Pharmacists do it better

Mass-vaccination sites sound great — give shots to thousands of people in one spot. But guess what: It turns out that retail pharmacies are a better way.

Federal data show the retail pharmacy program — which has signed up 21 chains and 17,000 stores — can reach far more Americans in a shorter time, according to four senior officials with direct knowledge of the matter. The bottom line, those sources said, is that more Americans seem to be willing to walk to their local pharmacist to get the vaccine than to travel to a federal vaccination site for the shot.

Reality check … passed

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines each prove to be 90% effective in real-world tests — not quite as high as in the lab, but still pretty darned excellent.

Of note: The study suggested that the first dose alone was 80% effective — but only until the second dose. If you don’t get that second dose, all bets are off.

Another potential cancer vaccine

The other day we told you about using dead cancer cells as a vaccine against cancers. Now German researchers have completed a clinical trial on a vaccine against malignant brain tumors, with good news.

There were no signs of severe side effects amongst the patients, and over 90% showed the expected immune response to the vaccine. […] “We were able to demonstrate that the activated mutation-specific immune cells had invaded the brain tumour tissue. These patients had a particularly high number of immune cells that responded specifically to the vaccine”.

New MS treatment

The FDA has approved Janssen’s Ponvory as a treatment for multiple sclerosis. What sets it apart from other meds is that it only needs to be taken once a day (orally) and “the medication demonstrated that it reduced relapses by 30.5 percent compared with other MS medications.”

Caffeine* news

You burn more fat when you exercise in the morning as opposed to the afternoon. That’s old news. New news: Having some caffeine before you exercise — especially in the afternoon — can increase that fat burning.

Fun fact from the study itself: Since caffeine was removed from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of prohibited substances, “the urine caffeine concentration recorded in doping control tests […] has increased progressively.”

=ALSO=

Does coffee really stunt kids’ growth? No.

* Once again, these stories are about caffeine, but the headlines act like you only get it from coffee.

Viagra makes it longer

Men’s lifespan, that is. A study out of Sweden found that men who took sildenafil (or other PDE5 inhibitors) after a heart attack had a lower risk of another one, and lived longer to boot. (Not that this should be surprising, given sildenafil’s vasodilating effect.)

Two unexpected connections

“People with severe gum disease may be twice as likely to have increased blood pressure,” according to the American Heart Association. Apparently, when periodontal bacteria damage the gums, that triggers an inflammatory response — and a patient’s blood pressure could rise without their realizing it.

“[T]he link between gum disease and elevated blood pressure occurs well before a patient develops high blood pressure. Our study also confirms that a worryingly high number of individuals are unaware of a possible diagnosis of hypertension.”

=AND=

A new study out of UCLA found that “Psoriasis [is] Linked to Higher Risk for Thyroid Disease.” This connection had been noticed before, but now, looking at records of more than 15,000 people, the UCLA researchers have proven it exists. Next up: Why?

Warning! Warning!

Stop kissing your pet turtles. They may have salmonella.

The Long Read: Zero-Sum Game edition

After 9/11, the United States focused on the War on Terror … not a bad thing, of course, but it meant cuts in other places — including public health.

Though many public health experts fretted about possible pandemics, it was hard to capture lawmakers’ attention. After all, by the late 1990s, there were drugs to combat HIV/AIDS. Flu? There were vaccines. Infectious diseases? Perceived as conquered.

That’s partly why two large sources of money established after 9/11 — the Public Health Emergency Preparedness program and the Hospital Preparedness Program — were gradually chipped away.