Out of bed you daisy head

Want to avoid depression? A group of physiologists did a monster study, and found a simple trick: Wake up an hour earlier. Or more.

But it’s not about cutting the amount of sleep you get — it’s about what time you wake up. Night owls tend to have greater risk of depression, even when they have a full eight hours of sleep.

What these researchers found is that…

Each one-hour earlier sleep midpoint (halfway between bedtime and wake time) corresponded with a 23% lower risk of major depressive disorder.

Put another way, if someone who normally goes to bed at 1:00 a.m. goes to bed at midnight instead and sleeps the same duration, they could cut their risk by 23%; if they go to bed at 11:00 p.m., they could cut it by about 40%.

But why? They don’t know yet, but the speculation is that it’s better to have more of your awake time during the day: “Keep your days bright and your nights dark.”

Convention stuff!

It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s where you need to be — the Georgia Pharmacy Convention, June 17-20 on Amelia Island!

Online registration closes this coming Tuesday, June 1! After that you’ll have to register at the convention, where people will “tsk tsk” at you under their breath. Register now!

On June 1 the convention app will be released! W00t! That’s when you can start chatting with other attendees and making plans for Amelia Island. It’s also when William Huang will crack his virtual knuckles and start sharing photos.

There’s plenty more, including the big Pharm-a-Seas sand-pharmacy building competition. So head over the GPhAconvention.com, find out more, and register before it’s too late!

Antibiotics against humans?

Bacteria (and other prokaryotes) have different ribosomes than, say, human cells. They make proteins in a different way, and antibiotics target those bacterial ribosomes. That’s why antibiotics can kill germs without killing our cells.

But pharmacy researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago had an idea. What if they could alter human ribosomes so antibiotics would work? Not all cells, though, just the troublesome ones. In other words, “Can antibiotics treat human diseases in addition to bacterial infections?”

“Because there are many human diseases caused by the expression of unwanted proteins — this is common in many types of cancer or neurodegenerative diseases, for example — we wanted to know if it would be possible to use an antibiotic to stop a human cell from making the unwanted proteins, and only the unwanted proteins.”

CVS facing lawsuit

Seven (at last count) insurance companies are suing CVS Health, claiming the company — via its PBM — overcharged them for generic drugs by hiding the real prices via a discount club.

“CVS intentionally told third-party payers, including Plaintiffs, that the prices charged to cash customers for these generic drugs were higher — often much higher,” the lawsuit states.

Consequently, the insurers paid CVS at rates that were much higher than the actual prices that CVS was offering its customers.

Of note: This is the second such suit against the company; a year ago a different group of insurers sued for the same reason.

To fight resistant bacteria, first find their defenses

One way bacteria become resistant is by creating enzymes “that basically chew up the antibiotics before they can do their job,” as a University of Texas chemist explained. So, while stopping those enzymes isn’t possible (yet), the UT folks have figured out a way to make them glow using a florescent chemical probe.

That can not only inform treatment, it can be used as other researchers look for ways to get past those enzymatic defenses.

“This allows us to work towards developing therapies and eventually understanding evolutionary characteristics of such proteins.”

Rodent news update

If you have a hamster with Covid, good news: University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed an inhalable nanobody that “can prevent and treat severe Covid-19 in hamsters.” Think monoclonal antibodies (which are already used as a Covid treatment) but smaller and — most importantly — inhalable. With Covid attacking the lungs first, inhalation therapy makes sense.

And it works:

[I]nhalation of aerosolized nanobodies at an ultra-low dose reduced the number of infectious virus particles in the lung tissue by 6-logs (or a million fold).

And if you’ve got a mouse, it’s the scientists at UPenn bringing the good news: The drug diABZI — normally considered something for cancer — “was highly effective in preventing severe COVID-19 in mice that were infected with SARS-CoV-2.” In fact, they think it might work for other coronaviruses, too.

Bonus: Includes the phrase “game-changer”!