A positive Covid milestone

More people have been vaccinated against Covid-19 than have tested positive.

As of Monday afternoon, 26.5 million Americans had received one or both doses of the current vaccines […] Since the first U.S. patient tested positive outside of Seattle a year ago, 26.3 million people in the country have tested positive.

What, you want more? How ’bout this: The U.S. is now giving vaccines faster than any other country in the world — about 1.3 million doses per day.

More good news

The Russian Covid-19 vaccine is 91.6 percent effective in peer-reviewed tests and as published in the Lancet.

“But the outcome reported here is clear,” British scientists Ian Jones and Polly Roy wrote in an accompanying commentary. “Another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19.”

And even more

The U.S. government is spending $230 million to ramp up manufacturing of over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits made by Australia-based Ellume. The tests give results in 15 minutes, and is between 96 and 100 percent accurate.

Nimbex recall

Hospital folks: Meitheal Pharmaceuticals is recalling its cisatracurium besylate injection, USP 10mg per 5mL due to major mislabeling.

[A] product complaint revealed that a portion of Lot C11507A of cartons labeled as Cisatracurium Besylate Injection, USP 10mg per 5mL, containing 10-vials per carton, contained 10-vials mis-labeled as Phenylephrine Hydrochloride Injection, USP 100mg per 10mL.

Lot number: C11507A; NDC number: 71288-712-05 and -06.

More tech training

New session added! GPhA’s added a session to it’s hot course: “Immunization Delivery Training for Pharmacy Technicians” — a 5.75-hour CE program (home-study and live training).

You know trained pharmacy technicians can administer vaccines (under the supervision and authorization of a pharmacist), so why not be sure you’ve got the training?

GPhA is offering the live training on Friday, March 5, 2021. Space is limited — there’s a pandemic, in case you hadn’t heard — so don’t wait. Click here for the details and to register now!

How stuff works: Remdesivir

One of the bright lights of the battle against Covid-19 has been remdesivir, which has worked pretty well, especially with new and milder cases. Fun fact: No one was quite sure how it worked — it just did.

You know what’s coming: “Until now.” Yep, University of Texas molecular bioscientists figured out exactly how remdesivir does its magic:

Study co-author David Taylor likens the trick the team identified to a paper jam in the virus’s photocopier. Remdesivir shuts down this photocopier — called an RNA polymerase — by preventing copying of the virus’s genetic code and its ability to churn out duplicates and spread through the body. The team detected where the drug manages to gum up the gears, grinding the machine to a halt.

What’s great about this is that it might allow drug companies to “develop new and improved antivirals to take advantage of the same trick.” You know, for the next time.

About that second dose

The second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine is likely to have side effects, especially in younger people. That’s OK. “Side effects are just a sign that protection is kicking in as it should.”

Men’s brains are from Mars…

Drugs for mental illnesses and conditions don’t work uniformly — ask anyone who’s had to play “try this one” SSRI game. Notably, though, men and women seem to react differently to the same medications. What’s with that?

University of Colorado integrative physiologists found a key: The brain protein AKT “may function differently in males than females.” And there are several versions of AKT, ‘not all created equal.’ And they’re particularly unequal between sexes:

For instance, male mice whose AKT1 was functioning normally were much better than those missing the protein when it came to “extinction learning” — replacing an old memory, or association, that’s not useful any more. For female mice, it didn’t make much of a difference.

You know the mantra by now: “More research is needed,” but learning about the difference is a significant breakthrough.

The Lorax’s “I told you so”

Having lots of data lets you find some interesting correlations. German researchers, for example, compared antidepressant prescription rates for 9,700 people with the number of trees in an area.

The surprising find:

They reported that more local foliage within 100 metres (328 feet) of the home was associated with a reduced likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants – findings that could be very useful indeed for city planners, health professionals, and governments.

In case you were worried

You may have heard about how much bacteria comes out of a toilet when you flush — it was big news in 2018, and there’s even a Wikipedia page about it.

But fear not! Northwestern engineers did a test — they called it “Operation Pottymouth” — and found that the microbes on toothbrushes, by and large, came from people’s mouths, not … somewhere else.

This was true no matter where the toothbrushes had been stored, including shielded behind a closed medicine cabinet door or out in the open on the edge of a sink.