So that’s how it works

I didn’t realize that, in this day and age, researchers didn’t know how penicillin worked. Apparently they don’t — or, rather, didn’t. A team of researchers led by the University of Sheffield has figured it out — and in doing so may have found a path to preventing resistance.

You know what penicillin (and other β-lactam drugs) do? They create holes in the cell walls. The cells grow … and so do the holes — like blowing up a balloon with pinpricks in it. It goes about as well for the bacteria as it does for the balloon.

They’ve even identified the enzyme responsible for the hole-making, letting them “get to the heart of understanding how existing antibiotics work and give us new avenues for further treatment.”

Today’s ‘breakthrough’ Covid treatment…

…is benfooxythiamine. So say a group of British and German researchers, who found that the drug inhibits one of the critical processes of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the metabolic pentose phosphate pathway, since you asked) required for its reproduction (sorry, replication).

Benfooxythiamine is a transketolase inhibitor, and if you’re thinking you’ve never heard of it before, you’re not alone. It’s not exactly out there pressing the flesh and hanging out with the cool kids, although it’s been around for a while and mentioned occasionally as an antiviral.

The antiviral mechanism of benfooxythiamin varies from remdesivir and molnupiravir, other Covid-19 treatments. As a result, viruses that are resistant to these therapeutics could be sensitive to benfooxythiamin.

Add it to the growing list of tested treatments that could work in the real world. Someday.

Full vaccination still beats infection

Getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 will give you some protection from the virus, for sure. But how well does ‘natural immunity’ compare to a vaccination?

The latest data show, essentially, that having Covid-19 gives you about as much protection as a single dose of an mRNA vaccine. Compared to someone who’s been fully vaccinated, though…

Unvaccinated patients with prior infection were 5.49 times more likely to have laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated.

So if you’ve had Covid, you’ll still want to get at least one shot before your protection wears off.

The old variant

There are plenty of stories about how the new Covid variants are nothing to worry about (as long as you’re vaccinated), but here’s a twist: There’s an older variant out there, A.30, with a spike protein different enough that it seems to evade both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines

The good news: It’s “in all likelihood extinct now” and only showed up in five reported cases.

The bad news: A.30 shows that “true immune escape” is in the realm of possibility for the virus — and gets more likely the longer it hangs around. And also, as soon as a character says, “It must be extinct by now,” you know what’s gonna happen.

Honeybees know what’s up

They social-distance when the colony is dealing with the Varroa destructor mite. (So found a group of British and Italian researchers, publishing in Science Advances.)

Their ability to adapt their social structure and reduce contact between individuals in response to a disease threat allows them to maximise the benefits of social interactions where possible, and to minimise the risk of infectious disease when needed.

Old cancer drug, new painkiller

Finding new uses for old meds is a big deal these days. The latest comes from researchers at Duke and UC Irvine, who found an old experimental cancer drug called kenpaullone can treat mice who are in pain; it “enhances the expression of the gene KCC2, which is essential for silencing pain signals.”

So far they’ve tested it on mice with pain from nerve injury and bone cancer, and yep, it worked — getting the KCC2 gene to work harder cut back on pain. That’s opened other possibilities for rockin’ KCC2 (yes, CRISPR is mentioned), but first, obviously, is more testing.

It’s the same old song

Yet another review of pharmaceutical manufacturer spending finds — shockingly! — that they “spent more money on selling and marketing existing drugs than on research and development for new drugs.”

Selling and marketing expenses exceeded research and development costs by $36 billion, or 37 percent, for the group as a whole, the analysis found.

Some samples from 2020:

• GlaxoSmithKline: $15 billion on sales and marketing, $7 billion on R&D
• Bayer: $18 billion on sales and marketing, $8 billion on R&D
• Johnson & Johnson: $22 billion on sales and marketing, $12 billion on R&D

Yet they continue the worn-out mantra that allowing Americans to pay the same drug prices as the rest of the world would somehow stifle development, when in reality, it would cut their marketing budgets. So next time you see that same drug commericial for the 200th time, remember, you’re paying for it!

Getting the lead out*

The CDC’s new standard for lead levels in children’s blood is lower enough that more than twice as many 1 to 5 year olds are expected to be diagnosed with high levels.

The kids “should receive prompt medical care to reduce their lead levels and mitigate any damaging health effects of the exposure,” while public health officials will need to track and eliminate down the source of the problem.

No amount of lead is safe, especially for younger kids, and the acceptable level has been reduced over the decades, from 10 mcg/dl in 1991, to half that in 2012. The new standard is 3.5 micrograms.

* I know, cliché, but I couldn’t think of a better headline.