An asthma vaccine?

If you have mice with asthma, good news: Scientists at Paris’s Pasteur Institute have developed a potential vaccine.

Right now, treating the worst asthma usually means using dupilumab to block those nasty IL-4 and IL-13 molecules. But dupilumab ain’t cheap, especially when you’re talking about a chronic illness. So the Parisians came up with a way to get the body to produce an immune response itself — a treatment that “induces the sustained production of antibodies specifically directed against IL-4 and IL-13.”

Inflammation and depression

The interesting news: A huge British study (85,895 individuals) found that there is definitely a connection between depression and inflammation.

“Our study provides the most conclusive evidence to date that people with depression have proteins in their blood indicating activation of the inflammatory system.”

The frustrating news: They don’t know which causes which. (Although it’s possible that depression leads to behaviors such as overeating or smoking that lead to inflammation, but that’s far from clear-cut.)

While the evidence here isn’t enough to show that one directly causes the other, the researchers say that it suggests that there could be a direct biological link somewhere that’s yet to be discovered.

One is too many

New research out of the American College of Cardiology finds that alcohol has an immediate effect on heart rhythm. In fact…

The data revealed that just one glass of wine, beer or other alcoholic beverage was associated with twofold greater odds of an episode of [atrial fibrillation] occurring within the next four hours.

That’s not a big deal for most people, but if your heart isn’t in the best shape, that “rapid, chaotic and fluttery heartbeat” could end up being a free* ticket to the ER

* Not free

Drugmaker behaving badly

A congressional committee report found that AbbVie has raised the price of Humira over and over and over, in part because it blocked biosimilar competition by paying competitors to delay entering the market. AbbVie’s largest customer is the U.S. government — Medicare — but current law keeps capitalism at bay:

The U.S. is unable to negotiate directly with companies for lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries, making American taxpayers a cash cow for the drugmaker, the committee said.

Oh, and if you’re thinking, “The company needs that money for, like, research!” Wrong:

Most of those increases were aimed at reaching revenue targets, which led to big payouts for AbbVie’s top executives, according to the probe.

Smell test, Covid style

In the race to the fastest Covid-19 test, the Dutch may have taken the lead with the SpiroNose by a company called Breathomix. (No one said they were great at the whole naming thing.) Rather than look for the virus itself, the SpiroNose tests for a variety of exhaled organic compounds that — for unknown reasons — change when someone is infected.

The idea isn’t a clear Yes/No. Instead, it can give a fairly confident “No” and flag the rest for further testing, reducing the number of tests needed.

SpiroNose isn’t meant to definitively diagnose infection; instead it aims to rule it out in as many cases as possible. For the remainder, the test yields an “inconclusive,” and those people receive a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or antigen test.

Mix and match

A study out of Spain has answered the question (for the moment) “Can you mix the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines?” The answer: Yep. “[G]iving a dose of Pfizer’s drug to people who already received a first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine is highly safe and effective.”

A 20-year head start

Back in 1993 or so, researchers collected and stored thousands of blood samples. And now Johns Hopkins researchers looked at those samples and the patients they came from and discovered that there are 16 proteins that, if elevated, can indicate a high risk for developing Alzheimer’s two decades in advance. (Another 22 proteins can indicate that risk five years before symptoms appear.)

Oh, and one of those proteins, SVEP1, “is not just an incidental marker of Alzheimer’s risk but is involved in triggering or driving the disease.”

A pessimist might point out that, as there’s no treatment for Alzheimer’s, this is just a 20-year countdown clock. But the researchers are more optimistic:

“Some of these proteins we uncovered are just indicators that disease might occur, but a subset may be causally relevant, which is exciting because it raises the possibility of targeting these proteins with future treatments.”

Some will need boosters

The evidence is mixed on whether most people will need a Covid-vaccine booster shot. (Health experts say probably not, vaccine makers say probably so. Go figure.) But one group that likely will need a booster is people who are immunosuppressed, at least according to the chair of the American College of Rheumatology Covid-19 Vaccine Clinical Guidance Task Force.

“I personally think that it is likely that people will need a booster,” said Jeffrey R. Curtis. “That may not be everybody, but I think that getting a booster dose and then having some periodicity to this is likely to be quite common.”

But he did add this rather broad caveat:

“Of course, there is a lot of science and the science is very much in evolution. Whatever you think you know this month, may well be different next month, so for that reason I think everything we say or talk about tonight is subject to change.”