Daily aspirin gets some disclaimers

What you’ll read: “New advice says don’t take aspirin to prevent heart attack.”

The devil in the details: The latest advice from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says …

• If you’ve had a heart attack or stroke, you should probably continue taking aspirin (assuming your prescriber advises it).
• If you’re over 60 and haven’t had a heart attack, don’t start taking aspirin.
• If you’re 40 to 59 and have not had a heart attack, determine with your healthcare pro whether the potential benefit outweighs the risk of bleeding.

Where the risk really is

Sure, children are cute, and it’s natural to want to protect them*, but when you look at the data, the kids are (probably) all right: “An unvaccinated child is at less risk of serious Covid illness than a vaccinated 70-year-old.”

* Most of them

Shout-out to Hugh Chancy!

The GPhA member and 2005-06 president was featured in the Drug Store News story, “A family affair: Multigenerational pharmacists share their stories.”

Originally I thought, I don’t want to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. As I got older, I really resonated with the way he impacted our community. I realized then that pharmacy was truly a profession that could make a difference. I have always felt that I had a servant’s heart, and pharmacy is truly a service profession.

Chancy reports that he has since returned the heart to the servant who supplied it.

No magic necessary

Eating mushrooms — the regular kind, not the magic ones — may cut your risk of depression. That’s what Penn State researchers found after collecting data on more than 24,000 U.S. adults. Simply put, “They found that people who ate mushrooms had lower odds of having depression.”

Their guess as to why:

[M]ushrooms contain ergothioneine, an antioxidant that may protect against cell and tissue damage in the body. Studies have shown that antioxidants help prevent several mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Annnnnnd the caveats: They didn’t narrow it down to see which mushrooms this applies to, nor are they entirely confident whether this is causation or just correlation.

The best-laid plans

When Joe Biden took office, we all knew the end of the pandemic was in sight. Waving his magic wand, we would soon have a return to normalcy. Masks would disappear, restaurants would be packed, and unicorns would poop rainbow ice cream.

Today… not so much. Mixed messages, the delta variant, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, new mandates — the latest polls show more people are thinking the unicorns will be stuck in their stable a while longer.

Captain Obvious guards his noggin

Vanderbilt University researchers studied a decade’s worth of records to conclude that yes, helmets protect kids from head injuries: “The impact of helmet use on neurosurgical care and outcomes after pediatric all-terrain vehicle and dirt bike crashes: a 10-year single-center experience.”

What the market will bear?

When it comes to drugs, most Americans support capitalism — that is, the buyer and seller agree on a price. (So finds the latest poll.) But when it comes to Medicare being allowed to negotiate, “most Americans” don’t get a say — that’s between lawmakers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Everything you want to know about Merck’s Covid pill

From how it works to where it fits in the treatment scheme, courtesy of Yale. It’s a powerful weapon, for sure. The downside: Because it will be available via an emergency use authorization, people who refused the “experimental” vaccines will not want to take this, either.

Best Buy gets into the game

Heck, if people will look to Dollar General for healthcare they’ll probably be willing to try … Best Buy?

The Long Read: Mixing and Matching edition

Everything you wanted to know about “heterologous vaccinations” — taking Covid-19 vaccinations from different manufacturers — is in “A primer on what we know about mixing and matching Covid vaccines”. (Spoiler: It’s actually done fairly often, but there isn’t a lot of hard data.)