No good deed goes uncalculated

Yesterday we told you how Walmart will be offering Novo Nordisk’s human analog insulin at a cheap, cheap price: $73 for vials and $86 for FlexPens. Awful nice of it. But in case you’re worried about either company’s profits, don’t be.

A 2018 study published in the BMJ found that the cost to manufacture that insulin was no more than about $72 a year per patient for regular human insulin, and no more than $133 for analogues. So that 1,000% markup will help keep the company in business for a while.

P&G tackles nerve pain

Proctor & Gamble is launching its Nervive nerve-pain-relief pills in the U.S. — “a line of daily supplements meant to address nerve care and pain relief.” That is all.

The digestive-aids trend

The pandemic has got people to think about what they’re breathing, but it’s also got them thinking about health in general. And, apparently, they read enough to have learned the importance of the gut biome. (Possibly because “Considering the events of the past year [medical professionals] are not surprised that the number of people dealing with digestive issues is on the rise.”)

Which is to say that they’re looking past antacids and at broader gut health in the form of pre- and pro-biotics. What this means for you, dear pharmacy professional, is that sales are likely to go up (if they haven’t already). Time to get some of those products on the end caps, perhaps.

Headlines that make you look twice

“Single bee is making an immortal clone army thanks to a genetic fluke”. (Bonus: It’s exactly what it says on the tin. As one researcher said, “It’s incredible. It’s also incredibly dysfunctional.”)

Natural-trained killers

How do you take the body’s natural-born killer cells and make them better? If you’re McMaster University medical researchers, you take them out of the body and train them to kill only who you want them to kill.

The T-cells in “normal” CAR-T therapy are great killers, but they can’t distinguish friend from foe, so they can’t be used for every type of cancer. So the Canadians took natural killer cells from breast cancer patients and then trained them to recognize cancer — i.e., “genetically modified them to target specific receptors on cancer cells.” The result are “CAR-NK” cells.

“These cells have a sober second thought that says, ‘I recognize this target, but is this target part of a healthy cell or a cancer cell?’ They are able to leave the healthy cells alone and kill the cancer cells.”

Today I learned

…that removing wisdom teeth can have a long-term positive effect on your sense of taste.

“This new study shows us that taste function can actually slightly improve between the time patients have surgery and up to 20 years later.”

What else does Covid do?

Lung damage, heart damage, brain shrinkage, even messing around, um, down yonder. Is there anything Covid-19 isn’t hurting?

Welp, now you can add blood cells to the list. As in, the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to damage them long term, as German researchers discovered. And they ain’t minor:

We found significant changes in lymphocyte stiffness, monocyte size, neutrophil size and deformability, and heterogeneity of erythrocyte deformation and size. While some of these changes recovered to normal values after hospitalization, others persisted for months after hospital discharge.

Kidney, heal thyself

White blood cells kill infections; that’s 4th grade biology. But it turns out that the kidneys have their own type of killers: “intercalated cells” that eat bacteria and poop acid — just like white blood cells.

“A-ha!” said Illinois University researchers, if you want to treat a kidney infection, why get the whole body involved when you can just activate these guys?

“[S]ince we found these cells work the same way but are only present in the kidney, the long-term potential would be the ability to activate these cells to prevent or clear an infection from the kidney. The idea is that with this approach we will eventually be able to replace or complement antibiotic therapy.”

It was a beaver all along

First they thought the capital-P-Plague was caused by rats. Then they realized it was fleas. Then they figured it was fleas on gerbils that probably did it.

But wait, there’s more. Now the earliest known Plague victim looks to be from 5,000 years ago (not in 1346), and he got it from … a beaver.

Because this early strain of Y. pestis was not yet flea-borne, the scientists think that the bacteria originally entered the hunter-gatherer’s body through a rodent bite, possibly from a beaver, a common carrier of the plague predecessor Y. pseudotuberculosis.

The Long Read: Our Number Two Story

New products, new technologies, new delivery systems, and more — “Fecal Microbiota Transplantation Is Poised for a Makeover”