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The Trump administration is considering Houman Hemmati, an ophthalmologist, entrepreneur and frequent Fox News guest, to serve as the nation’s next top regulator of vaccines and treatments for complex diseases, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations. If selected, Hemmati would replace Vinay Prasad, who is slated to leave the high-ranking position at the Food and Drug Administration at the end of April after a rocky year. Prasad had overseen controversial decisions about drugs and a new plan to tighten vaccine approvals, which drew condemnation from former agency leaders. (Roubein and Diamond, 4/13)

A man with advanced HIV died with drug-resistant mpox replicating in his brain, US scientists found, in a case that shows how the virus can persist and evolve just as global health programs to check such infections are being scaled back. The findings, based on a detailed autopsy by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and released as a preprint Thursday, suggest mpox can spread far beyond the skin lesions that typically define the disease. The virus was found infecting the brain and continuing to multiply there despite lower viral levels than in other tissues. (Gale, 4/14)

In a study published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection, researchers in Singapore uncover no tie between repeated mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in the first trimester of pregnancy and a significantly increased risk of major structural birth defects. (Van Beusekom, 4/13)

Hanan Balkhy has a lot on her plate these days. Balkhy is the director of the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean region, an entity that includes several of the countries caught up in the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran. The problems it has been posing — not just to individuals’ health and safety but to entire health care systems — are robbing her of sleep. (Branswell, 4/14)