Vaccine quick notes

An ongoing study finds “No serious health effects linked to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines” — it’s looked at 6.2 million people so far, from December 2020 through June 2021.

Vaccines for Things Other Than Covid dropped significantly in 2020, at least looking at data for Michigan. That included vaccinations for diphtheria, herpes, HPV, meningitis, tetanus, and whooping cough. A study in the American Journal of Public Health found that April 2020 was the worst month, with…

86% fewer adolescents receiving shots, 83% fewer children ages 2 to 8, and 82% fewer adults. Children under age 2 had the smallest drop in vaccinations, with 35% fewer getting shots in April 2020.

Need an organ transplant? You might be bumped if you’re not vacciniated.

Across the country, growing numbers of transplant programs have chosen to either bar patients who refuse to take the widely available covid vaccines from receiving transplants, or give them lower priority on crowded organ waitlists.

One pill to burn your fat away

Guys (and post-menopausal women) can, it seems, lose weight without changing their diets. The key: drugs called PDE9 inhibitors.

They’re still experimental — being tested as treatments for Alzheimer’s and sickle cell — but Johns Hopkins researchers thought they might help heart issues, too. Indeed, and more: PDE9 inhibitors stimulate cells to burn more fat, reduces obesity, and don’t have side effects.

The big takeaway:

…if [the] lab’s findings in mice apply to people, someone weighing 250 pounds could lose about 50 pounds with an oral PDE9 inhibitor without changing eating or exercise habits.

The science:

The investigators found PDE9 inhibition produces these effects by activating a master regulator of fat metabolism known as PPARa. By stimulating PPARa, levels of genes for proteins that control fat uptake into cells and their use as fuel are broadly increased.

How’s work?

APhA and the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations are launching the “Pharmacy Workplace and Well-being Reporting portal” — a place for pharmacists, technicians, and student pharmacists to share workplace concerns anonymously.

The reports will be collected and analyzed by the Alliance for Patient Medication Safety, a federally recognized Patient Safety Organization, to help tell a collective, powerful story to spark change and improvement in pharmacy personnel well-being, and patient safety.

Where is it? you ask. Right here.

Better safe (or sorry)

Once you realize how utterly filthy your fellow humans are — and knowing flu season is coming — it’s not a big leap to wear a mask and keep your distance.

And if you make that decision, you’re apparently not alone. More than half of people surveyed by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases said they would continue to wear masks.

Other people, though, were not as worried — “44% said they were either unsure or did not plan to get vaccinated during the 2021-2022 influenza season.” (Of those, more than a third said they didn’t need a vaccine because they had never had the flu. Presumably they don’t wear seatbelts if they’ve never been in an accident.)

The killer is in the house

If you want to beat the bad guys, one way is to turn their own against them. In this case, to get rid of bacteria on medical devices, researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation engineered Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria so instead of being harmful itself, it would go all Benedict Arnold and secrete enzymes deadly to harmful microbes.

M. pneumoniae was first modified so that it would not cause illness. Further tweaks made it produce two different enzymes that dissolve biofilms and attacks the cell walls of the bacteria embedded within. The researchers also modified the bacteria so that it secretes antimicrobial enzymes more efficiently.

And it worked — “According to the authors, injecting the therapy under the skin of mice treated infections in 82% of the treated animals.”

Fun facts about molnupiravir

The Merck/Ridgeback Covid-19 treatment costs about $2.50 a treatment. Outside the U.S., it will cost “no more than $20,” giving the companies a healthy profit.

And for the U.S. government — which, by the way, paid for the university research that discovered it? Merck is charging about $700 a treatment.

The companies will undoubtedly argue that their price covers the costs of discovery and development—that without extraordinary profit margins of 95% or greater there would be no incentive to develop new drugs.

Other fun fact from the article: Egypt eliminated hepatitis C in the country in less than a year, using a two-drug, three-month curative therapy. It cost $45 to treat each person. In the U.S., the drugmaker charges about $80,000.

I do not think that word means what you think it means

“>140,000 U.S. Children Have Been Orphaned by COVID-19” reads the Drugs.com headline.

In fact, more than 140,000 U.S. children have lost at least one parent or caregiver. Which is still awful, but they aren’t orphans.

Mystery solved (maybe)

“We might finally know what causes ‘COVID toes’” Live Science reports. The rashes some people have gotten as a bonus with Covid-19 — it looks like frostbite on the toes — appear because the virus (via type 1 interferons) puts the immune system in overdrive — causing a “runaway immune response in which the body attacks its own tissues.”

Because you’ve been good this week, we’ll skip a picture. Use your imagination.

It’s that time of year

…when the American Academy of Ophthalmology reminds people not to buy decorative Halloween contact lenses from the hobo on the streetcorner.