“Computer, identify some new treatments”

Can existing drugs be used off-label for other conditions? Of course. But it’s not always easy (or obvious) to figure out which drugs might yield surprises.

Unless, that is, you’ve got millions of medical and insurance records and a high-powered computer at your disposal. In that case, let artificial intelligence (aka “deep learning”) take a whack at it. That’s what OSU scientists are working on:

“…a framework that combines enormous patient care-related datasets with high-powered computation to arrive at repurposed drug candidates and the estimated effects of those existing medications on a defined set of outcomes.

In other words, the computer can find correlations that mere humans might not realize. Maybe “A lot of Hispanic men between 25 and 45 taking azithromycin also saw their risk of prostate cancer go down” or whatever. By teasing out potential connections, the system might speed the discovery of new uses for existing drugs.

When it’s time to go

Japanese researchers checked out the anecdotal evidence for both senna and magnesium oxide as laxatives. Either, they found, “improves bowel movements in patients with constipation.”

The response rate for overall improvement in the placebo was 11.7% compared with 69.2% in the senna group and 68.3% in the magnesium oxide group.

Five vaccine tidbits

President-elect Joe Biden will release all available vaccine stockpiles, rather than hold some back for second doses.

[T]he Biden team believes that vaccine manufacturers will be able to produce enough second doses in a timely fashion while administering first doses to more Americans.

He also said he’ll use the Defense Production Act “to produce vaccine materials and other supplies in order to ensure there’s enough vaccine for both doses.”

Know this: The five things the CDC wants clinicians to know about the vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine seems to work against not only the U.K. strain, but the South African one as well.

We’re learning a lot from this practice pandemic. Like, “Unexpected weak link in supply chains: A shortage of workers“.

Here come the side effects — a “tidal wave” of reports of adverse reactions, especially because vulnerable people on multiple meds are top of the list to get the vaccines.

30 minutes to vaccination compliance

On Thursday, GPhA hosted a webinar, “COVID-19 Vaccine: Ensuring Pharmacy Compliance in Just 30 Minutes!” We knew it would be popular, but it got a little crazy — we even ran out of time for Q&A.

So…

If you missed the presentation, you can view a recording of this program HERE. (Sorry, there’s no CE involved.)

Even better, we’ve scheduled a follow-up Q&A session for next week with GPhA and a panel of professionals from the Georgia DPH.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021; 8:00 – 8:30am. (Save your spot; space is limited. CLICK HERE to register for the special Q&A session.)

Slow talkers had better practice, because this is going to be fast-paced to get as many answers as possible. Pro tip: CLICK HERE to send your questions in advance to GPhA’s Teresa “Mach 5” Tatum.

A million years of plaque

Wondering about the drug habits of ancient people? (Who isn’t?) Here’s a fun place to look: The tartar on their teeth. Washington State University archaeologists — with some help from those shifty Danes (at Aarhus University) are using mass spectrometry on the tartar of skeletons to learn how Dutch farmers may have self-medicated.

Fun fact: “Tartar traps bits of food, drink, and other substances while a person is living, and it can survive more than 1 million years on fossils.”

And there are some modern uses, too:

Because tartar seems to keep a long-term record of drug intake, it could be used in place of hair samples when criminal investigators need to test for substance use after drugs leave the bloodstream.

So many police procedural episodes just got ruined

Identical twins, it seems, aren’t identical — at least not more than briefly. Enough mutations occur in the embryonic stage that those ‘nature-vs.-nurture’ studies might need to be thrown out.

They measured mutations that occurred during embryonic growth and found that identical twins differed by an average of 5.2 early developmental mutations. In 15% of twins, the number of diverging mutations was higher.

As one of the Icelandic researchers put it:

“So if you take identical twins raised apart and one of them developed autism, the classic interpretation has been that that is caused by the environment. But that is an extraordinarily dangerous conclusion.”

Why did the pharmacist cross the road?

“New Study Finds that Delivering the News with Humor Makes Young Adults More Likely to Remember and Share”

Captain Obvious surrenders

“Covid-19 spiked in US counties where universities held in-person classes”

Covid-19 incidence increased by 56.2% in counties with in-person instruction, compared with a decrease of 17.9% in counties with remote learning.

Allow me to mess with your world today

3D science artist Joanna Kobierska created this image of what a velociraptor might actually have looked like:

Click to see the full image she posted on Twitter.