There is plenty of excitement from people who are taking advantage of free COVID-19 vaccines offered through Wayne Health from Wayne State University and their mobile medical units. On Monday people pulled up to the New Bethel Baptist Church and they didn't even have to leave the driver's seat to get their first Covid shot. Others will get a chance to get theirs as Wayne Health visits neighborhoods as part of a new pilot program. "This is what is needed for us to get beyond on the pandemic," said Dr. Phillip Levy, Wayne Health. "We have to wear masks we have to continue to social distance. But the more people that can get vaccinated the sooner we can reach herd immunity." For months Wayne State University and its physician group Wayne Health, have taken vehicles across Detroit where they've done Covid tests and other health screenings. Now they are part of a statewide pilot program to make sure everyone has access to the vaccine. Levy, the chief innovation officer, says it's especially important to meet Detroiters where they're at. because while most drove up to Monday's clinic- not everyone has a car. "There's a lot of transportation challenges despite it being 'The Motor City,'" he said. "A lot of people don't have cars and a lot of people can't get ready access to public transportation. And they have to rely on somebody to drive them to existing vaccination sites."

Hours before the NBA changed the course of sports history last March—suspending its season and carving a bold new path to combat the coronavirus—the league found itself confronting a different foe: public health officials. Local leaders in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco were urging citizens not to gather in large groups, and pleading with sports teams to shut out fans, to help prevent the virus’ spread. The message was not well received by the NBA franchises operating in those jurisdictions. Fourteen of the NBA’s 30 teams are now allowing fans to attend games again, albeit in limited numbers, and with strict rules on social distancing and mask wearing—and in some arenas, with rapid coronavirus tests required upon entry. Six more teams will begin admitting fans this month. Gretchen Newman, an assistant professor of infectious disease at Wayne State University in Detroit, called the decision to allow fans “profoundly stupid and unnecessary.” “We could just be not doing this and not putting anybody at risk at all, and we would all be fine and go on with our day,” Newman says. “On the other hand, in the background of what is happening nationwide, do I think that this is the biggest threat to people? No, I do not. ... It’s the wrong choice, but it’s a minor wrong choice in comparison to all the other wrong choices that are being made.”

The Wayne State University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences has teamed with the state to develop behavioral and mental health training and support for Michigan first responders and their families to address stress from the job. The program, Frontline Strong Together, will be available electronically and in-person to first responders and their families this year in most of Michigan’s 83 counties. The program is being developed and implemented with assistance from the Michigan Professional Firefighters Union, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Department of Corrections, paramedics and dispatchers. Deadline Detroit's Craig Fahle talked about the program with Dr. Alireza Amirsadri, an associate professor of psychiatry at Wayne State.

As advocates question the number of coronavirus vaccines going to Black and Brown recipients across the country, officials from the City of Detroit say even though the data is incomplete, they are sure that vaccines are predominantly being administered to Black Detroiters. City officials reported Tuesday that 70 percent of its vaccine recipients have voluntarily shared racial demographic data. However, over 26,000 vaccine recipients, or about 30 percent of all vaccine recipients by Tuesday, chose not to share their race, leaving a gap of unknowns of who is receiving the coronavirus vaccine in Detroit. Dr. Herbert Smitherman, vice dean of diversity and community affairs at Wayne State University and president and CEO of Health Centers Detroit Foundation, said it’s important to recognize the cases and death rates out of Detroit compared to the rest of the state when determining how to distribute vaccines. He cited the Dying Before Their Time report and the “longitudinal, historic challenges that African Americans and older African Americans have experienced in the United States.”

Wayne State University is offering comprehensive behavioral and mental health training and a support program for the state's first responders and their families to address everyday job stress. Statistics indicate that more first responders die from suicide than from injuries sustained in the line of duty, said Dr. David Rosenberg, chair of the WSU Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. Called Frontline Strong Together, mental health services will be available electronically and in person to first responders and their families in nearly all of Michigan's 83 counties this year, WSU said. Funded by a $2 million grant from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the program will offer education, training, support and treatment services. First responders include police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, dispatchers and corrections personnel and their families. Partners include the Michigan Professional Firefighters Union, the Fraternal Order of Police, the state Department of Corrections, paramedics and dispatchers. "Frontline Strong Together distinguishes Wayne State University in that the research we do is not in some ivory tower. This is right in the trenches with the community, in real time, to develop evidence-based approaches to help as many people as possible," said Rosenberg in a statement. "We go where the data is and implement the best practices."

After receiving emergency use approval from the Federal Drug Administration, the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine has become the third COVID-19 vaccination available in the country. Authorized for individuals age 18 and older, the J&J vaccine only requires one dose and can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures, which will make widespread dissemination throughout the state and country considerably easier. An ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled study conducted in the U.S., Mexico, South Africa and some of South America, within which 19,630 participants received the vaccine and 19,691 received saline placebo, has found the vaccine was approximately 67 percent effective at least 14 days after vaccination and 66 percent effective at least 28 days after vaccination in preventing moderate to severe/critical COVID-19. When it comes to preventing strictly severe/critical COVID-19, the study showed approximately 77 percent efficacy at least 14 days after vaccination and 85 percent efficacy at least 28 days after vaccination. “This vaccine is not only highly effective against severe disease in the United States, but was also highly effective against the highly transmissible South African variant that is now showing up in the United States,” said Paul Kilgore, M.D., MPH, one of the co-principal investigators of the J&J trial at Henry Ford that began in November, and an associate professor and director of research in the Department of Pharmacy at Wayne State University, in a press release. “It is 100 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths and is also equally effective across all races, including whites, African Americans and Hispanics.”

As COVID-19 vaccines are being introduced, a researcher at Wayne State University continues work on blood plasma treatment trials that began in November. Dr. James Paxton, assistant professor in the Wayne State School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine, has been the primary investigator for two outpatient studies of treatments that use blood plasma from people who have had COVID-19. The convalescent plasma, as it’s called, contains antibodies that help fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. “Not only do we have to limit the spread of this disease, but we have to be as aggressive as we can in treating it,” says Paxton, who is also an emergency physician at DMC Sinai-Grace and Detroit Receiving hospitals, both in Detroit. “I think convalescent plasma is one therapeutic option that’s going to prove to be effective. We hope it’s going to be as safe as it has been in other iterations and with other applications.” Sponsored through Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the months-long study aims to recruit at least 1,400 volunteers nationwide. Wayne State is one of 24 participating research entities and the only site in Michigan. The first study seeks to use the antibodies contained in plasma to protect people who have recently been exposed to COVID-19 but haven’t yet become ill. The second will use the plasma on recently diagnosed people who have not been admitted to a hospital in hopes that it will slow or eliminate COVID-19 symptoms. The study is slated to be finished with enrollment by mid-March and will continue to seek participants until then.

Arash Javanbakht, associate professor of psychiatry, wrote an article for The Conversation about the benefits of exercise on the brain. “As with many other physicians, recommending physical activity to patients was just a doctor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up boxing and became more active, I got firsthand experience of positive impacts on my mind. I also started researching the effects of dance and movement therapies on trauma and anxiety in refugee children, and I learned a lot more about the neurobiology of exercise. I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist researching the neurobiology of anxiety and how our interventions change the brain. I have begun to think of prescribing exercise as telling patients to take their “exercise pills.” Now knowing the importance of exercising, almost all my patients commit to some level of exercise, and I have seen how it benefits several areas of their life and livelihood.

Dr. Paul Kilgore is an Associate Professor and Director of Research at Wayne State University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Science. He’s also a principal investigator at Henry Ford Health System and an expert in vaccine research. As the country hit 500,000 deaths from COVID earlier this week, Kilgore says that we still have a lot of work to do. “There’s no doubt about it, the vaccine will be an important tool but not the only one,” says Kilgore. He adds that it will continue to be crucial that people wear masks and practice distancing in the months ahead. He also points to other countries, including Korea, where mask wearing as a way of minimizing disease transmission is a normal part of life and would be beneficial here in the United States as well. ”We need to think very carefully about how we adopt mask wearing in this country as a permanent activity… that can really help when reducing transmission,” says Kilgore. As far as the outlook for the next several months here in Michigan, Kilgore says that he thinks ”what we’ll see as (weather warms up) is potential reduction in transmission but… if variants are causing easier transmission we will still need to be very vigilant about masking, distancing and getting vaccinated as soon as possible.” 

Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University in Detroit, says the situation is starting to improve.

After giving his two cents at the White House, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan returns to the city to try to steer it through the pandemic. Duggan talked about the challenges of the COVID-19 vaccine on Flashpoint. Then the “other” pandemic -- the mental health struggles of young people after a year of COVID-19. From the beginning, we’ve wondered about the toll the pandemic has been taking on all of us from a mental health standpoint. Studies are now making clear what many feared, that it’s having a deep and damaging impact on teenagers. There was a discussion on the issue with two health professionals including pediatrician Dr. Lynn Smitherman from Wayne State University and Mary Beth Garvey, a family therapist from Grosse Pointe.

Dr. Herbert Smitherman, general internist at the Detroit Medical Center and vice dean of Diversity and Community Affairs at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been a practicing physician in Detroit for 33 years. Smitherman said he has met with several Black patients who don’t trust the COVID-19 vaccine or the health care system itself. He believes that can change if there are more Black doctors. “The race of the provider and having people that look like you, understand you, understand your concerns and your culture are very important to helping you receive needed care,” Smitherman said. A 2018 study done in Oakland, California, found that increasing the number of Black doctors could reduce the Black-white male gap in cardiovascular mortality by 19 percent. A 2016 study found that Black men and women in the U.S. have a life expectancy that was, respectively, 4.4 and 2.8 years shorter than white men and women. But Smitherman cautions that efforts to increase the number of Black doctors cannot be the only solution. “The mistrust was not created by Black physicians. It was structural racism and systemic racism within a health care system that created that mistrust, not Black physicians, but by non-Black physicians,” he said. Smitherman pointed out that issues such as where the vaccine is distributed, the times of day it’s offered, and the method for scheduling a vaccine appointment are all potential complications for the average Detroiter. He said figuring out solutions is all about having a diverse group of decision-makers at the table. “If you aren't having people of color represented in your real strategy setting and planning for vaccine distribution, we're not going to get where we need to get,” he said.

After the left ventricle of the heart contracts, it must relax efficiently to prepare to refill and supply the body with blood on the next beat.  An increasing number of patients — including nearly all patients with heart failure — suffer from impaired relaxation, which is part of a clinical syndrome known as diastolic dysfunction. Currently, treatments for impaired relaxation do not exist. A team of Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers led by Charles Chung, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology, recently received a $1,894,271 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to address the critical need for new drug targets and diagnostic indexes for diastolic dysfunction using novel biomechanical tests that ultimately can be translated into clinical practice. According to Chung, the project was inspired by his research team’s finding that how quickly the heart’s muscle moves is directly related to how fast the muscle can relax. The project will use unique experiments and imaging techniques to link mechanical properties of the heart with models of heart failure that occur in patients. “My lab’s main research focus is to understand how the heart muscle moves at the end of contraction and how this motion can speed up the force decline, or relaxation, of the muscle,” said Chung. “Major proteins in muscles called myosin, actin and titin control the force of each beat. When the heart muscle contracts, myosin binds to actin to generate force. Our lab is trying to determine if motion — and how fast the motion occurs — makes myosin let go of actin faster and make the muscle relax faster.” 

Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers have reported that zinc supplements for men and women attempting to conceive either naturally or through assisted reproduction during the COVID-19 pandemic may prevent mitochondrial damage in young egg and sperm cells, as well as enhance immunity against the virus. In “Potential Role of Zinc in the COVID-19 Disease Process and its Probable Impact on Reproduction,” published in Reproductive Sciences, Husam Abu-Soud, Ph.D., associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the C.S. Mott Center for Growth and Development, said that in addition to benefiting couples attempting to conceive during the pandemic, zinc supplementation of up to a maximum of 50 mg per day for all adults could be beneficial in enhancing immunity and fighting the viral disease process of COVID-19. He also noted that zinc can be beneficial to the general population in enhancing immunity and fighting the viral disease process.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is partnering with Wayne State University and Wayne Health to provide mobile COVID-19 testing. The partnership comes in an effort to reach more Michiganders in need of COVID-19 testing and other public health services. This new program allows three mobile units to move between sites and serve communities at the highest risk. Locations are chosen in part to help address racial and ethnic disparities that had existed prior to the pandemic and were exacerbated by the virus – a focus of the Racial Disparities Task Force. Wayne Health’s Mobile Health Unit offers an array of health care screenings, including COVID testing, flu shots, blood pressure screening, HIV testing and on-site referrals for public benefit programs such as Medicaid and unemployment assistance and emergency food and shelter services addressing social determinants. “Partnering with the state will expand our efforts to bring these vital services to more Michigan residents who need them,” said Phillip Levy, M.D., M.P.H., who leads the Mobile COVID Testing Program for Wayne Health and is WSU’s assistant vice president for Translational Sciences and Clinical Research Innovation. “This work is a key element of who we are as a university and as a practice group. Meeting people and providing services where they live is critical not only to containing the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to improving health in general.” 

As the initial priority groups are being offered a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., one population in particular faces a difficult decision: Pregnant people who are health care personnel or essential workers—categories that are eligible for the early phases of the vaccination program—“may choose to be vaccinated,” according to the latest official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem is that there are scant data available on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant individuals. They were not included in the clinical trials, as has historically been the case with most vaccines and drugs. For many years, it was believed that pregnancy was a state of immunologic weakness. The fact that pregnant individuals died more from diseases such as influenza was attributed to this state. More recently, it became clear that immunologic changes in pregnancy were much more complex than that. “They were not dying because they were immunosuppressed,” says Gil Mor, scientific director of the C. S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University. “They were dying because their immune system was so strong and activated that they produced a massive inflammation that killed them.” Mor, who is an expert in the immunology of pregnancy, says there are several mechanisms to maintain the delicate balance between too much and too little inflammation during that state. If this balance is not maintained for any reason, the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms rises.

The National Institutes of Health is supporting a Wayne State University School of Medicine physician-researcher’s work at preventing and treating cerebral palsy in the form of two new five-year R01 grants worth a collective $5.59 million. The principal investigator on both projects is Sidhartha Tan, M.D., professor and co-division chief of Neonatology in the Department of Pediatrics. Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture. CP is the most common motor disability in childhood, caused by abnormal brain development or damage to the developing brain that affects a person’s ability to control his or her muscles. Tan obtained his first R01 last May for “Potent Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibition for Prevention of Cerebral Palsy,” which will provide $2,393,590 over the half-decade award period to test new, promising drugs aimed at a preventive cure for the condition. “These are new drugs aimed at brain condition called neuronal nitric oxide synthase. New information about how these drugs act, how they affect brain cells and how effective they are in an animal model of cerebral palsy will be very valuable for future translation to clinical use in humans throughout the world,” Tan said. His second, a multiple principal investigator award launched Dec. 15, is “Probing Role of Tetrahydrobiopterin in Cerebral Palsy by Using Transgenic Rabbits.” The grant will provide $3,197,644 in funding over five years to explore whether an essential enzyme co-factor is involved in brain injury before birth. The cellular and genetic basis of brain regional injury will be investigated using an animal model in which genes have been altered by genetic engineering methods, as well as advanced methods of magnetic resonance imaging.

Wayne State University’s School of Medicine needs people to roll up their sleeves for research’s sake. The school is part of a nationwide clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Novavax, Inc. Phase 3 of the trial will help scientists determine whether it’s effective at preventing infection. Dr. Elizabeth Secord is heading up WSU’s involvement in the trial. She says her team needs about 300 volunteers. “Two-thirds will get the vaccine, one third will get a placebo,” she says. “We can compare rates of COVID, look at antibodies and see the effectiveness of the vaccine.” At first, researchers wanted a large number of higher-risk candidates, such as people 65 and older, individuals with underlying health conditions and people of color. They can still enroll, but now that many older people are eligible to receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, Wayne State is actively seeking younger volunteers for the study. “People who are, for example, 60, 50, 40, even in their 20s who are not likely to get a vaccine for several months,” Secord says. “It would be good for them to consider entering such a trial.” Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine does not use messenger RNA. Secord says she hopes that will encourage people to join the clinical trial, though she stresses that concerns about mRNA are unfounded, noting that she has already been vaccinated. “I think that this vaccine will be safe, the other vaccines are safe, and that people should take what they can get as soon as they can get it,” she says. If the Novavax vaccine passes its trials, Secord says she hopes it will be approved for emergency use within six months.

Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman Jr., vice dean of diversity and community affairs and a professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine, wrote an opinion piece discussing why we all should take the COVID vaccine. “The pace at which African Americans are dying has transformed this national health crisis into an abject lesson on racial and class inequality. African-Americans are more likely to die of COVID-19 than any other ethnic group in the nation. That’s why Black Americans — and all Americans — must be vaccinated against COVID. As an African-American male, I all too well understand the current mistreatment and the historic abuse of Black people in the United States. However, we as Americans, including all communities of color need to separate science from the recent political administration’s antics and society’s construct of race. There is only one race, the human race. Coronavirus is disproportionately killing people of color, not because of race but because of centuries of negative, oppressive and disparate social, economic, political, and health policies that result in disparate and inequitable living conditions in our society.”

Hilary Marusak, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, wrote an article for The Conversation on the benefit of mindfulness training., ”Now that 2021 is here, many are looking for new ways to manage stress. Although mindfulness and meditation are not new – there is evidence suggesting that humans have been practicing meditation for more than 5,000 years – many are turning to these techniques to improve overall well-being. Mindfulness is a technique that involves paying attention to what’s happening now in the present moment, in an accepting, nonjudgmental manner. There are mindfulness apps for managing stress, anxiety, chronic pain, weight loss, better sleep and quitting smoking.”