How’s Georgia doing: The good and the “needs improvement”

The latest on Georgia’s Covid-19 response, courtesy of the amazing Amber Schmidtke: We’re doing much better when it comes to new cases and test positivity, and not too bad for hospital admissions. Where the state needs work is the death rate (worst in the nation), and getting more vaccines into arms — although we’re starting to catch up:

What’s a nice pharmacist like you doing in a place like this?

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Doing more with sutures

Everyone’s expected to multitask these days, so why not sutures? Yeah, the little filaments used to hold wounds closed. While they’re sitting there, they could do a bit more, dontcha think?

McGill University researchers thought so, so they’ve developed a 21st-century suture. First, it’s soft — covered in “a slippery, yet tough gel envelope.”

But even better, these new sutures can include drugs and sensors — “loaded up with antibacterial compounds, pH-sensing microparticles, drugs and fluorescent nanoparticles” — to help wounds heal.

Another cancer target

It’s like a “person of interest” when it comes to cancer — “NLRP3.” Normally, it’s a mild-mannered receptor that looks for pathogens. When it’s in melanoma, though, it gets a little wild, and it can help the tumor grow.

That’s what University of Colorado researchers found, and more importantly, “By inhibiting NLRP3, the researchers found, they can reduce inflammation and the resultant tumor expansion.”

What’s nice about this is that it’s yet another new target in the fight against cancer, and we seem to be uncovering a lot of those lately.

Half a million more

The latest government figures show that “More than 528,000 Americans have signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage on the federal exchange in the first six weeks of the special enrollment period.” That’s double the number of signups in the previous two years.

Open enrollment through Healthcare.gov is available until August 15.

Rat trips

What happens when neuroscientists are up late at night, staring at the stars, coming up with experiments? This happens: “Scientists Have Induced Hallucination-Like States in Mice to Study Psychosis” — which is exactly what it says on the tin.

They forced the mice to play a “game” in which the mice would indicate whether they heard a sound that was obscured by noise. Playing the sound more frequently made the mice hallucinate that they had heard it.

Then they gave the mice ketamine. Not surprisingly, “Mice that were given ketamine before performing the task also reported more hallucination-like events.”

What’s the point? “[It] enables us to finally probe the neurobiological roots of this mysterious experience.”

Depression test

No, it doesn’t involve watching the first 10 minutes of “Up.” This one’s a blood test, developed at Indiana University.

Essentially, psychiatric researchers tested the blood of hundreds people with depression over four years. They were able to identify a group of biomarkers that changed depending on how depressed they were.

The result is a test that looks for levels of several RNA biomarkers “that can distinguish how severe a patient’s depression is, the risk of them developing severe depression in the future, and the risk of future bipolar disorder.”

Potential Covid-fog treatment: a game

An gaming app being used to treat ADHD — EndeavorRx — is being tested to see if it can help people experiencing the brain fog of long-haul Covid-19 patients.

The game challenges the player’s focus and multitasking by having them navigate a freakishly colorful character through a course, collecting targets, and avoiding obstacles” — kind of like life. It’s supposed to “target areas of the brain that play a key role in attention function.”

The hope is that it can improve their brain function … and possibly be used to treat other cognitive disorders.

Trodelvy approved

Gilead’s triple-negative breast cancer drug has been given the thumbs-up by the FDA. It’s the ninth antibody-drug conjugate drug on the market and the first for triple-neg breast cancer.

(Want to know about the other eight? There’s a website dedicated to ADCs.)

Acetaminophen recalled

Not a huge deal, but take note:

A-S Medication Solutions is recalling 198,350 bottles of extra-strength acetaminophen tablets after bottles were found to include an incomplete prescription drug label, rather than the required over-the-counter drug facts sheet.

If you have patients with Humana insurance, these were distributed in a “Health Essentials Kit.”