Vaccine update

As the rollout for the newly approved Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine begins, you can expect the rollout to be a little slow at first before it kicks into high gear.

But what about the children? Vaccine makers are testing theirs now, but little ones shouldn’t expect theirs until early next year.

Covid need-to-know

Cases had been dropping, but now the drop has leveled off — vaccines don’t protect against some variants as well, and people’s attitudes have been relaxing. Not a good combo. Expected result: Yet another surge.

As the more transmissible variant is expected to become widespread and dominant in Georgia in March, this is a precarious position for the state to be in right now. We likely have at least one more surge to go before enough people are vaccinated to start our steady march down for good — even if the more transmissible variant wasn’t here.

Want tons and tons of data and analysis? Amber Schmidtke’s Georgia Covid-19 Updates site is the place to go.

Region meeting. April 13. Be there.

Mark your calendars for GPhA’s Spring Region Meeting (singular!): Tuesday, April 13, 2021, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. EDT. Due to Covid-19 concerns, it will be held virtually via Zoom, but will cover all 12 regions (and even the mysterious 13th region). Details coming soon!

Slimed

Why don’t drugs for cystic fibrosis infections always work? The answer is both interesting and disgusting: “carbohydrate slime.”

Ironically, this slime not only reduces the effectiveness of the drugs meant to kill the P. aeruginosa bacteria, it also affects the drugs meant to reduce the signature cystic fibrosis mucus.

Now they have to figure out why the slime forms … and how to stop it.

COVID CURED!

The solution was simple. According to the 105-year-old woman (Lucia DeClerck of New Jersey) who survived both the 1918 flu and Covid-19, the answer is gin-soaked raisins.

In patch, out patch

Patches to deliver medication are old hat, and newer ones promise to be more sophisticated — delivering more kinds of meds, and even adjusting the dosage.

But here’s a new twist: Engineers at Japan’s Tohoku University have developed a patch that goes both ways. It can not only inject medication — including large molecules like vaccines — it can extract fluids for diagnosis. Oh, and it’s biodegradable.

When a low-grade voltage is applied […] the flow of liquid is generated like when a syringe plunger is deployed. Called electroosmotic flow, it can increase the transmission rate of drugs across the skin barrier or the extraction speed of interstitial fluid to be tested for such things as glucose levels.

https://www.tohoku.ac.jp/en/press/biobatter_powered_microneed_deliver_drugs.html

Holding on to antibiotics

Apparently older folks are saving their antibiotics, probably in the same drawer with all those aluminum pans and Tupperware lids.

Among U.S. residents over age 50, in 2019…

• More than one in eight (12.7 percent) had leftover pills from an antibiotic prescription.
• 65 percent kept the leftovers on hand (20 percent threw them out*).
• 16.8 percent of them took their own leftover antibiotics later for another condition.
• 3.4 percent took someone else’s antibiotics.

* The rest presumably gave them to someone else.

Captain Obvious didn’t even blink

“Gwyneth Paltrow’s wacky Covid-19 treatments have no medical justification”.

Go nuts (early)

In 2007, parents were told to avoid giving their kids peanuts until they were older. But in 2008, the advice changed to “introduce peanuts early, but slowly.” The goal, of course, was to prevent peanut allergies. The change worked. Aussie researchers compared kids enrolled in a 2007 study vs. kids enrolled in 2018 one:

The research found the peanut allergy prevalence in 2018-2019 was 2.6 per cent compared to 3.1 per cent in 2007-2011, which amounted to a 16 per cent decrease after accounting for migration and population changes.

They also found that the kids in the later study who didn’t get peanuts until they were a year old had an even higher rate of peanut allergy: 4.8 percent. So bottom line: Introduce those nuts as soon as possible.

The Long Read

“Why drug prescriptions should include diagnoses” — by the acting HHS inspector general, and its chief medical officer.

The Devil in the details

Hemp is legal (federally, thanks to the 2018 farm bill). Marijuana is not (federally) because of Delta-9-THC, the ingredient that gets you high. But what about its cousin, Delta-8-THC?

[T]hat small distinction, it turns out, may make a big difference in the eyes of the law. Under federal law, psychoactive Delta 9 is explicitly outlawed. But Delta-8-THC from hemp is not, a loophole that some entrepreneurs say allows them to sell it in many states where hemp possession is legal.

One Georgia firm, the Georgia Hemp Company, sells Delta 8 both in-state and nationwide. That Delta-8 hemp, owner Joe Salome says, is “very similar to its psychoactive brother THC,” but (he says) “without the same anxiety-producing high that some can experience with THC.”

Mr. Salome said that he didn’t need to buy an expensive state license to sell medical marijuana because he felt protected by the farm bill. “It’s all right there,” he said.

Or is it? Let’s just say — no offense to Mr. Salome — that we’d prefer to talk to an attorney before making any decisions. (Other than reading the article. That seems safe.)