A new Covid treatment?

An experimental drug — molnupiravir — seems to work like Tamiflu, helping people who have been infected recover more quickly. It doesn’t cure Covid-19, but it seems to lessen the symptoms and keep people out of the hospital. We only say seems because it’s still in a phase-2 trial, but go ahead and add “molnupiravir” to your spell-checker’s dictionary.

Covid testing quickies

Infection test: The FDA has authorized a new ‘Did you ever have Covid?’ test. What’s different about this one isn’t the results (antibody tests can show if you’ve been infected), but the fact that it looks at T cells, which “[reflect] the diseases they’ve encountered, in many cases years later.”

That means it can detect past infection even when antibodies are no longer present. It also means this test can act as a proof-of-concept for future tests and future viruses.

No more testing lines: The FDA has also authorized Cue Health’s at-home Covid-19 test. The company calls it ‘laboratory-grade testing at home.’

Eye test: It could become another option: “[T]he eye is not only a potential entry site for Covid-19 infections, but also a site of replication of coronavirus in an infected individual.” Definitely better than what China is using.

CRISPR vs cholesterol

Great news if you have mice with high cholesterol: An experimental treatment out of Tufts University can cut LDL cholesterol by up to 56.8 percent in a single shot.

The trick? It gives mice a mutated version of the Angiopoietin-like 3 (Angptl3) gene — a mutation that turns off the gene, allowing the breakdown of more fats in the bloodstream … and lowering LDL cholesterol. Even better, no side effects: “Importantly, no evidence of off-target mutagenesis at nine top-predicted sites was observed nor any apparent liver toxicity.”

Human testing is just around the corner — assuming that corner is years away.

Quick follow up

More than 16,000 Georgians now have new or better health insurance. They signed up for coverage on the state’s Obamacare exchange during the ongoing special enrollment period.

Per Georgia Health News:

That’s the third-highest total of any state, behind Florida and Texas, among the 36 states that let the federal government run their exchanges.

This makes sense

Per the CDC: If a group of people has all been vaccinated against Covid-19, they can hang out together indoors even if one of them was exposed to the virus. (How long this advice will last is anyone’s guess.)

Five is enough

Canadian researchers have determined that kids with pneumonia don’t need a 10-day course of antibiotics — five days is just as good.

The study, involving 281 Ontario children, found that 85.7% of those who received the short course of antibiotics and 84.1% of those who received the longer course of medication were cured two to three weeks later.

A surprising, and odd, Parkinson’s breakthrough

The European anti-smoking drug cytisine seems, per Texas A&M researchers, to treat Parkinson’s in women. It reduces the loss of dopamine neurons, but works much better when there’s estrogen present as well.

“At the face of it, this drug is ready to be used today in women with Parkinson’s, but as is true for all drugs, you cannot get approval for a drug until you understand what the mechanism of the actual drug is exactly.”

Taming the cytokine storm?

Inflammation, especially caused by runaway cytokines, is a Bad Thing; we all know that. But now Irish immunologists think they’ve found a viable target to keep the cytokine storm at bay: a protein called Arginase-2, which can limit the inflammation caused by cytokines.

Specifically they have shown for the first time that Arginase-2 is critical for decreasing a potent inflammatory cytokine called IL-1.

This discovery could allow researchers to develop new treatments that target the Arginase-2 protein and protect the body from unchecked damage caused by inflammatory diseases.

Captain Obvious shrugs

“Dining Restrictions, Mask Mandates Tied to Less Illness, Death, CDC Reaffirms”

Elsewhere: Ol’ Kentuck edition

Kentucky became the latest state to put a cap in insulin prices: $30 a month for people with “state-regulated, comprehensive, private health insurance plans.” It doesn’t apply to Medicare or Medicaid. (Both the state house and senate voted unanimously to pass the bill.)

If for no other reason, just because you can

L.A.-based Bionaut Labs has developed a crazy cancer-drug-delivery system: It uses tiny robots sent into the bloodstream and steered to a target (e.g., a brain stem gliomas). There they’re instructed to release their medicinal payload right at the target rather than “flooding a body with therapeutics.”

A set of magnets positioned around the head and neck generates an external magnetic field that the doctor can control to prod the devices up the spinal column and into the affected area of the brainstem. Once they’re in the right position, another magnetic signal activates a tiny plunger in each device’s cargo bay, ejecting the drug. Then, the doctor can drive the devices back to where they entered the spine and remove them.

Fun fact: The company could make the devices even smaller, but kept them larger to make them easier to track.