potential that we should be tapping to increase European food security,” he says. 

More reading: USDA economists promote tech and biotech vs. drought

More Agriculture & Environment News: 

USTR: Readout of Ambassador Katherine Tai’s Meeting with Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Raquel Buenrostro
“Ambassador Tai again stressed the importance of avoiding any disruption in U.S. corn exports to Mexico, including for both feed and human consumption, and adherence to a science- and risk-based regulatory approval process for all agricultural biotechnology products in Mexico.”

President Biden’s Friday: Meeting with the Prince and Princess of Wales in Boston before joining the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers phone bank in support of Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection campaign.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Having passed legislation to avert a rail strike yesterday, Congress turns its attention to spending legislation today.