Boys and vaping — a bad combo

We’re still learning about the health effects of vaping nicotine, which means there’s a lot of new information coming out, some of it surprising.

Take this: If you have adolescent mice that like to vape, it’s likely going to cause “significant and long-term cardiovascular effect[s]” — i.e., reduced heart function — but only in males. That’s what medical researchers at an Ohio State University found after exposing mice to a mixture of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and nicotine from the human equivalent of age 12 to age 30.

The culprit, not surprisingly, was the nicotine (although the aerosols might have their own effects). But why just the boys? Females have more a substantially higher amount of an enzyme that breaks down nicotine.

“The theory is that since the enzyme breaks down nicotine so much faster, the nicotine isn’t in the circulation as long and that may be why females exhibit protection from vaping.”

Region meetings are coming!

That’s meetings, plural — GPhA’s spring Region Meetings are coming! They’re live, in person, and you won’t need to mingle with people from those other areas.

The meetings will be between April 14 and 28 — check out GPhA.org/region-meeting to see when and where yours is being held, then mark your calendar. (Final locations are still being, well, finalized, and will be announced soon.)

And yes, the food will be great, the company greater, and that CE credit will be icing on the (excellent) dessert.

Shrinkage

This is a case where the article’s headline says it all. You can read the the details on your own: “Hamsters’ Testicles Shrink After Being Infected With Covid, Study Finds.”

Preemptive autism treatment

Could some autism be stopped before it starts? Maybe — at least in mice. Neurologists in Texas found that using rapamycin in a very early age (within a week of birth) blocked a signaling pathway in the brain that can sometimes be overactive. When it is, it can cause tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) — which often causes autism.

But “Blocking [that] overactive signaling pathway during the first five weeks of life prevents autism symptoms from ever developing.”

Even better, in humans, TSC can be detected in utero, so this treatment could be ready and waiting for the kid to be born.

Good Covid news bits

Lockdowns weren’t so bad: One in three kids said lockdown improved their mental health — because of “feeling less lonely, avoiding bullying, and getting more sleep and exercise.” Referring to the British nationwide lockdown (the study was done at Cambridge), the researchers said…

“The common narrative that the pandemic has had overwhelmingly negative effects on the lives of children and young people might not tell the full story. In fact, it seems as though a sizeable number of children and young people may have experienced what they felt was improved wellbeing during the first national lockdown of 2020.

One booster might do it: As the New York Times reports, a “flurry of new studies” seems to indicate that a single booster (i.e., a third shot) of an mRNA vaccine produces “a sustained, potent response to any coronavirus variant.”

As we’ve pointed out here before, news reports ignore a huge part of the immune system.

Throughout the pandemic, a disproportionate amount of research attention has gone to antibodies, the body’s first line of defense against a virus. That’s partly because these molecules are relatively easy to study: They can be measured from a drop of blood.

But memory B and memory T cells are still there, and they “can last for ages” — and thus so can protection from today’s Covid … and maybe tomorrow’s.

Vaccines without refrigeration?

Lots of vaccines need refrigeration, which makes it tough for developing nations and (because that also means a shorter expiration date) some parts of the developed world, too, where they might need to be kept awhile before being used.

But now the folks at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have made a big step to create a fridge-free vaccine. It doesn’t (yet) apply to the extra-sensitive mRNA vaccines, but it works for the traditional, live-virus kind — it keeps the vaccines effective for three months at up to 37° Celsius (310.2° Kelvin).

The trick, surprisingly, was not nanotechnology, but “a dissolvable crystalline material called MOFs (metal organic frameworks).”

“MOFs work similarly to a scaffold you might put around your house, once you remove the scaffold, your house remains — which is what happens when we dissolve the MOFs in a vaccine.”

Simplifying chemo

Using the same technology that Pfizer used to create the Covid-19 antiviral Paxlovid, Modra has made docetaxel — the chemotherapy drug — into a pill. And in phase 2 trials, it worked a treat.

Essentially, the company paired docetaxel with ritonavir, the same protease inhibitor Pfizer uses in Paxlovid. The result, which is expected to head to those all-important phase 3 trials, is a drug for advanced prostate cancer that’s easier to tolerate, “with less risk of cytopenias, hair loss, and neuropathy” (although there were some mild gastrointestinal issues).

This isn’t alarmist at all

In its article “What Allergists Want You to Know About the 2022 Spring Allergy Season,” the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology isn’t afraid of a bit of fear-mongering when it comes to Sudafed:

Pseudoephedrine is popular for helping to clear up congestion, particularly stuffy noses, but it is the main ingredient in methamphetamine — commonly known as “meth.”

The Long Read: Antivirals at Home edition

The new prescription antiviral pills can save a life of someone who contracts Covid-19. But we know there are … let’s call them ‘overenthusiastic’ prescribers. There’s a danger of overuse: “Taking COVID pills at home sounds great. But we need to use them wisely or risk drug resistance and new variants.”