The 39 winks (isn’t enough)

Insomnia sleep raises your risk of both flu and Covid-19. It may also delay either vaccine’s effectiveness.

That’s the takeaway. The details are in a paper out of the University of Helsinki and Harvard (with a token Yalie* thrown in out of pity). Chronic poor sleep, they found, “is a causal risk factor for contracting respiratory infections” and also makes them more severe.

You want the science?

With the acute loss of sleep, the levels of circulating cytokines such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) are increased.

* Yes, I know they’re “Elis” but that might confuse some folks.

Technicians, listen up!

You can already give some vaccines (under a pharmacist’s supervision, of course), and when Covid-23 comes around, you’ll want to be ready to give those, too. But don’t wait till 2023 to be the best you can be! Get ready now with GPhA’s Immunization Delivery Training for Pharmacy Technicians — a 5-½ hour CE program consisting of both home-study and live training.

The home study you can do any time. GPhA is offering the live training Saturday, April 23 from 9:00am to noon. Space is limited, so don’t wait — click here for all of the details and to register now!

Ticks provide inflammation breakthrough

If you’re looking for ways to fight inflammation (as Aussie researchers were) the obvious question: What’s good at stopping it?

How about ticks? They bite, but they also suppress the body’s reaction using proteins called evasins. Evasins bind to chemokines, keeping them from triggering the immune response and the inflammation. That’s why you might not notice a tick bite the way you would one from a mosquito.)

The breakthrough: Those Aussies figured out how those evasins work — and with that knowledge, a treatment doorway opens.

The scientists believe they have now identified the structural basis for what makes evasins recognize and bind to different chemokines. This provides the basis for engineered versions that can target pre-determined chemokines known to drive inflammatory disease, and potentially opens up an entirely new area of research.

Guys can wait between mRNA doses

Younger men (12-39 years old, that is) who are concerned about the rare side effect of heart inflammation from an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine can wait longer between doses, says the CDC. Instead of three weeks, it’s cool to wait up to eight, and that seems to reduce the risk.

Coming soon: “Vape mouth”

The various chemicals in e-cigarettes change the oral microbiome — and they change it enough that they might be causing gum disease. Interesting, although smoking is already known to be a risk factor, e-cigarettes affect the gums in a different (but also bad) way.

The researchers analyzed the bacteria found in the plaque samples and determined that e-cigarette users have a different oral microbiome from smokers and nonsmokers.

And that different microbiome led to greater “clinical attachment loss” of teeth than for either non-smokers or smokers, found NYU dental researchers. (The likely culprits, if you’re interested, were Fusobacterium and Bacteroidales bacteria, which “were particularly dominant in the mouths of e-cigarette users.”)

Worse, vaping increased the levels of cytokines which “can worsen gum disease by making people prone to inflammation and infection.”

What the people want

A full 86 percent of Americans surveyed say they want to know why the FDA doesn’t approve a drug (and they’re apparently confident they’d understand the reasons).

And 91 percent “supported the FDA correcting any misleading information spread by drug manufacturers.” That means that almost 1 in 10 Americans doesn’t want the FDA to correct misinformation.

Proof of concept, at least

Today’s brand-new, game-changing way to (maybe) fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria comes from … (throws dart at map) … the University of Texas!

That’s where microbiologists used chemicals to inhibit a protein, called DsbA, that helps create that resistance. With DsbA out of the picture, the bacteria couldn’t build their antibiotic-resistance proteins — resistance thwarted.

Oh, but an important piece of bad news: The process requires “using chemicals that cannot be used directly in human patients.”

Scent of a disease

Chinese scientists have created an electric nose that can detect Parkinson’s.

(Or, more science-y: Biomedical engineers at China’s Zhejiang University have developed a prototype “artificial intelligent olfactory system for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease”.)

Per the news article:

The device was found to be 70.8 percent accurate at identifying which individuals had the disease, although that figure rose to 79.2 percent when each person’s full body-odor profile was analyzed.

Human testing is coming shortly