A Crohn’s disease vaccine from Georgia State

There’s a particular gut bacteria that’s responsible for some inflammatory bowel diseases — think ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. It works by creating a cylinder-shaped flagellin protein, which allows it to penetrate the intestinal wall.

“A-ha!” said Georgia State researchers. “What if we could create a vaccine against the flagellin?” And so they did (at least in mice). By eliciting a response against flagellin, they were able to make sure the mice’s gut bacteria stayed where it belonged.

“The administration of flagellin, and perhaps other bacterial antigens, has the potential to vaccinate against an array of diseases associated with, and driven by gut inflammation,” said Dr. Benoit Chassaing, senior author of the study.

Better resolution

“Lose weight,” “make more friends,” “feed the dog” — those New Year’s resolutions are borrrrrrring. How about “Enhance my education by taking some great CE webinars from the comfort of home so I can provide better services and healthcare outcomes for my patients*”? Smart!

“Healthy Patients = Healthy Business” is a three-part course that will teach you how to help your patients with diabetes … and how that can be great for your practice. The first session is Tuesday, January 14 — click here for the details.

Or how about “Opioid Stewardship 101: Optimizing Non-Opioid Analgesic Therapy“? That’s a one-hour standalone webinar, Thursday, January 30, 2020 from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. that will teach you the various alternatives to opioids for treating acute or chronic pain.

And of course we have a growing catalog of on-demand CPE courses — check them out at GPhA.org/cpeasy!

Not so simple

There are rarely simple explanations in history, and the opioid crisis is no different. It’s easy to blame [insert cause here], but the reality is that there are a lot of factors.

For example, researchers at Boston University found that a contributing factor to the opioid situation was fear of existing painkillers in the early 2000s — think Vioxx, or even the gastrointestinal and liver risks of NSAIDS or acetaminophen. Patients needed something for pain, and … well, you know the rest.

“[I]t appeared to us that an increase in opioid prescribing during that time was, at least in part, an unintended consequence of COX-2 inhibitors coming off the market and concerns about NSAID risk.”

Oh, cannabis oil, is there nothing you can’t do?

SheaMoisture is now selling shampoo and conditioner with cannabis sativa (hemp) seed oil — it “aims to prevent breakage, improve hair and scalp health, and enhance the appearance of fullness.”

Clean mouth, healthy heart

Dentists may tell you that brushing twice a day is enough, but Korean researchers looked at health records and found that people who brushed three or more times a day “were 10% less likely to develop atrial fibrillation and 12% less likely to develop heart failure.”

Whether it was the brushing that did the trick (getting rid of harmful bacteria), or just that people who brushed that often were also likely to take care of themselves … well, file that as “to be determined.”

Wake up, little Susie

Sleeping too long might increase your risk of stroke. And don’t even think about napping more than half an hour during the day; that “was associated with a 25 percent increased risk for stroke compared with napping 30 minutes or [fewer].”

[C]ompared with sleeping (or being in bed trying to sleep) seven to eight hours a night, sleeping nine or more hours increased the relative risk for stroke by 23 percent.

Same old songs

If your patients get their health advice from Facebook ads, you have our permission to slap them upside the head*.

“Breast is best” — because it’s full of bacteria.

Physicians are prescribing waaaaaaaaaay too many unnecessary antibiotics.

Today’s way-cool science/med read

Phages are viruses that kill bacteria. Bacteria use CRISPR (the natural kind, not the human-made process) to fight phages. But one phage developed a defense — it put its DNA inside a shell, making it invulnerable.

The long read: Alternatives to seizure drugs

“As epilepsy drugs fail nearly one-third of patients, scientists seek root causes of seizures” — from Science magazine.

After years of frustration, epilepsy researchers are shifting from targeting the seizures to seeking their cause, sometimes one patient at a time. Much about the condition remains a mystery, including why antiseizure medications fail so many people, among them more than 1 million in the United States.