Publications by authors named "Talia Spark"
Background: Although psychiatric disorders have been associated with reduced immune responses to other vaccines, it remains unknown whether they influence COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE). This study evaluated risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and estimated mRNA VE stratified by psychiatric disorder status.
Methods: In a retrospective cohort analysis of the VISION Network in four US states, the rate of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19-associated hospitalization between December 2021 and August 2022 was compared across psychiatric diagnoses and by monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccination status using Cox proportional hazards regression.
Article Synopsis
- Social and economic inequalities can really affect people's health, especially by changing the tiny bacteria in our guts that help us stay healthy.
- Living in a "food desert," where there isn’t enough healthy food, can make this problem worse and also hurt mental health.
- More research is needed to understand how these inequalities, gut health, and mental health are connected over a person's lifetime.
Article Synopsis
- The Omicron sublineages BA.4 and BA.5 show increased immune evasion, reducing the effectiveness of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in preventing illness among immunocompetent adults.
- A study across 10 states focused on vaccinated adults, assessing the effectiveness of 2 to 4 vaccine doses during periods of BA.4 and BA.5 circulation, and examining the severity of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients across different Omicron sublineages.
- Results indicated that in a large sample of emergency department and hospitalized patients, a significant portion tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, highlighting ongoing challenges in vaccine effectiveness and patient outcomes during these variant periods.
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination coverage remains lower in communities with higher social vulnerability. Factors such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exposure risk and access to healthcare are often correlated with social vulnerability and may therefore contribute to a relationship between vulnerability and observed vaccine effectiveness (VE). Understanding whether these factors impact VE could contribute to our understanding of real-world VE.
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