Biomarkers of vaccine safety and efficacy in vulnerable populations: Lessons from the fourth international precision vaccines conference.

Vaccination has been a cornerstone of public health, substantially reducing the global burden of infectious diseases, notably evident during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. However, vulnerable populations (VPs), including those in extreme age groups and those with underlying health conditions, have borne a disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases. Understanding vaccine immunogenicity in these populations is crucial for developing effective vaccines.

Transmission of societal stereotypes to individual-level prejudice through instrumental learning.

How are societal stereotypes transmitted to individual-level group preferences? We propose that exposure to a stereotype, regardless of whether one agrees with it, can shape how one experiences and learns from interactions with members of the stereotyped group, such that it induces individual-level prejudice-a process involving the interplay of semantic knowledge and instrumental learning. In a series of experiments, participants interacted with players from two groups, described with either positive or negative stereotypes, in a reinforcement learning (RL) task presented as a money-sharing game. Although players' actual sharing rates were equated between groups, participants formed more positive reward associations with players from positively stereotyped than negatively stereotyped groups.

Multi-modal immune dynamics of pre-COVID-19 Kawasaki Disease following intravenous immunoglobulin.

Despite progress, the molecular mechanisms underlying Kawasaki Disease (KD) and intravenous immunoglobulin's (IVIG) ability to mitigate the inflammatory process remain poorly understood. To characterize this condition, plasma proteomic profiles, flow cytometry, and gene expression of T cell subsets were investigated in longitudinal samples from KD patients and compared with two control groups. Systems-level analysis of samples in the acute phase revealed distinctive inflammatory features of KD, involving mainly Th-1 and Th-17 mediators and unveiled a potential disease severity signature.