Could Georgia tax vaping?

Maybe. A bill in the legislature would “levy a 7% excise tax on sales in Georgia of vaping products like e-cigarettes, refillable cartridges, vape pens, and electronic hookahs.” It’s got wide support from health advocates.

Amy at UGA

Shout-out to Amy Miller, GPhA board member and owner of Lula Pharmacy in Lula, who visited with UGA College of Pharmacy students during ASP’s Org Hour. She spoke about GPhA and on being an independent pharmacy owner.

Click to embiggenificate:

(l to r) Lee Snelling, UGA senior director of development & alumni relations; Blake Terrell, APhA-ASP; Amy Miller;, Laird Miller, executive director of CPESN Ga; Kristine Nguyen, APhA-ASP; Kim Hamby, UGA director of alumni affairs.

Even Americans with insurance skip meds over cost

Americans with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological diseases often skip their medication because of the cost — even those with private insurance.

“Even changes as small as $50 a month can make a difference,” said coauthor Dr. Brian Callaghan, a staff physician at the Michigan Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. And as out-of-pocket costs increase, fewer and fewer people stick with their prescribed treatments, he added.

In fact, a $50 monthly out-of-pocket increase translated to a 12% lower rate of prescriptions being filled for Alzheimer’s drugs.

Flu fact

This year’s vaccine seems to be about 45% effective, according to the CDC. That’s about on par with other years.

Dad’s doobie does damage

Male rats who use marijuana are likely to have babies with “distinct abnormalities in areas of the brain that help govern learning, memory, reward, and mood.” That’s right — it seems that “changes in the father’s sperm impact how the offspring’s brains develop in the womb,” and marijuana exposure means some neurological pathways don’t form properly.

[T]he brain anomalies of the offspring closely resembled changes that evident in human babies exposed to known neurotoxins such as pesticides and tobacco smoke as fetuses.

Step on a crack, mom might need these two drugs

A combination of two drugs — a CXCR4 antagonist and a beta-3 adrenergic agonist — seems to help the body heal bone damage more quickly by causing the marrow to release more stem cells. It might even be useful for healing spinal fractures.

“[W]hen the damage is severe, there are limits to what the body can do of its own accord. We hope that by using these existing medications to mobilise stem cells […] we could potentially call up extra numbers of these stem cells, in order to boost our bodies own ability to mend itself and accelerate the repair process.”

Standard disclaimer: It’s an early-stage study. On rats.

AI finds a new antibiotic

Why do the grunt work of sifting through thousands of chemicals for a new drug molecule when you can have a computer do it for you? That’s what MIT researchers did.

Step one: Show the computer what molecules and drugs kill E. coli.

Step two: Give it a library of 6,000 compounds to sift through.

Step three: Publish the fact that you discovered an entirely new type of antibiotic.

Step four: Profit.

A better time release

German researchers have found a way to make long-term dosing of meds more accurate: a mixture of oil droplets and hydrogel. The problem it solves: Even time-release meds aren’t that precise, especially over the long term.

“We found that the droplets continuously release the drug while they get smaller and smaller. The consequence is that over the entire release period, the drug release rate remains constant.”

It was the olive oil all along

The Mediterranean diet might help you live longer, but it’s not the resveratrol in the red wine — it’s the olive oil. But (and it’s a biggie), you need to eat less and exercise more for the fats in the olive oil to work their magic.