If you don’t test, rates go down

It might sound like good news — STD rates have plummeted lately in the U.S. But it ain’t. Probably. That’s because the drop is not because people are so sick of each other that they’re refraining from you-know-what*. It’s more likely that they’re just not getting tested or they’re avoiding getting treatment in These Troubled Times.

* Birds, bees, flowers, trees

It doesn’t have to be hard

Take it easy — CPEasy! We’ve got a new home-study education session* available as a CPEasy course.

Interested in MTM? Interested in diabetes management? Meet their love child: “Diabetes MTM: Best Practices for the community setting” featuring the terrific Jonathan Marquess, PharmD, CDE, FAPhA.

Diabetes MTM: Best Practices for the community setting – a review of diabetes guidelines & medications will teach you what you need to know to help patients manage their type 2 diabetes, from glycemic control to treatment algorithms, to new products and much more.

As always, GPhA members receive a discounted rate — just $20 for an hour of CE credit. Non-members are welcome ($42) but you will be pitied.

* Or “home-education study session” — either way. We’re easy.

…and you’re so cold

“What’s the average human body temperature in Fahrenheit?”

“Ninety-eight p—”

“WRONG!”

Further proof that 98.6° (or 37°, if you’re using that quaint metric system) is old news. Yet Another Study, this one out of UC Santa Barbara, found that today’s “normal” temperature is about 97.7°.

Interesting wrinkle: It took the U.S. about 150 years to drop that low, but it took the Tsimane, “an indigenous population of forager-horticulturists in the Bolivian Amazon” only 20 years. The likely culprit: Better medical care.

It could be that people are in better condition, so their bodies might be working less to fight infection […] Or greater access to antibiotics and other treatments means the duration of infection is shorter now than in the past.

Tylenol is poisoning the Swiss

Back in 2003, Swiss folks could start getting 1000mg paracetamol pills at the pharmacy (acetaminophen in the Language of Freedom™), rather than just the 500mg version. But since then, found researchers from ETH Zurich*, the high-dose version has gained in popularity … and so have cases of paracetamol poisoning.

It’s very easy to exceed the maximum daily dosage by taking just a few extra of the 1,000 milligram tablets, whereas, with the lower-dose 500 milligram tablets, the risk of accidental overdose isn’t as great.

Says the study’s author, “[I]f paracetamol doesn’t have the desired effect, it’s important not to simply take more tablets.”

* Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

Russia is attacking U.S. hospitals

The feds — the F.B.I., HHS, and Homeland Security — are all warning hospital and clinic administrators that Russian hackers are conducting and planning cyberattacks on medical facilities in the U.S. in an effort to create panic just before the election.

The attacks on American hospitals, clinics, and medical complexes are intended to take those facilities offline and hold their data hostage in exchange for multimillion-dollar ransom payments, just as coronavirus cases spike across the United States.

Medicare may cover more insulin devices

CMS is proposing changes “that could expand Medicare coverage for continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps.”

Under the proposed rule change […] CMS would expand the interpretation regarding when external infusion pumps are appropriate for use in the home and can be covered as durable medical equipment under Medicare Part B.

Today’s funky science story: monkey brains

If you woke up today and thought, “I’d love to be able to control monkey brains with light, but it’s so tough,” we’ve got good news: Researchers from 45 primate labs in nine countries have launched the Nonhuman Primate Optogenetics Open Database, which aims to help share information (“minute details of successes and failures”) on using light to control animal brains.

By the way, you’re right that it’s a tough job:

Delivering light to large brains is a hurdle as well. “Say I am using a 200-micron-diameter fiber optic for stimulating my mouse brain,” [neuroscientist Arash] Afraz explains. “To scale that up, I’d have to stick a flashlight in the monkey’s head.”