The new STD guidelines are here!

It’s been more than five years since the CDC updated its “Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines,” but that long dry spell has come to an end. Behold, the 2021 recommendations (mobile app coming shortly).

Young person’s disease

People under 50 in Georgia, like the rest of the country, are now seeing the highest rate of Covid-19 hospitalization since the pandemic started. All age groups are seeing a spike, but for people 0 to 49 years old, the current rate surpasses the early-2021 numbers. And that is scary stuff.

Naloxone in shortage

Naloxone, thanks in part to a Pfizer “manufacturing issue” back in April, is suddenly in short supply. That’s hitting the Opioid Safety and Supply Network Buyer’s Club — the buyers group for harm-prevention programs nationwide — particularly hard.

OSSN had been able to buy it from the company at a discount, but with supplies “depleted,” according to Pfizer, they’re left without alternatives … just as overdoses are hitting record highs. Most can’t afford to pay the regular price (and most don’t get federal funding).

The community programs that rely on the buyer’s club have resorted to seeking donations to buy naloxone at market price or looking for supply from places where the antidote is sitting on shelves and expiring. […] Without supply, organizations such as Utah Naloxone must weigh which facilities, including libraries and treatment centers, it will no longer stock.

A vax for ticks

Pfizer’s lazily named “Ticovac” has been approved for prevention of tick-borne encephalitis. That is all.

Two for T cells

Instead of looking at antibodies after vaccination, Penn researchers looked at the body’s T cell response to both the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the two available mRNA vaccines. What they found: a robust and durable response with either the virus and one vaccine, or with two vaccinations.

“For people who haven’t had COVID-19, the first dose powerfully primes the pump, and the second dose turns on the whole engine — but having had COVID-19 is like having had that first vaccine dose already.”

Said the director of the Penn Institute of Immunology, “Our findings underscore the fact that we need to look at T cells, not just antibodies, if we want a complete picture of the vaccine response.”

Quick Covid notes

Good news: Lung damage from Covid-19 doesn’t appear to be permanent (from Loyola University).

More clues: Long Covid might be a result of “higher measures of blood clotting,” which would explain many of the common symptoms (from Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland).

Fungus fighter

Fungal infections are becoming more and more of an issue in hospitals, with various species of Candida infecting medical equipment, forming protective biofilms that make them resistant to anti-fungal meds.

C. albicans is “one of the most invasive and notoriously resistant,” and it can be deadly to people with compromised immune systems. (Pro tip: Do not Google “Candidiasis.”)

But now Aussie researchers have a possible solution, and of course it uses nanoparticles. They’ve created “smart micelles” — lipid spheres that can break apart that protective biofilm and deliver drugs to kill the fungus.

“We estimate that the new micelles could improve the efficacy of anti-fungal medicines by 100-fold, potentially saving the lives of millions of people worldwide.”

(Right now it only works for C. albicans, but hopefully it can help attack the up-and-comer, C. auris, too.)

Congrats to GHN!

Georgia Health News (which we at Buzz love) is becoming part of Kaiser Health News — one of the best health and medicine news operations out there. It will be the start of KHN’s Southern Bureau.

Resistance is everywhere

If you have lemurs living near you (you know who you are), take note: Duke anthropologists have found that the ones living close to humans — including in research facilities — harbor a heck of a lot more antibiotic-resistant microbes than those in the wild.

At first they thought that pet and research lemurs acquired the bacteria because of being treated by veterinarians with antibiotics. But nope, even those that had never been to the vet had resistant bacteria. And the closer they lived with humans, the more of it they had.

The current hypothesis: Humans carry antibiotics with us.

“Humans came along, developed antibiotics, spread them all around us, and propagated these resistance genes into natural environments and into the microbiomes of wildlife.”

Not good news for the fight against resistance. Speaking of which….

You can’t starve them

Indiana University biologists tried to starve bacteria — and failed. Even after 1,000 days without food, the bacteria lived, putting themselves in a dormant state.

What does that mean for humans? Well, our treatments “are often designed to target the cellular machinery of metabolically active cells.” So the dormant cells aren’t killed, and in fact can evolve antibiotic resistance, all while hiding somewhere. And waiting.

Pistols at dawn

The American Society of Anesthesiologists is very very angry, and has put out a strongly worded press release that “Condemns the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists’ misleading name change.”

Apparently, the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists is now the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology, which ASA calls “medical title misappropriation.”

Said ASA president Beverly Philip, “ASA will not allow AANA leadership to continue their harmful initiatives.” Get your popcorn.