Tonight, tonight, it’s going to be tonight

It’s GPhA’s Spring Region Meeting, of course. Today, April 22, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. via Zoom — and of course good for an hour of CPE for pharmacists and techs.

There’s still time to register (unless you waited till 8:00pm to open this): GPhA.org/region-meeting.

J&J vaccine updates

The European Medicines Agency has cleared the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine — the minor danger of blood clots pales in comparison to the benefit of the vaccine. Here in the U.S. the FDA is hopefully going to make a decision soon.

And a pleasant surprise: Pausing the J&J vaccine here didn’t erode folks’ confidence in vaccines.

76% of 1000 registered voters surveyed nationwide said the pause didn’t decrease the likelihood that they would get vaccinated. In addition, among those already vaccinated, 87% said they would “definitely” decide to get vaccinated again.

ICYMI: Once and done, confirmed

For people who have survived Covid-19, it’s pretty solid now that a single dose of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna) is all they need for protection.

The new antibiotic guidelines are here! The new antibiotic guidelines are here!

The American College of Physicians has released its latest guidelines for antibiotics: “Appropriate Use of Short-Course Antibiotics in Common Infections” including a list of best practices for common infections, both in detailed text form and in a handy-dandy chart (click to embiggenify):

Undruggable, you say?

Challenge accepted. The cancer protein with the appropriate name “BRAT1” was considered undruggable. But apparently it hadn’t met Purdue chemist Mingji Dai or the North American purging nut shrub. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

BRAT1 shows up in a lot of cancers* — ironically it helps the cancer repair its own DNA. Stop the BRAT, stop the tumor growth … and the shrub’s curcusone D does just that. (Side note: Dai didn’t choose the purging nut randomly; it’s been used in traditional medicine … to treat cancer.)

* Breast, brain, colorectal, lung, liver, and prostate

Nothing to see here, folks

Set your Google Alerts to “H5N8.”

Artist’s conception

Rats can get dirty again

Speaking of purging nuts, after a common surgery for prostate cancer, there can be nerve damage leading to … let’s just say “male issues.” Albert Einstein medical researchers, though, have created a drug — a topical drug, no less — that actually “regenerates and restores the function of erectile nerves damaged by radical prostatectomy.” In rats, anyway.

It’s a nifty technology: The drug actually stops genes from interfering with the healing process, allowing skin cells to help the damaged nerves.

At three and four weeks post-therapy, the treated animals had significantly better erectile function compared to controls. After a month, the blood pressure response of the treated animals was comparable to that of normal animals.

Vitafusion gummy recall

Not, sadly, because the gummy bears have come to life to seek revenge, but simply because some people have found bits of “metallic mesh material” in the containers.

It affects a whole bunch of products: melatonin, FiberWell, SleepWell, multivitamins, and more. Click that link to see the lot codes and UPCs.