How depressed are you?

A scale of smiley-frowny faces isn’t terribly scientific, so Indiana University neuroscientists have developed a blood test that looks for biomarkers of depression — 26 of them, in fact.

After all these steps were taken, the researchers say 12 of the biomarkers provide particularly strong links to depression, with six of the same tied to bipolar disorder, and two biomarkers that can indicate mania.

By finding these markers, they suggest, you can use targeted therapy rather than the typical ‘throw it at the wall and see what works’ method so often used today.

Math geeks, assemble!

If you take a Covid-19 test that only gives a false positive one out of 1,000 times, and it says you’re infected — what’s the chance that you’ve actually got Covid? It’s 99.9%, right, because it’s 99.9% accurate?

That’s what we normal people would say, but the actual math is more complex because the disease itself is rare. A positive test vs. a rare disease actually has a much higher rate of false positives.

It’s based on Bayes’ theorem, which is all about probability and what you know before you take the test (i.e., how rare Covid actually is). So in terms of Covid tests, it means the result is far from simple.

Say you tested 1 million people, chosen at random [….] About 20,000 people would have the disease, and of the 980,000 who don’t, it would wrongly tell about 980 that they do, for a total of 20,980 positive results. So if you tested positive, your chance of a false positive would be 980/20,980, or nearly 5%. Or, to put it another way, it’d be almost 95% likely that you really had the disease.

Fun fact: Your spam filter is made possible by Bayes’s Theorem, first proposed by Paul Graham in 2002.

Your patients need immunizations. You need to be ready.

We knew APhA’s Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery: A Certificate Program for Pharmacists was going to be popular this year, but we didn’t realize how popular — our four sessions sold out lickety-split!

So what’s the plan? Offer it three more times, of course. One is concurrent with the Georgia Pharmacy Convention (but a separate registration); the others are in Sandy Springs. More info is at GPhA.org/immunization-2021 — so sign up today!

• Sunday, June 20, 2021; 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Omni Amelia Island Resort (next to but separate from the Georgia Pharmacy Convention) — register here!
• Sunday, September 19, 2021; 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the GPhA World Headquarters building in Sandy Springs — register here!
• Sunday, December 5, 2021; 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the GPhA World Headquarters building in Sandy Springs — register here!

Here comes the cannabis

Georgia’s medical-cannabis program, in the works since 2015, is close to awarding licenses to six groups to produce low-THC oil. Nearly 19,000 Georgians have a license to possess the oil for any of a number of health conditions, but no legal way to obtain it. That will change, likely by the end of the year.

Obligatory update: Marijuana is currently fully legal in 16 states and decriminalized in 13 more; in the remaining 21 states, which include Georgia, it’s either wholly illegal or allowed for medicinal use only.

Finally, a use for opera

Since being forced to attend the opera was banned by the Geneva Conventions*, researchers have been struggling to find a good use for the “art” form.

Now some Brits have found a possible answer: helping people recover from post-Covid breathing problems.

The practice of singing—in particular operatic singing, which involves hitting different ranges and holding notes for extended periods of time—is rooted in breathing and involves engaging the diaphragm, a muscular respiratory structure that contracts and expands when a person inhales and exhales.

It’s called ENO Breathe, it ‘takes the same vocal techniques and breathing exercises used by opera singers and applies them to Covid-19 patients in a group setting.’ It’s free, done via Zoom, and you can get more info from the English National Opera at ENO.org/eno-breathe.

Except “Tommy,” which also must always be referred to as “the rock-opera Tommy.”

Good news for hamsters with Covid

A study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found an experimental drug — “MK-4482” is its catchy name — “significantly decreased levels of virus and disease damage in the lungs of hamsters treated for SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

The potential caveat (besides the fact that hamsters aren’t humans) is that it was effective “when provided up to 12 hours before or 12 hours after infecting the hamsters with SARS-CoV-2.” So timing could be critical.

(Georgia represent! It was done by Emory University’s Drug Innovation Ventures group.)

Even better: MK-4482 is now in phase 2 and 3 human clinical studies.

Coronaviruses vaccine

Once upon a time, Covid-19 was “the coronavirus*,” even though there were plenty of others. But Covid vaccines are pretty specific to infections by just one coronavirus: SARS-CoV-2.

Now Virginia Tech researchers say they may have developed a vaccine for coronaviruses in general, including Covid-19.

“The candidate vaccine was developed using an innovative vaccine platform targeting a highly conserved genomic region of coronaviruses.” Translation: It targets the DNA that all coronaviruses share.

So far it’s only in early animal testing, but if it works, it would be cheap and easy to make, they say.

* Relevant xkcd

The glass-half-empty crowd

There’s always a Debbie Downer, and in this case it’s that frustrating group, “some scientists.” They say that today’s Covid vaccines might protect us from the current variants, but also make it harder to protect against future variants.

In the case of Covid, some scientists are concerned that the immune system’s reaction to the vaccines being deployed now could leave an indelible imprint, and that next-generation products, updated in response to emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2, won’t confer as much protection.

Specialty pharmacy cage match

In one corner, hospitals and health systems that have done this for decades and are right next to the patients.

“Health systems have shown that the locally embedded approach results in higher satisfaction, better adherence, faster turnaround times, and ultimately improved clinical outcomes.”

(It also makes them a bunch of money.)

In the other corner, insurers and their PBMs “who also see the same opportunity and have the power to keep their members’ costly and complex drugs within subsidiaries and affiliates.”

And in the middle there’s whatchamacallem — oh, yeah, the patients. Those people.

It’s a medical mystery!

“26-year-old man with ankle pain, swelling after victory leap over tennis net.”

He landed awkwardly on the lateral edge of his right foot, felt a pop and noted immediate pain and swelling as he collapsed onto the court.