The two-month cycle

Has Delta peaked? Previous variants seem to work on a two-month cycle, which means that we might start seeing Delta infections slow down. But the experts aren’t sure, in part because they don’t know what causes that cycle in the first place.

That would be welcome news. Georgia set a record for Covid-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday — 5,880 people, breaking the previous total set back in January. That doesn’t bode well for two weeks from now, as deaths typically lag by about that long.

Region Meetings are a-comin’

It’s time to mark your calendar: GPhA’s fall Region Meeting(s) are coming! Virtual, schmirtual — they’re going to be live in your area.

The meeting places aren’t set yet, but the dates are:

• Region 5: Thursday, October 21
• Regions 2 & 7: Tuesday, October 26
• Regions 8 & 9: Wednesday, October 27
• Regions 10 & 12: Thursday, October 28
• Regions 1 & 3: Tuesday, November 9
• Region 11: Wednesday, November 10
• Regions 4 & 6: Thursday, November 11

Details about locations, CE, and the program will be coming soon. In the meantime, save that date! (Don’t know your region? No worries — just click here.)

Bad news (antibiotics)

“Antibiotics increase the risk of colon cancer” say Swedish researchers, after studying 40,000 cancer cases. The culprit, they think, is what the drugs do to the gut microbiome.

Researchers found that both women and men who took antibiotics for over six months ran a 17 per cent greater risk of developing cancer in the ascending colon […] than those who were not prescribed any antibiotics.

But after reading that and freaking out, you come to this: “There is absolutely no cause for alarm simply because you have taken antibiotics. The increase in risk is moderate and the affect on the absolute risk to the individual is fairly small.”

Bad news (flu)

University of Pittsburgh public health researchers predict that, after last year’s non-existent flu season, the upcoming one may be pretty bad. It’s a combination of relaxed Covid precautions, the potential for lower-than-normal flu vaccinations, and the lack of antibodies from last year.

One model found…

… the coming influenza season will likely bring about 600,000 hospitalizations, at least 100,000 more than would happen in a normal season. In a worst-case scenario where vaccine uptake is low, there would be more than 400,000 additional hospitalizations. Getting 75% of Americans vaccinated against flu, rather than the typical 50%, would be needed to avoid the additional hospitalizations, according to the model.

Good news (glioblastoma)

Check out today’s Long Read: the story of the drug marizomib — a molecule that comes from a deep sea bacteria called Salinispora tropica … and that might be a treatment for glioblastoma.

(And if not, another possibility — per Texas A&M veterinarians — is an immunotherapy drug being tested for dogs that may also be viable for humans.)

Good news (vaccines)

Having received the MMR and Tdap vaccinations seems to reduce the severity of Covid-19. The T cells created by those vaccines are activated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus — kind of like bringing in additional help to fight Covid.

JAK inhibitors get a warning

The FDA is now requiring its heavy-duty black box warning on JAK inhibitors because “there is an increased risk of serious heart-related events such as heart attack or stroke, cancer, blood clots, and death.”

It applies not only to tofacitinib (aka Xeljanz) — which already had an alert, but to baricitinib (Olumiant) and upadacitinib (Rinvoq).

Light ’er up!

North Carolina-based EmitBio is testing a device that shines LED light (at specific frequencies, of course) into a person’s throat. That, they say, can treat mild cases of Covid-19.

We were going to poke fun at the idea, but heck, there’s this:

The company’s early results have shown some promise, finding that its LED device can reduce viral loads in the laboratory. And on Wednesday, the company announced that its experiments found a 99.99% elimination of the delta variant virus in lung cells after three days of shining the light twice a day for about five minutes.

The antibiotic shuffle

Evolutionary biologists in Germany think they’ve found a way to help reduce antibiotic resistance. The trick is to ignore conventional wisdom and use multiple antibiotics — but (and here’s the important part) switch between them quickly.

[S]witching rapidly between the individual antibiotics produced much better extinction of bacterial populations than when the switch between antibiotics was slower. This suggests that fast switching between antibiotics constrained the bacteria’s ability to adapt to the drugs.

And no, swapping antibiotics didn’t drive resistance: “[W]e found this is not the case if resistance to one of the antibiotics cannot emerge easily, and if the antibiotics show collateral sensitivity to each other.”

Elsewhere: Spelling Matters edition

If you’re going to make a fake vaccination card — and don’t want to be arrested — learn to spell “Moderna.”

If it was a snake it would have bit me

Today: A molecule in the venom of the jararacussu pit viper inhibits the SARS-CoV-2 virus from multiplying (found Brazilian researchers).

Tomorrow: “CDC warns against deliberately being bitten by venomous snakes.”

Next week: “Hospitalizations rise from snake-bite victims.”