Kindness helps, and reflections on clinical advances of 2022
December 22, 2022
Today, I’ll cover research which shows that random acts of kindness are more appreciated than expected, and are beneficial for the giver, too. I’ll also review some of the 2022 advances for which I’m most grateful, and link to holiday recommendations. Hope all have a wonderful and healthy holiday week and a happy new year. This is the last post of the year; I’ll be off next week.
1. Kindness is highly valued by givers and receivers, and is contagious
Researchers from the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago) summarized their work this month in Scientific American. They demonstrate through psychological experiments that participants tasked with random acts of kindness to others routinely underestimate how much happiness this brings to the recipient. Further, the moods of both the givers and receivers were improved with this act of kindness, which ranged from giving out cupcakes or hot chocolate to writing letters.
They also did research in a corporate office in Spain where they asked givers to practice five specified acts of kindness over four weeks for specified receivers. The givers became less depressed and more satisfied with their lives and jobs, and the receivers themselves were dramatically more likely to exhibit their own prosocial behaviors.
Implications for employers:
- Create opportunities for employees to be kind to their colleagues, especially during the holiday season when rates of depression can be higher
- Programs that promote volunteering and charitable giving can improve the atmosphere in the workplace
2. Reflections on many advances during 2022
As 2023 rolls into focus, I want to take a few minutes to note some important achievements made by scientists and policymakers over the last year.
Mpox pandemic was rapidly contained
When Monkeypox was first reported widely in Europe and the United States, many were worried that this would become a widespread sexually transmitted disease. But what is now called Mpox has declined rapidly due to remarkable work in the pharmaceutical space (a smallpox vaccine was rapidly repositioned), the public health space (vaccines were made available quickly, and dose was altered to increase coverage) and in the LGBTQ community (where changes in behavior led to decreased transmission).
Mpox daily confirmed new cases
Source: Our World In Data December 20, 2022 LINK
The COVID bivalent booster offers additional meaningful protection
The FDA instructed Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to produce a new bivalent booster aimed to decrease risk from Omicron B4 and B5 on June 30 and the vaccine was approved on August 31 and widely available in pharmacies by late September. This bodes well for our future ability to use the mRNA platform to respond rapidly to a new viral threat. The most recent data shows that the bivalent vaccine reduces risk of hospitalization by 57% compared to those who are unvaccinated, and by 38% compared to those who are vaccinated but not up to date. The results in the elderly were even better. The bivalent vaccine decreased risk of hospitalization by 84% compared to no vaccine, and 73% compared to those who had been previously vaccinated at least two months earlier.
Uptake of this vaccine remains low - so there is real opportunity to save lives and prevent viral transmission by increasing the use of the bivalent booster.
mRNA platform can be used for vaccines to fight cancer
Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna (with Merck) have shown preliminary data demonstrating that mRNA can be used to deliver immune therapy to cancer patients - which could open dramatic new opportunities to treat cancers that right now have few good treatments. The Moderna/Merck cancer vaccine reduced recurrence or death in those with late-stage melanoma 44% compared to chemotherapy alone. There’s other hopeful news on the cancer front, too. Researchers in the United Kingdom used CRISPR gene editing to cure a teen of refractory leukemia.
d. Wastewater tracking helps us understand community risk
It’s hard to track community spread of many infectious diseases. Few people get tested and home testing is not reported. Moreover, some diseases like polio can lead to terrible outcomes, but have very mild symptoms and are not reported. But we all flush the toilet! The pandemic showed us the value of wastewater tracking for COVID-19, and more recently we’ve also been able to intensify polio vaccination efforts when poliovirus was found in wastewater in metro New York.
e. Drug shown to delay development of Type 1 diabetes
The FDA approved Tzield, a monoclonal antibody which delayed onset of Type 1 diabetes by about two years. Administering this drug requires testing many children at risk, and the drug requires 14 days of intravenous infusion, and costs almost $200,000. Hopefully, this is a first step toward identifying lower-cost drugs that will keep Type 1 diabetes at bay for even longer.
f. Millionth solid organ transplant performed in the US
Organ transplantation is close to miraculous. People with kidney failure live longer and better lives with a kidney transplant compared to dialysis, and those who got liver or heart transplants are often hours or days from dying, but can return to near-normal lives. The millionth solid organ transplantation was performed in the US in 2022.
The barrier to organ transplantation is lack of donors. I am registered with the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles as an organ donor. Here’s a link if you want to get the benefit of showing kindness by being an organ donor.
g. RSV vaccination will likely be available for 2023
This year has been a horrible one for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). There have been as many as five times the hospitalizations as in a usual RSV surge, and many pediatric ICUs have been over capacity for months. Estimates are that 1 in 56 babies will be hospitalized for RSV this season.
Next year could be much better. Pfizer reported a Phase 3 trial where a vaccine administered to pregnant women late in pregnancy decreased the likelihood of their infants getting RSV by 82%.
h. We can now cure some kinds of hemophilia
I wrote about Hemgenix earlier this month - a gene therapy which is likely to lead to long term remission or even cure for Hemophilia B, a rare disease that leads to bleeding due to a blood clotting deficiency. We’re all worried about the cost ($3.5 million per patient). But this drug will represent an enormous improvement in the lives of many hemophiliacs, and the cost of factor concentrate can sometimes exceed $1 million a year for select high-cost claimants.
i. There will be enormous health benefits from efforts to decarbonize to address climate change
We’ve seen many efforts this year to move toward alternatives to fossil fuels. Decarbonizing will not only decrease global warming, it will also have substantial health benefits. Reducing air pollution reduces asthma, lung disease and heart disease. Putting children on electric rather than diesel buses will improve their attention and test scores, and cooking with electricity rather than gas will improve indoor air quality. Some estimate that the Clean Air Act decreased medical costs by over $600 billion from 2000 to 2020.
3. Keep safe for the holidays!
We’ve republished an earlier post about keeping safe during family gatherings as well as some other material from previous posts on WTWco.com.
Hope all have a happy and safe holiday season, and see you next year!
Jeff