Dr. Klotman's Video Message - Week 321

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:03][music] [music] [music] >> Happy Friday Baylor College of Medicine and [music] friends of Baylor. Well, all the news is about the hantavirus cruise ship.

[00:00:25]I mean, the cruise ship with hantavirus.

[00:00:28]I guess you don't go on a hantavirus cruise. Well, actually these people did.

[00:00:32]What I love is, you know, you get an itinerary. We're going to go to Antarctica. [music] We're going to go see fancy islands out off the coast of Argentina. The next thing you know, it's a 33-day itinerary, except it would be 42 days afterwards of isolation.

[00:00:46]So, Spain received 140 of the passengers, the crew members. Eight of them were ill.

[00:00:51]Remember, three had died from hantavirus on the ship already.

[00:00:55]Uh the passengers that were going to be isolated in the United States uh were met by the CDC staff and then of all places, flown to Nebraska.

[00:01:05]Uh I don't know. It's bad enough, but they were flown taken to they were quarantined in Nebraska.

[00:01:11]Uh there's a national quarantine unit there. It's a federally funded quarantine unit that that also contains the Nebraska biocontainment unit.

[00:01:21]It's a 20 single-person 300 sq ft rooms.

[00:01:25]Uh the main thing is has negative air pressure, so when you open the door, air comes in and goes through a filter rather than if there's infectious air going out.

[00:01:34]Uh so, it's very very important.

[00:01:38]Uh this this was the same unit that, if you remember, treated the very first patient that had Ebola in the Ebola outbreak in 2014. And some of the the uh COVID-19 patients, if you recall, from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It's just another reason to stay off a cruise ship. you can get anything, anything.

[00:01:59]Anyway, so there's 17 Americans and one UK citizen that's living in the United States that were flown to the quarantine center. One of them was asymptomatic but was testing positive, probably had antibodies to it, that's my guess.

[00:02:13]And they that person was put in the bio containment facility. The remaining ones were sent either in the isolation units or they can be sent to regional emerging special pathogen treatment centers, which is part of HHS.

[00:02:28]So they were assessed in Omaha and then if they several of them were able to be flown to other places. Then there was a group of seven that left the boat before the hantavirus was identified.

[00:02:41]Seven of those were in from Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

[00:02:46]The two Texas residents were from Houston, our own Houston.

[00:02:50]But they had left the ship before this whole outbreak was identified. Two others were from New Jersey were exposed on the flight. They were nearby the passengers that had been on the boat. So the ones that the ones in Houston are doing fine.

[00:03:05]Apparently everybody's doing pretty well and the risk assessment is still very low because it's not easy to transmit.

[00:03:12]Now the Andes variety is actually a little bit more transmissible and so people are a little bit concerned but you have to have close contact, probably those people in the same room. So the concern is is very low but you know, always with biology you can never predict so it's important that we continue to integrate with the World Health Organization, these other organizations that are able to identify all these viruses.

[00:03:38]So we're we're we're doing the wrong thing by sort of isolating ourselves.

[00:03:43]Now I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the New York Times had reported that the FDA was blocking certain publications on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I mean, what? They're supposed to be on our side, but what are they doing? So, a spokesperson from HHS stated that studies were withdrawn because, and I quote, "The authors made broad claims not supported by the underlying data.

[00:04:07]The FDA acted to maintain the integrity of its scientific process and to ensure all work linked to the agency adheres to its rigorous standards."

[00:04:16]That That would be, in my words, BS.

[00:04:20]>> [laughter] >> That is such So, it it just to show you, two of the studies that were that was analyzing millions of patient records had already been accepted for publication by medical journals, and then they were asked to withdraw them.

[00:04:35]Now, the way you don't get published in a medical journal without peer review. So, these were peer-reviewed publications.

[00:04:42]The other two that were blocked were efficacy of the shingles vaccine showing that it was incredibly safe and efficacious, and they were asked to remove those from submission.

[00:04:55]So, both blocked studies demonstrated the widespread safety and efficacy of the vaccines. So, the FDA blocks that?

[00:05:07]I don't know.

[00:05:08]Can't make it up.

[00:05:10]And in other great brilliance by our institutions, uh Moderna trial, mRNA trial, came out. It's very, very positive. It was published in the New England Journal. These authors report a phase three randomized controlled trial looking at Moderna's mRNA vaccine versus the usual seasonal flu vaccine.

[00:05:30]You know, remember mRNA is manufactured by the RNA directly, and uh seasonal vaccines are generally made in eggs.

[00:05:39]So, this trial enrolled 40,700 adults at 301 sites, 11 countries, and it studied this during the 2024-2025 uh northern hemisphere flu season and they were randomly assigned either receive the mRNA vaccine or the standard dose flu vaccine. So, that's important.

[00:05:57]Uh the mRNA vaccine provided significantly better protection against influenza uh than standard dose flu shots in adults over the age of 50. Now, I don't think it's really the right study because if you're over the age of 50, they recommend the high dose. And I think it should have been compared to the high dose. But, the main thing is you know, they want to get it approved, so went after it and a little easier uh indication. But, the fact is it works very well. So, and the nice thing about mRNA vaccines is they can be adjusted very quickly.

[00:06:27]You know, it takes usually almost 12 months 10 to 12 months to get vaccines ready if you're going to be making them in in eggs or even in cell culture.

[00:06:36]So, this is a great technology. We're not using it.

[00:06:40]I don't know. Okay.

[00:06:42]Now, there's also an interesting study that came out of University of Minnesota.

[00:06:47]Again, this is the theme here is vaccines are really good. This is showed that human papillomavirus vaccines reduce the risk of cervical cancer by 80% in women if they're vaccinated before the age of 16 and 66% in those vaccinated after 16.

[00:07:02]So, there this is a significant problem.

[00:07:04]50,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with HPV-related cancer.

[00:07:08]That's men and women. Men usually get things like ENT cancers, mouth cancers, things like that. But, it's very effective in men as well. So, again, a great couple of more studies showing the efficacy of the HPV vaccine.

[00:07:22]And speaking of vaccines that work and we don't use, let's look at measles. Measles are up 1,842 cases. Uh you know, it's still going strong. We're probably going to beat last year.

[00:07:36]Almost everyone is unvaccinated.

[00:07:38]As is flu. So, influenza probably coming to the end of the season, but you know, there were still three related pediatric deaths. That brings 158 children who died. All 85% 90% of those were unvaccinated. So, those were needless deaths. CDC estimates 32 million flu cases, 380,000 hospitalizations, and 24,000 deaths so far this season. So, moderately bad flu season.

[00:08:04]Okay, I just want to talk about one one interesting paper from our own Baylor College of Medicine cuz this is really fascinating.

[00:08:10]This is a paper that was published in nature by Sameer Sheth and his colleagues. And it's really uh transformational study. And the reason is they were looking at uh surgery for epilepsy patients. Sometimes people have such bad epilepsy they actually have to have the surgical they have to go into the brain, find this this the the active center, and then cut it out. So, while they were under general anesthesia, they put used uh ultra-high resolution electrodes placed in the hippocampus. And the hippocampus is thought to be associated with memories.

[00:08:41]So, while unconscious, so these people are anesthetized, they played simple sounds occasionally interrupted by an odd tone, and then they read natural language stories to them. You know, so they're unconscious, but because they're you have these electrodes and they can see the response of individual neurons.

[00:08:58]And what it showed was that the brain was still detecting patterns, process it was processing grammar, even meanings of sentences.

[00:09:05]Uh it could predict upcoming words just by the neural patterns while they're anesthetized.

[00:09:10]So, this thing really is transformative.

[00:09:12]It suggests the brain performs complex and predictive processing even without consciousness, which is why I went through most of my college education, unconscious and predicting all kinds of things. Anyway, want to end today with a bunch of shout-outs.

[00:09:28]First of all, congratulations to Bambi Grilly, Professor of Pediatrics, Hematology and Oncology in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, who is has been appointed president elect of the International Cell and Gene Therapy Society. This is a global organization that unites clinicians, regulators, researchers, uh and industry partners to really advance gene therapy. So, a really important position and congratulations to uh Bambi.

[00:09:52]Also, congratulations James Orengo, associate professor of neurology, has been named the co-director of the Medical Scientist Training Program, the that's our MD PhD program.

[00:10:01]Uh he will be joining Dr. Katherine King, who is professor of pediatrics in leading the program.

[00:10:06]Uh big shout-out to Dr. Ashwin Rao, a fellow in medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology, who received the 2026 Endoscopy Quality Improvement Project Prize from the American Society for Gastroenterology or I'm sorry, for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. This award is important it awards trainees who are doing a really good work, so congratulations. And then finally, I had this a chance to go visit our our our my favorite little school, Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan, at the James D. Ryan Middle School. I visited them last was with the eighth graders, met uh four of the students that won uh some of the science fair awards, so uh it's great. It's always great to see wonderfully young minds [music] and Baylor is very much involved with the growth of those those kids and and uh the STEM [music] Plus M program that we run throughout the city of Houston and the county of Harris County.

[00:10:54]>> [music] >> Anyway, thank you so much. It's great to see you and I can't wait to see you next week.

[00:11:04]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Mhm.