Georgia sinks in health rankings

The state is now ranked #40 for women and children’s health, dropping three spots from last year.

The 2019 United Health Foundation report said among Georgia’s challenges are its high percentage of uninsured women, its low rate of prenatal care before the third trimester, and its low percentage of high school graduation. The state also has high rates of infant mortality and low-birthweight babies.

The best and worst are the usual suspects: Northeast states at the top (Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut); Mississippi at the bottom followed by Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Nevada.

D is for spray

For people who need a vitamin D supplement but don’t (or can’t) take pills, good news: A three-year study found that an oral spray of vitamin D is just as effective as a capsule.

Hypertension meds finger pointing

You know the whole tainted-blood-pressure-meds mess? The FDA has pointed it Finger of Blame™ toward India — specifically at Ahmedabad*-based Torrent Pharmaceuticals. The agency “found manufacturing violations at Torrent’s Taluka-Kadi, Indrad, Gujarat facility in India that contributed to the production of tainted valsartan, losartan and irbesartan.”

That doesn’t mean Torrent is the source of all the bad medicine, but it seems to at least be contributing to the problem.

* Rhymes with Dzhafarabad

When it comes to sugar, you are what you drink

Here’s an odd finding about weight gain from sugar: Mice gained a lot more calories from drinks with added sugar than from food with added sugar.

…The mice that had the same level of added sucrose in their food pellets but drank plain water “were leaner and metabolically healthier than their counterparts exposed to liquid sucrose,” write the authors.

Besides the obvious conclusion about diet, this finding is interesting because, the authors note, it calls into question other mice studies on the effects sugar. If those mice only got it in solid form, could the studies be flawed?

And on that note…

A UConn study found that sweetened fruit drinks and waters “dominated sales of drinks intended for children in 2018, making up 62% of the $2.2 billion in total children’s drink sales.

“Aggressive” hypertension control is good for older brains

While we’re up in Connecticut, another UConn study finds that “more aggressively controlling daily blood pressure in older adults can improve brain health.”

While the researchers did not identify any significant differences in cognitive outcomes or walking speed between the two study groups, they did observe a significant reduction in the accumulation of brain white matter disease in those receiving the intensive treatment for blood pressure control. […]

In fact, after three years, the accrual of white matter lesions in the brain were reduced by up to 40% in the those patients receiving the intensive blood pressure therapy compared to those who were on standard therapy.

A different FluMist problem

A few years ago, FluMist was effectively pulled from the shelves because it turned out not to be effective. Bad news for AstraZeneca, but the company recovered, changing the formula and fixing the issue. Last year the nasal spray was again approved for kids.

But now there’s a new problem. The company couldn’t grow enough of the vaccine, so it will only be able to ship about three lots of FluMist — about 758,000 doses, and a third of what it shipped last year. (For comparison, AstraZeneca shipped 40 lots of FluMist in the 2013-2014 season.)

Patching it up*

The FDA has approved a transdermal patch to treat schizophrenia, containing a once-daily dose of asenapine.

* Yeah, that was a pretty weak headline

Elsewhere: South of the Border

Mexico looks like it’s about to legalize marijuana. The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting the recreational use of the drug violates the constitution and gave lawmakers there until October 24 to legalize it.