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New Covid Vaccines
Today there was a publication on a self-amplifying mRNA Covid booster shot vs Omicron Phase 2 and 3 randomized trial. The advantage of these sam vaccines is a much lower mRNA dose, which essentially making xerox copies of itself once it gets into the cell, thus potentially reducing side effects of the mRNA per se, and its self-sustaining feature may promote longer duration of the immune protection. The results look encouraging in the newly reported trial (Figure), at least as good at the conventional booster shots of immune response. It is injected into the skin, not muscle, with a needle-free injection system.

While that publication was just for immune response and safety, there was a recent self-amplifying mRNA Covid shot approved in Japan, the first one to get a regualtory green light. Instead of 30 ug of mRNA it only uses 5 ug and had a superior immune response to the conventional (Pfizer) shot.

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Thanks for this. One of my patients recently was an infectious disease doc working for the FDA who made some interesting points:

1. Long COVID is now as prevalent as Type 2 diabetes, affecting 6% of the US population

2. Long covid patients form clots around amyloid particles, and these clots are really hard to break. The sxs come from vaso-occlusions from these particles. There is literature out of s. africa that advocates for a triple anticoagulation protocol, and results from clinical trials there look pretty good. Unfortunately, no protocol is accepted in the US, so people are prescribing it off-label, without monitoring people for all the bad things that can happen with strong anti-coagulation.

3. The first covid variants were extremely inflammatory, and the vaccines are mostly still being generated against these variants. This is one reason that people who react badly to them do so. She suggested that I take zyrtec and pepcid plus an aspirin 2 days prior and 1 week after vaccination to suppress mast cells. She does this, as she experiences strong reactions as well. I'm also not getting my next booster until late in the year, all things being equal.