Weird statin stat

A study of the records of almost 11,000 patients found that prescribers prescribe fewer statins as the day goes on. And we’re not just talking early morning vs. late afternoon.

[C]ompared with patients who came in at 8:00 AM (the reference group), patients who came in at 9:00 AM were 12% less likely to get a prescription. Patients coming in for noon appointments were 37% less likely to get a statin prescription, which made them the least likely to get a script.

Covid-19 vaccine quickies

Will we really need boosters?

Experts are thinking, “No, probably not.” But that’s not what the vaccine makers want to hear.

Some of these scientists expressed concern that public expectations around Covid-19 boosters are being set by pharmaceutical executives rather than health specialists, although many agreed that preparing for such a need as a precaution was prudent.

Spare the rod

The University of Miami has found the data to convince a large portion of vaccine skeptics they need to get the Covid shot(s).

Mixing brands

What happens if you get one Pfizer and one Moderna vaccine? It’s possible the radio waves from the two different embedded microchips* interfere, resulting in more-frequent side effects. They aren’t worse, though, just more common. No word yet on whether the protection is as good, though.

* I feel the need to point out, just in case, that that’s a joke.

Incentives

What about incentivizing people to get the vaccine? Spending $100 now (as West Virginia is planning) could save a lot of money later, if you’re the one paying for treatment. Funny, though: Like everything else with this bleepin’ pandemic, there’s a partisan divide. Democrats would take the money, Republicans prefer “don’t need to wear a mask.”

And, of course, there are all the private incentives, from Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Sam Adams beer to baseball tickets to sweepstakes entries. But the skeptics say “such incentives rarely make a large, lasting impact on healthy behaviors or public health initiatives.”

In other vaccine news…

Dengue: Aussie researchers have made a vaccine candidate for Dengue — one of the nastiest viruses in the tropics (affecting 390 million people a year). There is, sorta kinda a dengue vaccine already (Dengvaxia*), but it’s only for people who have already had the disease. Yeah, go figure.

Tdap: Saint Louis University medical researchers found that “adult patients who have received a Tdap vaccination have a 42% lower risk for dementia, compared with patients who are not vaccinated.” That’s after reviewing more than 300,000 medical records. (Other vaccines have also been linked to reducing dementia, but they say this is the first time the evidence isn’t anecdotal or self-reported.)

* Really? “Dengvaxia”? That’s the best they could do?

Fighting the risperidone rounding

A side effect of risperidone can be weight gain — like serious, supersize-me weight gain in just a few weeks.

But now there’s good news. First, University of Texas neuroscientists figured out why: Risperidone seems to interfere with the melanocortin 4 (Mc4r) gene.

The good news is that there’s a drug for that: liraglutide, which targets that very Mc4r gene and is used as an obesity treatment. So they did the obvious thing and combined the drugs. Voila! The patients (well, mouse patients) didn’t gain weight.

Trapping the malaria parasites

Nothing against quinine (or a gin and tonic), but a good treatment for malaria is always welcome, especially as the the malaria parasite develops resistance to existing drugs.

Most anti-malarials work by killing the parasite, but now researchers in Britain and Latvia have created something new: a “drug-like compound” that enters infected red blood cells and prevents the parasite within from escaping.

Coming soon: animal and human testing.

The Long Read: Immune System edition

What if the function of the immune system was about more than fighting infection? Why would evolution let us develop a system that so often runs amok?

The answer may lie in humanity’s evolutionary history: Immunity may be as much about communication and behaviour as it is about cellular biology.