How’s your toilet paper supply?

It’s not all that surprising, but it’s worth noting: The new Omicron variant — sorry, subvariant (previously called “stealth Omicron” but now the less-scary “BA.2”) — is chugging along in Georgia.

Nationwide, BA.2 makes up about a quarter of new cases (which, by the way, have started rising again). In Georgia it’s half that at the moment — about 12.4%.

Feds end coverage for Covid vaccines and testing for uninsured

Last week we told you how Congress isn’t providing more funding for the country’s Covid response. Now that’s hitting home.

The federal Health Resources & Services Administration has announced that, after March 22, its Covid-19 Uninsured Program “will stop accepting claims for testing and treatment due to a lack of sufficient funds.” Then, after April 5, it “will also stop accepting vaccination claims due to a lack of sufficient funds.”

Claims that have been submitted by these deadlines will be paid subject to eligibility and availability of funds.

For more information, visit https://www.hrsa.gov/CovidUninsuredClaim.

Bad to the bowels

What makes inflammatory bowel disease worse? If you said “the gut biome,” you’re right — and you might be a regular reader (thank you!).

Specifically, it’s a “high-damaging” strain of the Candida albicans fungus that produces candidalysin — a toxin that damages immune cells.

It’s a vicious cycle. When inflammation is present, C. albicans has a field day in the intestines. There that candidalysin, in damaging the immune cells, increases inflammation — often to the point that standard treatments don’t work. And more inflammation, more C. albicans.

The Cornell researchers who discovered the mechanism now hope they can use it to develop better treatments.

Up your POC testing game

Don’t be surprised if you’re selling a lot more point-of-care testing kits, and not just for you-know-what. Drugs, flu, pregnancy … you name it, there’s probably a test for it.

Help your patients get the most from these tests — and better yet, show them how impressive you are with a nationally recognized point-of-care testing certificate on your wall.

That’s why GPhA is offering you (yes, you!) the NASPA Pharmacy-based Point-of-Care Testing Certificate Program — 20 hours of CE (4 hours live, 16 home study). The live portion is in our Sandy Springs location on Sunday, April 24.

Check out the details, then sign up today before too many other people beat you to it: GPhA.org/pointofcare!

Nasonex goes OTC

The FDA has approved Nasonex — mometasone furoate monohydrate to you science geeks — for over-the-counter use to “treat and prevent hay fever and allergy symptoms” That is all.

Cholesterol news

The good stuff is better: Patients with sepsis have lower levels of HDL cholesterol, and a University of Kentucky study suggest that “HDL treatment could be an effective treatment.” (Specifically, a synthetic HDL treatment called ETC-642.)

The bad stuff may not be so bad: High LDL cholesterol is bad for your heart, right? Maybe not. Irish researchers, looking at the use of statins (which, as you know, lower LDL) found that “lowering LDL-C using statins had an inconsistent and inconclusive impact on CVD outcomes such as myocardial infarction (MI), stoke, and all-cause mortality.”

Is it possible that medical marijuana isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

Sure, everyone knows cannabis and its derivatives are magical treatments developed by pixies that can treat just about anything: pain, seizures, the mystery of the evil realtor pretending to haunt a house, nausea, depression, and so on*.

Could this possibly be overhype? What if there was a downside?

Turns out there is, according to researchers at Mass General. Not only did they find that medical marijuana simply doesn’t work in a lot of cases, it can increase patients’ chances of abusing it — i.e., “in rapid onset of cannabis use disorder.”

“In this first study of patients randomized to obtain medical marijuana cards, we learned there can be negative consequences to using cannabis for medical purposes. People with pain, anxiety or depression symptoms failed to report any improvements, though those with insomnia experienced improved sleep.”

The big issues: Doses of the “medicine” aren’t monitored or regulated, and prescribers don’t often follow up.

“There needs to be better guidance to patients around a system that currently allows them to choose their own products, decide their own dosing, and often receive no professional follow-up care.”

* Baldness, poor eyesight, war, famine, pestilence ….

Worms detecting cancer

You’ve heard that dogs — and even ants — can detect cancer. And now Korean scientists have added worms to the list.

Today, testing for lung cancer requires an invasive biopsy or often-too-late chest X-ray. Instead, these scientists only needed a bit of lung tissue culture. They put it on one side of a chip, with a sample of normal tissue on the other … and worms (C. elegans) in the middle.

After an hour, if the worms preferred the patient’s lung culture, it could be cancerous. (The prototype was correct about 70 percent of the time.) The worms, apparently, can detect a chemical called 2-ethyl-1-hexanol that’s emitted by the cancer cells.

“We don’t know why C. elegans are attracted to lung cancer tissues or 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, but we guess that the odors are similar to the scents from their favorite foods.”

Weird Science: Boring edition

Do you know someone who’s religious, does data entry for a living, lives in a small town, and likes watching TV?

British psychology researchers into the “the science of boredom” have discovered what makes the world’s most boring person — and that list fits them to a T. (But bonus Boring Points™ if they’re also into bird watching.)

To be clear, this is what people perceive to be boring — “the stereotype that people hold about boring people, not the actual individual characteristics that boring people possess.”

* Why? Because “the stereotypical beliefs about bores—that is, perceptions of people as stereotypically boring—have hardly received empirical attention.” Wonder why.