Predicting diabetes

Imagine knowing almost 20 years before it happens that you’re going to get type 2 diabetes. It’s like a horror movie where the monster is getting closer and closer … except that it’s real.

Swedish researchers have found a biomarker in blood — follistatis — that can predict type 2 diabetes a crazy 19 years before the disease hits. Oh, and this is “regardless of other known risk factors, such as age, body mass index, fasting blood glucose levels, diet, or physical activity.”

They know why (“follistatin promotes fat breakdown from the adipose tissue, resulting in increased lipid accumulation in the liver”) and they know how follistatin is regulated, but at this point the information is useful for prediction rather than treatment.

GPhA’s Region Meeting — virtual version

If you couldn’t make it to your in-person GPhA Region Meeting, fear not — we’ve got a live, virtual version for ya. The dress code is more casual, but you have to do your own cooking. You can still get an hour of CE, though, and an important update on what’s happening at the capitol.

It’s Thursday, November 18 at 7:30 pm. Sign up today! (You’ll need to login with your GPhA account.)

Ellume recalls Covid tests … again

Ellume has recalled yet another batch of its Covid-19 home test kits, again because of the potential for false positives. The FDA considers this a Class I recall — and when they use Roman numerals like that you know it’s serious.

Hit up the FDA website for info on lot numbers, what to do (step 2: “Quarantine the affected products immediately.”), and who to contact.

Play it again

Music — it may not only soothe the savage breast, it also seems to have a surprisingly powerful effect on Alzheimer’s patients. It’s all about that brain plasticity (which is also a factor in treatment-resistant depression). When patients listened to music that had meaning for them, there were noticeable “changes in the brain’s neural pathways correlated with increased memory performance on neuropsychological tests,” according to Canadian researchers.

“We have new brain-based evidence that autobiographically salient music – that is, music that holds special meaning for a person, like the song they danced to at their wedding – stimulates neural connectivity in ways that help maintain higher levels of functioning.”

ICYMI: Califf to head FDA

Guess who’s back? Robert Califf, former FDA commish, and his moustache were nominated to take the post again. But his confirmation may not be a shoe-in, because Senator Joe Manchin (“D” -WV), said he’s opposed to Cardiff because of Cardiff’s former ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

J&J to commit mitosis

Everyone knows it for its consumer products, but the big bucks are in the pharmaceuticals and medical devices, so Johnson & Johnson is going to split itself into two companies, one focusing on each market. The consumer-health side will get a new name and become a publicly traded company.

The process, said J&J, will take up to two years at “a cost of $500 million to $1 billion.”

Hol’ up. The company is so rich that it’s not worrying about a half-billion dollar difference between the high and low end of its cost estimate. That’s like being told, ‘It’ll cost between $500 to $20,000 to repair your car’ and saying, “Sounds good.”

Enriched with vitamin never mind

If you’ve been figuring that enriched baby formula is one way to give a little one a bit of an advantage later on, some bad news. Despite what the marketing might say, enriched formula does not actually promote brain development.

That comes from British researchers who looked at trial results, health records, and academic records of about 1,800 kids from 1993 to 2001 and found … bupkis.

There was no difference in scores for English at age 16, and for maths and English at age 11, between children who had standard formula as infants and those who had nutrient enriched, added iron, sn-2 palmitate or nucleotide formulas.

In fact, they write, if claims of better brains convinces parents to use formula over breast milk, these claims could actually be doing harm.