Quiet damage

Young folks may have milder cases of Covid, but a new study out of Appalachian State University found that even with mild symptoms, the virus causes damage to blood vessels that could lead to cardiovascular complications. In particular, they observed increased stiffness of arteries — not a good thing, even if you’re otherwise healthy.

This means that young, healthy adults with mild COVID-19 symptoms may increase their risk of cardiovascular complications which may continue for some time after COVID-19 infection

ICYMI

Pfizer is going to ask, in September, that its Covid-19 vaccine be approved for people two to 11 years old.

It’s more than size that matters

When pharmaceutical companies test drugs on kids, they typically just reduce the dose — smaller bodies, less medication. Simple. But researchers at Finland’s Aalto University realized it’s more complicated than that:

“The size of an organ is not necessarily the only thing that affects its performance. Kids’ organs are simply not as efficient as those of adults. In drug modeling, if we assume that size is the only thing that matters, we might end up giving too large of doses.”

So they’ve developed a system that’s part chemistry, part artificial intelligence that they say will make it safer to test and prescribe medications for the little ones: “It works for any drug whose concentration we want to examine.”

Captain Obvious never rests

If you use both e-cigs (ENDS: electronic nicotine delivery systems) and “smoked products,” you increase your risk for respiratory symptoms.

“Those who use ENDS to stop smoking tobacco should be cautioned against dual use,” the authors write.

It’s not the pill, it’s the math

Someone is in pain from, say, osteoarthritis. They get a placebo. The pain is reduced.

A-ha! Placebo effect! …right?

Maybe not, says an investigator at the University of Arizona. In fact, rather than the placebo effect, it might be the result of a different phenomenon: a statistical one — regression to the mean.

The short and rough explanation: If the average of something is, say, 5, and you score a 9, chances are your next ‘score’ will lower — closer to the mean. It doesn’t matter what that something is (pain level, baseball score, height of the person you’re dating). If you’re away from the average one time, you’ll probably be closer to the average next time.

So if the average pain level is 3, and people report a 9 (ouch!), chances are their next report will be lower — closer to the mean — no matter what happens. So it’s not the placebo effect. It’s just statistics.

Related book recommendation: Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project about psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Today’s alcohol study

The latest answer to the question “Is moderate alcohol good or bad?” is … maybe good. That’s from a study out of Mass General Hospital that reports “Alcohol in Moderation May Help the Heart by Calming Stress Signals in the Brain.”

In other words, a little alcohol can calm you down. But having too much has the opposite effect:

“We found that stress-related activity in the brain was higher in non-drinkers when compared with people who drank moderately, while people who drank excessively (more than 14 drinks per week) had the highest level of stress-related brain activity.”

That doesn’t mean you should drink, say the authors. Maybe try yoga instead.

Flu vaccine quickie

Flu vaccines made from cultured cells are just as good as those made using eggs, according to vaccine maker Seqirus (which makes both kinds of vaccine).

What, not science-y enough for ya? Here:

“Noninferiority of QIVc compared to QIV was concluded if the upper bound of the two-sided 95% confidence interval for the postvaccination [geometric mean titers] ratio did not exceed 1.5, and if the [seroconversion rate] difference did not exceed 10% for each of the four strains.”

Bad news for transplantees

The Covid-19 mRNA vaccines don’t really work for people who’ve received an organ transplant. They’ll still need to practice all the Covid-19 precautions, even if they’ve received both the vaccine doses. So sayeth researchers from Johns Hopkins.

“While there was an increase in those with detectable antibodies — 54% overall — after the second shot, the number of transplant recipients in our second study whose antibody levels reached high enough levels to ward off a SARS-CoV-2 infection was still well below what’s typically seen in people with healthy immune systems.”

So why bother with the vaccine at all, if immunosuppressants are going to render them ineffective? Because some protection is better than none in a disease with Covid’s nasty long-term complications.