A “pivotal change” to diabetes treatment?

What if, when treating diabetes, instead of focusing on blood sugar first and weight loss second, you swapped them? That’s the recommendation from an international panel of experts who say that treating blood sugar levels is akin to treating the symptom, not the cause.

The researchers state that dropping 15% or more of body weight can have a disease-modifying effect in Type 2 diabetes, an outcome that is unattainable by any other glucose-lowering intervention. The new focus would require updating current treatment guidelines and providing significant provider education,

The panel’s recommendations are published in The Lancet.

Another scam alert

Scammers, it seems, are spoofing the Board of Pharmacy’s telephone number and scaring the bejeezus out of pharmacists (“Your license has been suspended”) or just asking for info (“We’re doing a system update”).

So if you get a call from the BoP — (404) 651-8000 — tell them you’ll call right back, then dial the number yourself.

Pharmacy needs the foundation, and the foundation needs you

See Thomas climb. Climb, Thomas, climb!

Help Thomas move to the top of the mountain!

The mountain is the $24,000 the Georgia Pharmacy Foundation is working to raise for student scholarships, education, mental health programs, opioid safety, and more. And we need your help — Thomas needs your help — to make it.

Doing that important work takes funding. It take you. Together, we can move mountains … or at least climb them.

Please, donate to the foundation today!

Covid treatments (real ones) keep coming

The latest entry in the Covid-treatment game is Merck/Ridgeback, with molnupiravir — an oral antiviral that, they say, clinical trials show cuts the risk of death in half.

In the placebo group, 53 patients, or 14.1%, were hospitalized or died. For those who received the drug, 28, or 7.3%, were hospitalized or died.

In fact, the results were so good that an independent board of experts recommended the study be stopped early. The companies will be applying for an emergency use authorization shortly. (Other companies are hot on their heels, though, with their own antivirals.)

Bonus: Article includes the phrase “game-changer.”

A(nother) new kind of antibiotic

The Czechs, it seems, have come up with the next new antibiotic replacement. Researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences have found that a new compound, a type of lipophosphonoxin, could be a replacement for antibiotics — at least in some situations.

LPPOs hold considerable promise as a new generation of antibiotics. They do not have to penetrate the bacteria but instead act on the surface, where they disrupt the bacterial cell membrane.

Finding the compound was one thing. Making it useful was another. To do that they, of course, did what any of us would to: added nanotechnology, creating an anti-bacterial dressing for skin wounds. Next up are clinical trials.

Scam group hacked

A group of physicians calling themselves “America’s Front Line Doctors” A) has apparently been scamming people for a while with fake consultations and prescriptions for unproven Covid-19 treatments, but even worse, B) was just the victim of a hacker who released all its operational and patient data, as Fierce Healthcare reports.

But first, from Time magazine:

Hundreds of AFLD customers and donors have accused the group of touting a service promising prescriptions […] and failing to deliver after a fee had been paid. Some customers described being charged for consultations that did not happen. Others said they were connected to digital pharmacies that quoted excessive prices of up to $700 for the cheap medication.

“They’re the 21st century, digital version of snake-oil salesmen,” says Irwin Redlener, a physician who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

It may not matter much anyway: The group’s founder is facing prison, it’s about to lose its non-profit status, and the company that provides the technology for its consultations pulled the plug: “Cadence Health’s Roque Espinal-Valdez said he shut the platform down, not wanting any part in profiting off of Covid-19 ‘quackery.'”

Side note: You kids might not know this, but once upon a time medication wasn’t a political thing. You had a headache, you took aspirin — no matter who you voted for. Simpler times.

This isn’t creepy at all

Kinsa makes smart thermometers — they connect to your smartphone, and even let you add symptom information. Sales have been booming.

But Kinsa sells then sells the data the app collects (anonymized) to Reckitt’s Mucinex, which uses it to run ads and adjust stock “by showing where people are starting to get sick before outbreaks peak.”

Four out of five dentists…

If you want to take care of your teeth, what’s actually been proven to work? A University at Buffalo researcher decided to find out. What he found:

What works for sure: Regular and interdental toothbrushes (teethbrush?); Water Piks; and mouthwashes with chlorhexidine gluconate (by prescription), cetylpyridinium chloride (e.g., Crest Pro-Health), or essential oil (e.g., eucalyptol in Listerine).

What might work, but there isn’t any proof yet: Powered toothbrushes, dental floss, probiotics, dietary supplements. (Although he agrees that common sense says that flossing is good.)

What’s bad: Triclosan — “the compound is linked to the development of various types of cancers and reproductive defects”.