The long-Covid list

The Brits have done a big survey — 3,762 persons across 56 countries who have various symptoms even after recovering from Covid-19. The result: 203 symptoms of long Covid, including 66 that lasted at least seven months.

The most common symptoms were fatigue, post-exertional malaise (where people’s health worsens after physical or mental exertion) and brain fog. Other effects included visual hallucinations, tremors, itchy skin, changes to the menstrual cycle, sexual dysfunction, heart palpitations, bladder control issues, shingles, memory loss, blurred vision, diarrhoea and tinnitus.

Golf … with guns!

Well, no, not really golf, but yes to the guns. It’s the 2021 Ready. Aim. Phire! — a sporting clays event
benefitting the Georgia Pharmacy Foundation.

Mark your calendars and update your insurance: Friday, September 24, from 1:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. at the Big Red Oak Preserve in Gay, Georgia. It’s open to both singles (we’ll group you up) and teams of four. We’ll supply the guns, the ammo, the targets, and the training. You bring your eye and an intense hatred of airborne clay disks.

Join us for an afternoon of outside adventure*, (friendly) competition, the smells of barbeque, beer, and gunpowder, and the natural beauty of one of Georgia’s finest sporting clays courses.

Click here for info and register today!

(Psst: There are a bunch of sponsorship options, too — check ’em out!)

* How can you go wrong with both guns and adventure?

Sunscreen recall

Johnson & Johnson is recalling some Neutrogena and Aveeno aerosol sunscreens because they contain benzene. Check yer shelves:

• Neutrogena Beach Defense aerosol
• Neutrogena Cool Dry Sport aerosol
• Neutrogena Invisible Daily defense aerosol
• Neutrogena Ultra Sheer aerosol, and
• Aveeno Protect + Refresh aerosol

How diabetes hurts

Diabetes often leads to heart disease, but how that happens hasn’t be clear … until now. British researchers have figured out that high levels of glucose literally reprogram stem cells in bone marrow to produce inflammatory immune cells in the blood. Being inflamed, they’ll help increase the buildup of arterial plaque, like a slow buildup of hair in a drain.

“Our study is the first to show that diabetes causes long-term changes to the immune system, and how this might account for the sustained increase in the risk of heart attack.”

Another problem with anticoagulants

Brazilian endocrinologists have discovered a potentially troubling connection: Taking oral anticoagulants, whether direct-acting or warfarin, can lead to lower bone density and quality — but warfarin users were affected the most.

“[B]one microarchitecture assessed by trabecular bone score, […] was more degraded in the warfarin group compared with the direct-acting oral anticoagulant group, and more degraded in the direct-acting oral anticoagulant group compared with the control group.”

From death comes life

If Australia is known for one thing, it’s “Everything wants to kill you.” But there are at least two species that might be slightly more helpful (although still deadly).

First is the funnel-web spider — known as the deadliest spider in the world, but whose venom contains a protein called Hi1a that might be able to protect cardiac cells during a heart attack (presumably caused by coming across a funnel-web spider). It might also help extend transport time for hearts to be transplanted.

Choose the form of the destroyer

Second is an adorable little caterpillar called Doratifera vulnerans (literally “bearer of gifts of wounds”) with venom that can cause extreme pain. That venom, though, was just found to be chock full of bioactive peptides “containing 151 different protein-based toxins from 59 different families.”

Sure, those toxins might kill a few unlucky grad students, but experience tells us that they might also lead to any number of treatments. But … “First, we need to work out what the individual toxins do, to inform us about how they might be used.”

Diabetes and depression

People with diabetes have a higher risk of also having depression, but it’s even more important for them to consider antidepressants. Why? Because, as a new study of more than 36,000 people found…

“People with depression and diabetes have poorer health outcomes than those with diabetes alone, and regular antidepressant treatment could lower their risk of complications.”

Depression, they say, adds stress, reduces exercise, and makes those complications worse; adding an antidepressant can have a much bigger impact.

Link above is to the study; here’s the news story.

Elsewhere: “The UK Has Had Enough” edition

Some generic-drug makers in the UK raised their prices for hydrocortisone tablets by an eye-popping 10,000% over 10 years. (They also paid off competitors not to enter the market.)

Governments may be slow, but they do tend to catch on, and now those companies will be shelling out $305 million (£221 million) in fines to Her Majesty’s Government for their “excessively high prices.” And that’s before the National Health Service decides to seek damages.