Don’t go there

If for some reason you’re planning travel for the Christmas holiday, the Covid Tracking Project can tell you which five states not to visit because the virus is running wild: Tennessee, Rhode Island, Arizona, Indiana, and California.

(They’re the five riskiest because they’ve got the most new cases per 100,000 people and/or highest percentage of positive tests.)

What, you want the list of 10 riskiest states? Add Pennsylvania, Utah, Delaware, Oklahoma, and Nevada to that list.

What about your co-workers?

In case you’re wondering, yes, employers can require employees to get the Covid-19 vaccine in order to work. And 57 percent of Americans say yeah, the folks I work with ought to have to get it.

(The latest polls show that about 71 percent say they’re willing to get it — and that number has been rising.)

Yay

“Research strongly suggests COVID-19 virus enters the brain”

I’ll take the pills, please

If you have diabetic patients with severe diabetic retinopathy, something you (and they) should know: Aflibercept appears to work just as well as surgery to treat it. At first, the surgery seems to be better, but after about six months the two treatments are equal … but only one involves, you know, cutting into the eye.

A step to easier organ replacement

There’s a shortage of organs for transplant, so University of Maryland researchers, perhaps worried about waking up in an ice-filled bathtub with a new scar, are working to solve it.

They’ve shown the proof of concept that they can take pig stem cells, inject them into an embryo, and affect just the organ they want to. In other words, the stem cells can be targeted.

This leads to two ideas. First, a human who needs a transplant might instead be able to have an existing organ repaired using targeted stem cells. Second, it raises the possibility of using the same technique to grow human organs inside pigs — again, using these targeted stem cells to grow a specific organ for transplant.

Sucrose isn’t glucose — it’s much worse

You drink a lot of sugary drinks, you get fat. Common sense, right? It’s all about the calories. But if that was true, you wouldn’t be reading it here.

It seems, say USC researchers, that those sugary drinks may do more. They seem to also mess with the hormones that regulate appetite — a double whammy.

“When young adults consumed drinks containing sucrose, they produced lower levels of appetite-regulating hormones than when they consumed drinks containing glucose.”

APhA’s got pharmacist vaccine resources

The vaccine is here. The end is in sight. Pharmacists, are you ready to vaccinate and help end this pandemic?

APhA has pharmacist-specific resources for giving and billing. Click, read, and be ready and FDA has a fact sheet (https://www.fda.gov/media/144413/download)!

Air pollution and your kidneys

Air pollution’s bad for your heart and lungs, but now Chinese researchers think it’s probably bad for your kidneys, too.

Each increase of fine particulate matter of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air was associated with 1.3 times higher odds of having the disease.

Another reason to appreciate those bikeways and green spaces, huh?

Today’s head-scratcher

Every now and then, soccer players take a break from faking injuries. And when that break includes having children, here’s a wild fact: The male players who train harder are more likely to have female children.

Or, more science-y, “The results reveal a significant bias in the sex ratio toward females as a result of higher-load volume and/or intensity of training.” Go figure.