(SILVER SPRING, Md.) — The Food and Drug Administration authorized a second omicron-targeted bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine for people over 65 or who are immunocompromised, the agency announced Tuesday.
The agency also said any adult who has not yet been vaccinated will get one dose of an updated bivalent shot, rather than starting with the original vaccine and receiving the bivalent shot as a booster. The FDA is withdrawing authorization for those older COVID-19 vaccines targeting the original strain of the virus.
It’s part of an overall move to simplify the COVID-19 vaccination process, the agency said in a statement. United States regulators are shifting towards a flu shot-like model for COVID-19 vaccines, where people get a single shot every year that’s updated annually to match the virus strain predicted to be in circulation.
“At this stage of the pandemic, data support simplifying the use of the authorized mRNA bivalent COVID-19 vaccines and the agency believes that this approach will help encourage future vaccination,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.
The original COVID-19 vaccine was matched against the first strain of the virus first identified in Wuhan, China. That strain of the virus is no longer circulating — the omicron variant and its sub variants are the predominant strains throughout the world. The bivalent shots target both that original strain and the omicron variant. They were first authorized as booster doses in fall 2022 and research shows they offer stronger protection against infection and serious illness from omicron than the original shot.
Now, they’ll be the only vaccines available in the US. Adults who haven’t been vaccinated and who want to get vaccinated can get just a single dose of that vaccine, rather than a series of multiple shots. Unvaccinated children will still get multiple shots. Children 6 months through 5 years of age can either get two doses of the Moderna bivalent vaccine or three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Vaccine uptake has slowed to a crawl in the U.S. Only 16.7% of people in the US overall and less than half of people over 65 have received a bivalent booster shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even though FDA is making a second bivalent booster shot available to people over 65, it’s not clear how widely it’ll be used.
But a single, annual shot could help encourage more vaccination, says ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital
“Simple and clear messaging is critical when it comes to ensuring vaccine uptake,” he said. “Moving to a model that resembles the yearly flu shot campaign will help focus messaging and help increase population immunity ahead of a potential fall surge.”
FDA advisors will meet in June to discuss updating the vaccine composition for fall 2023.
“COVID-19 is not influenza,” Marks said during a press briefing Tuesday. “But that said, we’re using that public health model where we’ll look to do our best to select what we believe to be likely to circulate the following fall and winter season, and use that in the vaccine composition to try to protect as many people during the season in which respiratory viruses tend to wreak havoc.”
Despite these steps, research on COVID-19 is ongoing and scientists are still working to understand the seasonal patterns and evolution of the virus. The new approach to COVID-19 vaccination may not be the last change, Brownstein said.
“We still have to recognize that the future of covid remains uncertain and this trial vaccination strategy may have to be modified,” he says.
(WASHINGTON) — A new report from Senate Republicans doubles down on the theory that COVID-19 emerged from an accidental lab leak in Wuhan — and possibly, even more than one leak.
While their investigation concedes that “both hypotheses are plausible,” the nearly 300-page document released by the minority on the Senate health subcommittee makes a circumstantial case that the “preponderance of circumstantial evidence” points to “an unintentional research-related incident” — an undetected aerosol leak — likely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as the first spark which would ultimately ignite the pandemic.
The WIV has long been known for not just its extensive research on bat coronaviruses, but also poor biosafety conditions while dealing with risky contagion samples which need proper containment, investigators wrote.
The document says an initial leak may have occurred “sometime before September 2019” and began circulating in Wuhan. Then, once WIV and Chinese government authorities realized what had happened, officials scrambled to quickly and quietly develop a vaccine that could be deployed to contain the outbreak — all before the world could learn the truth, according to the authors.
That rush to develop a vaccine may have led to a second accidental lab leak — one which, in turn, would lead to the global pandemic, the investigators believe.
No definitive conclusion has yet been reached on the origins of COVID but the intelligence and scientific communities remain split on whether the most likely scenario is a natural spillover or an accidental lab leak.
How, where and when the pandemic began that has killed nearly seven million people still remains a highly contentious and unsolved geopolitical debate.
The latest report unpacks the theories the committee originally shared last November which, they say, requires further investigation. The investigators said they were “concerned” that possible vaccine experiments at the WIV were conducted under “inadequate biosafety containment conditions” and “may be the proximate cause of the initial outbreak in Wuhan.”
And while they “could not determine whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a product of nature alone or possible genetic manipulation,” the “preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research,” investigators continued.
“The nature of the identified biosafety vulnerabilities increased the likelihood that such containment failures were not immediately recognized,” and, combined with COVID’s propensity for asymptomatic spread, the initial outbreak may have gone unnoticed at first, according to the report.
“Such initial unrecognized infections could serve as the nidus of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan and is a plausible proximate cause of the pandemic,” the report said.
The Huanan wet market in Wuhan has long been viewed as a potential early epicenter of the pandemic — the place where an animal disease jumped to humans. But the team that worked on this new report said they believe the market could well have been a “super spreader,” where the virus exploded once it was already coursing through the region.
This is not a peer-reviewed scientific study. It is a report released by Republicans on the Senate health subcommittee.
The report says their core investigative team was comprised of two attorneys, three research assistants, a China foreign area specialist along with one medical and one veterinarian epidemiologist.
That core group was “supported by an outside scientific advisory group consisting of three former U.S. national high- containment laboratory directors, a medical infectious disease physician, medical epidemiologist, two veterinarians, two biosafety experts, and two molecular biologists. Additionally, technical experts were consulted on topics ranging from specific biosafety equipment and processes, vaccine development and production and animal experimentation.”
The core team on this report — which numbered 60 experts — cite several parallel timelines indicating that COVID infections may have begun to swirl in the population months before the Chinese government told the World Health Organization or the world.
That timeline puts initial infections far earlier than December clusters at the wet market — suggesting an animal spillover from there may not have been the origin. Additionally, the report says, the outbreak began to gather steam at the same time as Chinese scientists were beginning to develop a vaccine, according to their experts’ analysis of early Chinese vaccine patents.
Among the clues this report cites that COVID was brewing months earlier than has been publicly admitted, it nods to some of ABC’s early reporting:
• Satellite data from the fall of 2019 showing a dramatic and unusual spike in auto traffic around major hospitals in Wuhan.
• Keyword queries on Chinese search engines substantially increasing in October and November 2019 for symptoms of COVID, like “cough.”
• A “significant” and “abnormal increase” in mysterious flu-like illnesses confirmed by Chinese epidemiologists. Public schools began to close.
• Officials on the ground began to worry, according to the report, and the team at the American embassy in Beijing may have received early word of that concern.
• As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population.
• By mid-October 2019, the “dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November. When city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread, the team passed the word to Embassy Beijing and continued monitoring,” the report says.
Congressional investigators spent 18 months interviewing dozens of subject matter experts, digging into hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, public reports and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
This report does not include the still-classified intelligence that may shed more light on the pandemic’s origins but that intelligence is due to be released within the next two months.
The investigation was originally commissioned as a bipartisan effort but ended up becoming a Republican document after the leadership of the Senate HELP Committee changed, said Dr. Robert Kadlec, the lead investigator who ran the pandemic response in 2020-2021 as assistant secretary of HHS.
Sen. Roger Marshall tells ABC News he has reviewed some of that classified intelligence and thinks it will not contradict the conclusions in this report.
“I think number one is that the facts are solid in this investigation,” Marshall told ABC News, adding the team had set out to pressure-test and “shoot down” both theories. Having done that, he said, “a preponderance of evidence” points to that unintentional lab leak, he claims.
“I think that this– if it was a civil lawsuit, I think that the jury would say, ‘Yes, indeed, we think that this came from a laboratory, an unintentional laboratory leak in Wuhan, China,'” he said.
When pressed by ABC News, Marshall conceded the case might not stick in criminal court.
“These are theories, these are not facts,” Kadlec told ABC News, but acknowledged there are potential telltale clues that point to the possibility of an accidental lab incident.
“I would fully expect that there may be some insights that can be shared with the American public that would give them greater confidence as to what was known, when it was known, and provide, hopefully — at least some — collaboration or corroboration of our study,” Kadlec said. “I think to move onto the next phase of this conversation, which is, how do we work collectively with China and other countries around the world to prevent the next pandemic, whether it be deliberate, accidental or natural?”
Said John Brownstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s and an ABC News Medical Contributor: “We have to remember that most evidence still is circumstantial and inconclusive. And unfortunately, the scientific community has had its hands tied because of the lack of data. So we need more data to unlock this mystery, to really for once and for all figure out what took place in Wuhan.”
(NEW YORK) — YouTube , the largest video-sharing platform, announced Tuesday a new policy framework for eating disorder-related content, in the company’s latest effort to address the growing mental health crisis, especially among teens, who can often be “vulnerable viewers.”
“Mental health issues like eating disorders can be isolating and stigmatizing for people around the world. YouTube is an important platform for raising awareness and understanding of eating disorders from a variety of perspectives, and we want to empower creators to continue to share their stories,” Dr. Garth Graham, director of YouTube Health, said in part of a statement Tuesday.
The new policies outline prohibiting content that features “imitable behavior” for “at-risk viewers,” including content that shows or describes behavior like restricting calories, setting age restrictions on content that discusses disordered eating behavior and adding information about mental health resources under videos related to eating disorders.
The Google-owned global video-sharing platform, which boasts over two billion users, said it worked with the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) and Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y Anorexia to expand the scope of Community Guidelines.
“In developing the new policies, we worked closely with NEDA and other groups to enhance understanding of what constitutes imitable behavior, how it can show up in content, and how it can impact vulnerable viewers,” said Graham.
Disordered eating behaviors include binge-eating, purging, laxative abuse and fasting for weight loss, are nearly as common among males as they are among females. Nearly 28.8 million Americans will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in their lives, according to NEDA .
The updated policy comes nearly a month after researchers reported that an increased time spent on social media platforms, like YouTube, was identified as a risk factor for disordered eating.
Andrea Vazzana, a child psychologist who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders in children, adolescents and adults at NYU Langone, spoke to ABC News’ Good Morning America about young social media users and eating disorders last month. She said the negative influence of social media is largely due to the social comparisons that are part of engaging in these social media platforms, including filtered photos, weight loss challenges and videos of purging techniques.
However, social media can be helpful and used to educate and provide resources to those who may need them.
“We know from the data that YouTube had over 1.4 billion views on mental health content in the US in 2021 and we know that the earlier a person with an eating disorder reaches out and seeks treatment, the greater the likelihood of physical and emotional recovery,” said Sarah Chase, the vice president of communication for NEDA, in part of a statement. “YouTube is taking a further step in the right direction toward helping NEDA with our mission.”
(NEW YORK) — Early on in her pregnancy, Tori Wapsheli made plans to deliver her second child in the same hospital where she had her first — Astria Toppenish Hospital on the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State.
But with just three months left in her pregnancy, the hospital suddenly shut down its Family Maternity Center, leaving Wapsheli and others in the community scrambling. In a news release, the hospital cited higher costs, reduction of Medicaid reimbursement from 150% to 100%, inability to recruit enough staff and a 50% decrease in deliveries as the reason for the closure.
“Just being so far out here, Toppenish was the place that would have worked easier,” Ciera Wheeler, who was more than 7 ½ months along when the pregnancy ward closed, told ABC News.
Patients in active labor who come to Astria Toppenish when there’s no time to stabilize and transfer them before delivery will now have their babies delivered in the emergency room and then, after being stabilized, transferred by ambulance to another hospital, the release said.
For Wheeler, the closest hospital with a maternity ward was now 45 minutes away, she said.
Options for maternity care on the reservation, which spans more than a million acres, have gone from bad to worse. Pregnant women looking for care are often forced to travel roads that can become dangerous in poor weather, according to the women ABC News spoke to on the reservation.
“This area is very rural. It is isolated. So the traveling distance plus the resources that are needed to get quality care not there,” said Jessica Whitehawk, who founded the Ttáwaxt Birth Justice Center with the help of fellow advocates Leslie Swan and Semone Dittentholer.
The Yakama Indian Reservation is just one of many U.S. communities dealing with a shortage of obstetric care.
Over a third of all U.S. counties are what’s known as maternity care deserts, which translates to more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age and 146,000 babies born in areas without obstetric providers, hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care, according to a recent March of Dimes report.
It’s an issue that’s contributing to the high U.S. maternal death rate, said March of Dimes chief medical officer Dr. Elizabeth Cherot.
In 2021, there was a 40% increase in the death rate from maternal causes compared to the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After a spike during the pandemic, preliminary data suggests the number of maternal deaths began dropping in 2022, but numbers are still higher than experts would advise.
One of the states with the highest number of maternal deaths, according to the CDC, is Mississippi, where Byron Stribling lost his pregnant wife, Harmony, and their unborn child while on the way to the hospital in July 2021.
“We don’t have a hospital. We don’t have an emergency room. The nearest hospital was about 15, 20 miles away, give or take,” Stribling told ABC News.
Harmony was five days away from delivering her baby when she developed complications from preeclampsia. On the drive to the hospital, Stribling pulled over to perform CPR as directed by a 911 dispatcher. By the time first responders arrived around 15 minutes later, she and their unborn child were dead. They were about three minutes from the hospital, according to Stribling. Stribling believes that if there had been an emergency room or hospital in closer proximity to their home, his wife or child might have been saved.
There are no obstetric providers in more than 50 counties in Mississippi, according to Rachael Morris, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She and her team have been trying to fill the gap by training hundreds of first responders in parts of the state that lack maternal care on what to do if there’s an emergency.
“We teach you how to intubate a baby. We teach you how to deliver a baby,” Morris said.
Morris said that almost 90% of the mortalities they’ve had over a 2-year period were deemed preventable.
“It’s frightening. Something’s got to change,” Morris said.
According to the CDC, the maternal mortality rate for Black women is three times higher than non-Hispanic white women, although all ethnicities saw an increase in 2021. For women over the age of 40, the mortality rate is seven times higher than for women under the age of 25.
At 38 years old, Dominique Armour is considered to be of advanced maternal age. She’s 8 months pregnant with her tenth child, putting her in a high-risk category. She told ABC News this will be her fourth time driving across state lines, from Arkansas to Mississippi, to give birth because of limited options.
“My last baby, I almost had on the side of the road,” Armour said.
The only hospital in Armour’s county hasn’t had a delivering physician in more than five years, according to Armour. Access to prenatal care is also limited, she said, and the last time she was able to see a doctor was months ago.
“It was hard. I had to go by myself. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t,” Armour said in tears.
Alice Rogers Johnson of the Arkansas Birthing Project says she is exploring options like the March of Dimes mobile clinic to get women in the area access to more care.
“A lot of women do miss appointments because they don’t have transportation,” Johnson said.
Back at the Ttáwaxt Birth Justice Center, the founders are working to expand their services, hoping that one day they can build a new birthing facility on the Yakama Nation grounds.
“We’re trying to rebuild our kinship, our nationhood, our family strength, providing a safe place for our families and women and children to come to have more options, to be cared for and to heal,” Whitehawk said.
(MICHIGAN) — Nearly 100 probable cases of a rare fungal infection, including one fatal, have been linked to a Michigan paper mill.
Public Health Delta & Menominee Counties (PHDM) said 21 cases of blastomycosis have been confirmed while another 76 are suspected. All cases are in employees, contractors or visitors of the Escanaba Billerud Paper Mill on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Amid the outbreak, 12 people have been hospitalized and one person — a contractor who worked at the mill — has died due to blastomycosis, health officials said.
The department was notified about the first cases on Feb. 28 among workers with the mill.
“The health and safety of our Escanaba employees is our first priority,” Brian Peterson, vice president of operation at the mill, said in a statement. “Although the source of the infection has not been established, we continue to take this matter very seriously and are following recommendations from health and government officials.”
Public Health Officer Michael Snyder told ABC News the health department sees a few cases of the infection every year but rarely an outbreak of this magnitude.
Here’s what you need to know about blastomycosis and how it can be treated:
What is blastomycosis?
Blastomycosis is a fungal infection caused by a group of fungi known as Blastomyces.
“These are fungi that live in the environment as a mold and they make spores,” Dr. Teresa O’Meara, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, told ABC News. “And what happens is that when people inhale too many of those spores, they can sort of set up and evade some of these innate immune responses and cause pneumonia and spread throughout the body.”
The fungi are found in the environment, mainly in moist soil and in decomposing organic material such as wood and leaves, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most cases of the infection occur in the United States and Canada but are very rare, with the annual incidence being about one to two cases per 100,000 people, the CDC said.
In the U.S., O’Meara said blastomycosis is most common in eastern parts of the Midwest — including states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the Great Lakes region and Southwest.
“On average over the past five years, only 26 cases have been reported for the entire state of Michigan annually,” PHDM said in a release. “However, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a known risk area for blastomycosis infection.”
The infection is not transmitted from person to person or from animals to people and can only be contracted by breathing in the microscopic spores, often after activity that disrupts the soil or the decomposing material.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms can be wide-ranging, O’Meara said. Some patients are asymptomatic while others develop symptoms including coughing, fever, chest pain, muscle aches and fatigue.
Because symptoms resemble other types of infections, it can be hard to diagnose the illness in a person, O’Meara said.
“And so diagnosis is pretty hard, even in places where it’s endemic, just because it’s so rare,” she said.
O’Meara added that evidence suggests symptoms can appear anywhere from three weeks to three months after inhaling spores.
According to the CDC, the infection can spread from the lungs to other areas of the body, including the joints, bones, brain and spinal cord among those who are immunocompromised.
Which treatments are available?
Those infected with blastomycosis need to be treated with a prescription antifungal medication.
Those with mild to moderate cases can take a medication known as itraconazole, which stops the growth of fungi.
Patients with severe infections are usually given amphotericin B, an intravenous medication. Because it can have a wide range of side effects, it’s only given to critically ill patients or those who are immunocompromised.
Treatment can range from six months to a year and can depend on how severe a person’s infection is as well as the strength of their immune system.
“One of the really important problems I would like to highlight just for people to know is that we often think about antibiotic resistance as being a real problem,” O’Meara said. “But there’s actually dozens of classes of antibiotics and antifungals. There’s only three classes of antifungals available.”
She continued, “And so this is going to be a big problem going forward just because there are more and more fungal infections that are on the rise and we need to develop new antifungal treatments.”
Is blastomycosis deadly?
It is very rare for blastomycosis to result in death. According to the CDC, there have been 1,216 blastomycosis-related deaths between 1990 and 2010.
What’s more, the age-adjusted mortality rate is 0.21 per 1 million person-years, the federal health agency said.
How can I protect myself?
Because there is no vaccine and it is endemic in some environments, it may be hard to protect yourself against the fungus.
If you work in areas where the fungi is prevalent or you might disturb soil, O’Meara said you can consider wearing protective equipment.
If you think you’ve been exposed, get tested and — if positive — start antifungal treatment if needed.
(NEW YORK) — Spring has sprung and summer is around the corner which means long strolls and rolling strides outside to enjoy the warm weather months.
But with heat waves already setting in across parts of the country, ABC News’ Good Morning America tapped Dr. Liz Weinandy, lead dietitian at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, to explain what to watch out for if dehydration hits, as well as the best things to drink and eat to keep your body nourished.
Symptoms of dehydration
“There are several signs a person might be dehydrated,” she said. “Headache or confusion, extreme thirst, very dark urine, infrequent urination, fatigue, muscle cramping and lightheadedness. In extreme cases of dehydration, it can lead to heatstroke or hyperthermia (abnormally high body heat).”
When it comes to preventative measures and staying hydrated, Weinandy said, “the best way to avoid dehydration is to drink before you get thirsty.”
“In some situations, it is easier to get dehydrated, like being active in hot temperatures,” she continued.
Best drinks for hydration besides water
While some supplements like hydration packets that are added to water can be helpful for some, Weinandy said H2O still reigns supreme for staying hydrated.
“Water is usually best and suitable for most people unless they are excessively sweating, then replacing electrolytes like potassium and sodium start to become more important,” Weinandy explained. “Sports drinks and electrolyte replacement solutions are very appropriate in this situation, although keep in mind most people do not need them.”
“As for food, most fruits and vegetables have a higher water content compared to other foods,” she said. “Melons, strawberries, pineapple, cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce are especially high in water and can help prevent dehydration.”
Who’s at-risk for dehydration?
Weinandy said another factor to keep in mind is that “some groups are at a higher risk of becoming dehydrated.”
“Infants, elderly and people who cannot communicate clearly” can all be more prone to dehydration, she said. “Also, being dehydrated increases the risk of developing kidney stones because urine is more concentrated.”
How much water to drink to stay hydrated
ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said the amount of water you should consume daily depends on your age, height and where you live.
Most guidelines call for the average woman to drink around 2.7 liters per day, and 3.7 liters for men.
One liter is equivalent to 33 ounces.
“Your body’s own systems will tell you when you need more water and it’s called thirst,” Ashton said. “A lot of times people think they’re hungry and they’re actually thirsty. See how it works for you.”
(NEW YORK) — Five years ago, Shannel Perman nearly became a statistic in the growing Black maternal health crisis in the United States.
In the last week of her pregnancy with her first child, Perman, now 33, said she began to experience complications like swelling, high blood pressure and weight gain that she said were dismissed by her doctor.
Perman, who lives near Baltimore, went onto give birth to a healthy baby, a son named Jyace, 41 weeks into her pregnancy, and said she thought she was medically in the clear.
“As far as I was concerned, I was healthy. My baby was healthy,” Perman told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “That’s all my doctor kept telling me, was that I was OK and my baby was OK.”
It was not until a week after giving birth that Perman nearly lost her life.
She suffered a stroke while at home with her baby and husband, who rushed her to the hospital, where she eventually underwent two emergency brain surgeries.
“I wasn’t stroke-alerted when I came in to the hospital showing signs of a stroke,” said Perman, who added that it was her mom, who met them at the hospital, who demanded she get medical attention for a stroke. “I was failed multiple times.”
As a Black woman in the U.S., Perman is three times more likely to die during childbirth or in the months after than white, Asian or Latina women, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A recent CDC report found the majority of maternal mortality cases — about 53% — occur after the first week of childbirth.
Black women are also more likely than white, Asian or Latina women to die from pregnancy-related complications regardless of their education level or their income, data shows. And in cases of maternal death, Black women are more likely to die from cardiac conditions, like the high blood pressure complications that Perman described experiencing in her last week of pregnancy, according to the CDC.
Perman said that as an otherwise healthy 29-year-old at the time of her son’s birth, with no preexisting conditions, suffering a stroke came as a life-changing shock. She said she underwent several months of rehabilitation and continues to suffer from complications including memory loss, brain fog, migraines and light sensitivity.
Perman said it also came as a shock to learn the disparities Black women like herself face when it comes to giving birth, and how the maternal mortality rates have only continued to grow in the five years since she gave birth.
“A mom should be able to enjoy her pregnancy, enjoy her newborn and postpartum period and not have to worry about dying during childbirth or shortly after her child’s birth,” she said. “So it’s heartbreaking to think about, that this issue is still happening.”
For Perman, the decision to have a second child was one that took several years, a period of time that she said involved mental health therapy, prayer and finding the right medical team.
Last year, Perman gave birth to a healthy daughter, whom she and her husband named Jordyn.
She shared with GMA the things she did differently when giving birth to her second child, and what she wants other women to know.
1. I made sure I felt seen by my medical team.
Perman said she and her husband did their research on doctors, including meeting with several, to make sure they found the right fit.
“We wanted to find someone that made us feel comfortable and made us feel seen and heard. Someone that we didn’t feel rushed with. Someone that took the time to answer every and all of our questions,” Perman said. “And the team that we went with, they were great. If we showed any concerns, they were running tests and just doing all the things we would want from a doctor.”
Dr. Pam Oliver , a board-certified OB-GYN and executive vice president of Novant Health in North Carolina, said she also encourages patients to look around to find a team of doctors with whom they connect.
“I think that patients should look at the team that’s taking care of them and make sure they feel that connection. They feel like this is a place, or this is a team that truly cares about me,” Oliver, who did not treat Perman, told GMA. “And that becomes part of how you choose the team that actually is going to take care of you when you deliver.”
Oliver, also president of the Novant Health Physician Network, said she also encourages patients to work with the same OB-GYN prior to pregnancy, when possible.
“I like to take care of my patients prior to pregnancy so that they understand that how they come into pregnancy matters some with their outcomes,” she said. “We start a nine-month journey once we have a positive pregnancy test, but some of the outcomes and, unfortunately, the deaths that we see may be related to health issues that started way before pregnancy.”
2. I used an at-home blood pressure monitor.
Perman said that with her second pregnancy, she used an at-home blood pressure reader, which can be purchased over-the-counter for as little as $20.
“That can be a life-changing method for so many moms, if they have a blood pressure reader where they can be testing or checking their own blood pressure throughout their pregnancy and even the postpartum period,” she said. “Because for a lot of moms, we don’t get a [postpartum] checkup until the six-week appointment, and so much can go wrong in those six weeks.”
High blood pressure, or hypertension, can put women at risk during and after childbirth, raising the risk of stroke, preeclampsia and preterm delivery, according to the CDC .
The CDC also recommends that women keep track of their blood pressure at home so they can notify their healthcare provider if their blood pressure is higher than usual.
3. I was my own biggest advocate.
Perman said her biggest piece of advice to other women is to speak up and be persistent if they feel anything is off with their body.
“You have to be your own biggest advocate,” she said. “If you feel any symptoms or anything is concerning, you have to speak up. If your doctor isn’t listening to you or you don’t feel seen or heard, you need to find someone else that’s going to hear you because you cannot take any chances when it comes to your life or your child’s life.”
Perman continued, “You have to trust your own intuition and if something something doesn’t feel right, you just have to follow that and speak up and advocate for yourself.”
Oliver said she encourages patients to be persistent with their doctor and proactive with their health.
“Advocating is really about being persistent and making sure that your provider, whether it’s a physician or a midwife, understands what your issue or your concern may be and that you get some answer, even if it means you have to seek another opinion or talk to someone else to make sure that you truly are getting an answer,” Oliver said. “Because there are a lot of things in pregnancy we can’t explain. There are a lot of aches and pains and things that happen.”
4. I was alert for warning signs after giving birth.
With Perman’s second pregnancy, she said she knew that even after she gave birth, she needed to advocate for herself and pay close attention to how she was feeling.
“The experience between the two pregnancies were night and day,” she said. “This time around, I was able to know what to look out for.”
Oliver echoed that once a new mom goes home from the hospital, it’s important that she knows to speak up when something feels off in their body.
Among the warning signs for women to watch for are shortness of breath, chest pain, weakness, severe headaches and excessive bleeding, according to Oliver.
“Those are just a few of the things that we look out for because they may be tied to the most common causes for women dying after childbirth,” she said. “You have to make sure that you you’ve gotten your symptoms out, that you’re heard and that you’ve had an evaluation that feels reasonable to say, ‘We’ve ruled out the bad stuff.'”
Oliver noted that women should listen to their intuition and feel confident telling their doctor, “Something just feels off.” She added that if a woman is told by her doctor that a symptom, like a headache, for example, is normal, she should ask the follow up question, “When should I be concerned about this headache?”
“That is something you can truly act on,” Oliver said. “You need your team to be able to tell you when do you get concerned? When do you follow up? How do you follow up and what should you expect from there?”
5. I knew that maternal mortality was a major crisis.
Perman described it as “difficult” and “heartbreaking” to know that so many women, particularly Black women, die during and after childbirth due to forces beyond their control.
Oliver, too, said she struggles as a doctor to know that outside of medical care, there are issues like poverty, bias and systemic racism that impact the rising maternal mortality rate.
One reason for the maternal mortality disparity is that more Black women of childbearing age have chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which increases the risk of pregnancy-related complications like preeclampsia and possibly the need for emergency C-sections, according to the CDC.
But there are also socioeconomic circumstances and structural inequities that put Black women at greater risk for those chronic conditions. Black women often have inadequate access to care throughout pregnancy which can further complicate their conditions, data shows.
Anecdotal reports also show that the concerns of Black women experiencing negative symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum are specifically ignored by some physicians until the woman’s conditions significantly worsen, at which point it may be too late to prevent a deadlier outcome.
Oliver said one of the most heartbreaking and frustrating things she hears as a doctor is Black women who are afraid to have children, or who have decided not to have children out of fear they will die.
“That hurts my heart because that’s not at all what we intend to do, is to scare people,” Oliver said. “It’s not about fear. It’s about empowering ourselves, advocating for things that we know help all women, getting legislators and others to understand what we need to do to get the data, to cover the services that need to be covered, to approach this from many angles.”
She continued, “It’s important for people to know it is still safe to have babies and every day millions of women are having safe childbirths, but the trouble is that Black women are dying at a rate that is three to four times that of White women.”
(NEW YORK) — One couple found out that they are truly a match — in more ways than one.
After being together for more than 20 years, a husband and wife pair learned they were rare matches as living donors.
Dexter Holaday had been living with a rare genetic disorder called polycystic kidney disease, when in late 2021, he was told he needed a kidney transplant.
“The average timeframe for a kidney, with my blood type, is five years for a deceased donor,” Holaday told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “So it’s kind of a waiting game.”
Living donor kidneys are generally healthier than deceased donor kidneys, which leads to greater long- and short-term survival rates. However, in 2022, living donors accounted for only 29.7% of all kidney transplants nationwide, highlighting the need for living donors, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite the rarity of living donor kidneys, Holaday and his wife June began their search for a match.
“We had flyers, we had sent out over 400 Christmas cards,” June Holaday told GMA.
More than 90,000 people nationwide are currently waiting for a kidney; the average wait time for a deceased donor kidney is three to five years, and more than 22 people a day die in the U.S. while waiting for a transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
Up against time and despite having different blood types, June Holaday decided to still get tested to see if she could be a living donor for her husband — even if the chances were extremely thin.
After months of testing, June Holaday found out she defied the odds. She was a match and was approved to give her husband the gift of life.
“I think we finally breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in the whole journey,” June Holaday said of learning she was a match for her husband.
Living donor transplant surgeries happen simultaneously in rooms next to each other to ensure the organ is transplanted quickly and safely. On March 28, the Holadays went into the lifesaving operation room, together.
Dr. Leigh Anne Dageford, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, performed June Holaday’s nephrectomy. She said the Holaday’s situation was “beautiful.”
“To be a true perfect match, it’s one out of 100,000, but given the advances we have these days, we don’t always have to have that exact perfect match,” Dageford said. “It is an amazing love story. Her willingness to do this, to continue to have a wonderful life with him. For the rest of their lives together is beautiful.”
Dr. Nahel Elias, the surgical director of the kidney transplant program at Massachusetts General Hospital, was right next door to transplant June Holaday’s kidney into her husband Dexter.
“It is not only life-changing,” Elias said. “It’s life-enhancing and it’s life-extending.”
Dexter Holaday said he is “absolutely grateful” for his wife, describing what she did as “amazing.”
June Holaday called her donated kidney just a “spare,” and wants to encourage others to sign up to be living donors.
“Anyone can function on one kidney. I want to shout it from the rooftops like, ‘Share your spare, share your spare!'” she said. “Someone in this country will need you at some point.”
(NEW YORK) — A new bill introduced in California could potentially do away with some additives that appear in ingredient lists of processed foods from candy to cereals.
Earlier this week, the California State Assembly health committee approved the landmark piece of legislation, AB 418 , which would prohibit brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, Red dye No. 3 and titanium dioxide in food products sold throughout the state.
If enacted, California would be the first state to impose such a prohibition.
With the narrow exception of Red No. 3 used in candied cherries, regulators in Europe previously banned the other four substances outright. In the U.S., such a move would set a precedent for processed food safety going forward.
The bill’s proponents have raised concerns over the potential adverse or negative health impacts, both short-term and long-term, of these chemicals.
“Californians shouldn’t have to worry that the food they buy in their neighborhood grocery store might be full of dangerous additives or toxic chemicals,” Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, the legislation’s sponsor, said in a press release in February. “This bill will correct for a concerning lack of federal oversight and help protect our kids, public health, and the safety of our food supply.”
Because these chemicals exist in non-natural foods that Americans already eat, it’s important for consumers to understand the impact, but “not make themselves crazy” over their exposure, especially in small amounts, said Dr. Stephanie Widmer, an ABC News medical contributor, board-certified emergency medicine physician and medical toxicologist.
“These chemicals are all kind of in different foods and all exert different effects and different concerns — some of them are associated with neurological problems, some are reproductive problems, some have been linked to cancer. It really depends on the substance,” Widmer told “Good Morning America.”
“I don’t know if there is, for any of these things, a safe level,” she added, underscoring instead the importance of “moderation and variety in diet.”
According to Widmer, “there are tons of chemicals and substances that are in our foods that are not necessarily supposed to be there.”
“But we’re not necessarily being exposed to them in high amounts,” she said. “And you can’t go nuts trying to track down everything in your food.”
Widmer explained that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, while “trying to do everything they can, are just constantly playing a game of catch up” when it comes to tracking new substances coming onto the market.
“It’s nearly impossible to be able to regulate everything,” she added. “We’re learning more and more about the food we eat every day and they’re trying to do the right thing.”
Widmer said it was “unfortunate” that “a lot of these different additives and preservatives that can be harmful have ended up in our food supply,” but added, “I think [the FDA is] trying to stay on top of it as best they can — it’s almost overwhelming.”
Over 10,000 chemicals are allowed for use in food sold in the U.S., 99% of which were approved by the food and chemical industry, but not the agency tasked with ensuring the safety of America’s food supply.
Widmer’s biggest takeaway and advice to others, she said, is to “limit exposure as much as you can and when it comes to diet.”
“Try to just do things in moderation and have variety in your diet — as long as you’re not being exposed to the same thing over and over again in high quantities, you should be OK,” she said.
Potentially harmful effects of 5 food chemicals
Widmer broke down, at a basic level, what science-backed research has found as far as potential links to health problems for the five substances that would be banned under AB 418. At this time, while some evidence is stronger than others, there isn’t conclusive proof that any cause adverse health conditions for humans — just that there could be a risk.
Brominated vegetable oil: In high quantities, Widmer said, it has “often been linked to neurological changes, like balance problems and memory problems” in humans.
Potassium bromate: “Potassium bromate is found in certain soft drinks and can cause issues with hearing and kidney function,” Widmer said.
She noted that “there have been studies suggesting that it’s been linked to cancer in some animals in the laboratory,” but there isn’t research on that link in humans.
Propylparaben: “Propylparaben has been proposed to be a reproductive toxin [that] can cause hormonal dysregulation, which is concerning for some people — there [have] been documented studies where it caused earlier or delayed menstration,” Widmer said.
While the research has hinted at those links to disruptions in the hormone systems in humans, the evidence is weak and research is ongoing.
Red dye No. 3: Red No. 3, which “gives that reddish or pink color, like in those pink Peeps,” Widmer said, is banned in cosmetics as it “is a known carcinogen,” a substance capable of causing cancer. Research in California linked it to behavioral problems in children.
Titanium dioxide: This “is in sunscreen, but it’s also Skittles,” Widmer said, noting that it is a “possible carcinogen and food color additive that can be very irritating to mucous membranes like the eyes, nose and throat.”
She said it has also been “linked to cancer in rodents.” There is no research on that link in humans.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly 100 cases of a rare, fungal infection have been linked to a Michigan paper mill.
Public Health Delta & Menominee Counties (PHDM) said 19 cases of blastomycosis have been confirmed while another 74 are suspected.
The department was notified about the first cases on Feb. 28 among workers with Escanaba Billerud Paper Mill on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
“The health and safety of our Escanaba employees is our first priority,” Brian Peterson, vice president of operation at the mill, said in a statement. “Although the source of the infection has not been established, we continue to take this matter very seriously and are following recommendations from health and government officials.”
Public Health Officer Michael Snyder told ABC News the health department sees a few cases of the infection every year but rarely an outbreak of this magnitude.
Here’s what you need to know about blastomycosis and how it can be treated:
What is blastomycosis?
Blastomycosis is a fungal infection caused by a group of fungi known as Blastomyces.
“These are fungi that live in the environment as a mold and they make spores,” Dr. Teresa O’Meara, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, told ABC News. “And what happens is that when people inhale too many of those spores, they can sort of set up and evade some of these innate immune responses and cause pneumonia and spread throughout the body.”
The fungi are found in the environment, mainly in moist soil and in decomposing organic material such as wood and leaves, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most cases of the infection occur in the United States and Canada but are very rare, with the annual incidence being about one to two cases per 100,000 people, the CDC said.
In the U.S., O’Meara said blastomycosis is most common in eastern parts of the Midwest — including states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the Great Lakes region and Southwest.
“On average over the past five years, only 26 cases have been reported for the entire state of Michigan annually,” PHDM said in a release. “However, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a known risk area for blastomycosis infection.”
The infection is not transmitted from person to person or from animals to people and can only be contracted by breathing in the microscopic spores, often after activity that disrupts the soil or the decomposing material.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms can be wide-ranging, O’Meara said. Some patients are asymptomatic while others develop symptoms including coughing, fever, chest pain, muscles aches and fatigue.
Because symptoms resemble other types of infections, it can be hard to diagnose the illness in a person, O’Meara said.
“And so diagnosis is pretty hard, even in places where it’s endemic, just because it’s so rare,” she said.
O’Meara added that evidence suggests symptoms can appear anywhere from three weeks to three months after inhaling spores.
According to the CDC, the infection can spread from the lungs to other areas of the body, including the joints, bones, brain and spinal cord among those who are immunocompromised.
Which treatments are available?
Those are infected with blastomycosis needed to be treated with a prescription antifungal medication.
Those with mild to moderate cases can take a medication known as itraconazole, which stops the growth of fungi.
Patients with severe infections are usually given amphotericin B, an intravenous medication. Because it can have a wide range of side effects, it’s only given to critically ill patients or those who are immunocompromised.
Treatment can range from six months to a year and can depend on how severe a person’s infection is as well as the strength of their immune system.
“One of the really important problems I would like to highlight just for people to know is that we often think about antibiotic resistance as being a real problem,” O’Meara said. “But there’s actually dozens of classes of antibiotics and antifungals. There’s only three classes of antifungals available.”
She continued, “And so this is going to be a big problem going forward just because there are more and more fungal infections that are on the rise and we need to develop new antifungal treatments.”
Is blastomycosis deadly?
It is very rare for blastomycosis to result in death. According to the CDC, there have been 1,216 blastomycosis-related deaths between 1990 and 2010.
What’s more, the age-adjusted mortality rate is 0.21 per 1 million person-years, the federal health agency said.
How can I protect myself?
Because there is no vaccine and it is endemic in some environments, it may be hard to protect yourself against the fungus.
If you work in areas where the fungi is prevalent or you might disturb soil, O’Meara said you can consider wearing protective equipment.
If you think you’ve been exposed, get tested and — if positive — start antifungal treatment if needed.
