Elizabeth Phillips

Analyzing electronic health records (EHR) of 9,748 patients diagnosed with COVID-19, Cosmin Bejan, PhD, Elizabeth Phillips, MD, and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center asked whether COVID disease severity correlated with any drugs that happened to be taken by these patients in the months leading up to their diagnosis.

A report of more than 23,000 health care workers and employees at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine shows that a risk stratification screening mechanism for potential allergies to the vaccine worked exceedingly well as the vaccine program rolled out in December 2020.

Studies using large DNA biobanks revealed genetic variants associated with penicillin allergy, the most common type of drug-induced allergic reaction.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than 1% of the population is truly allergic to penicillin. The rest were never allergic to begin with or have outgrown their allergy — an estimated 80% of people with penicillin allergy lose their sensitivity to the drug within 10 years.

A program in the Medical Intensive Care Unit has successfully removed penicillin allergy labels from more than 45 inpatients at high risk to receive antibiotics, but whose penicillin allergies were low risk.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues have identified a gene that increases the risk for a severe and potentially life-threatening reaction to the commonly prescribed antibiotic vancomycin.