Scientific breakthrough

Fun fact: It’s a rule that whenever you write about coffee, you must mention that “Coffee is the most commonly consumed beverage in the world.” (It’s not. Water is.)

So is the case with the American Heart Association’s story about a UC San Francisco study. Researchers there discovered the breaking news, “Coffee boosts physical activity, cuts sleep, affects heartbeat, study suggests.”

Specifically, people who drank coffee walked more and had fewer episodes of one type of abnormal heart rhythm … but more episodes of a different kind of abnormal heartbeat. “They also slept less.”

Attention, ladies!

Once upon a time, here at Buzz we poked fun at the annual SE Women of Pharmacy Leadership Conference for its seeming focus on beauty tips and spa days.

No more. This year’s SE Women of Pharmacy Leadership Conference is on a whole new level — and GPhA is excited to partner with the South Carolina Pharmacy Association, which is hosting the event (oddly, in North Carolina).

Yes, you can still get spa appointments, but those are playing second fiddle to a full three-day conference schedule with sessions on leadership, harassment, dealing with trauma, merging the intellectual and the emotional, and more, for 9 hours of CE credit.

Deets:

January 14-16, 2022
Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC

Early-bird rates for the conference and hotel are until November 28.
GPhA members should use the discount code “STATE”.

Click here for more information and register!

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Anyone on Medicare Part B owes some thanks to Biogen. Premiums are going up $21.60 a month next year so Medicare can pay for the company’s not-really-proven Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm.

Thankfully, though, Biogen only priced it at $56,000 a year — if it decided to charge more, Medicare would have had to pay that, too (no negotiation, remember?). This is the biggest price hike dollar-wise in Part B history, but not the largest percentage-wise. So that’s even better news!

A nonprofit think tank focused on drug pricing pegged Adulhelm’s actual value at between $3,000 and $8,400 per year — not $56,000 — based on its unproven benefits.

Ready to climb your ivory tower?

Do you like pharmacy, research, academia, and administration? UGA’s College of Pharmacy is looking to hire the head of the Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy.

Reporting directly to the dean of the College of Pharmacy, the PBS Head leads a robust department that provides the foundational science support for the college, including teaching at all levels, and the conduct of cutting-edge research in the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences.

Check out the details of the position at the link above, or download the lovely PDF here.

Covid pill: latest news

As expected, Pfizer has asked the FDA for an emergency-use authorization for its Paxlovid Covid-19 treatment pill. If granted, this will be under an EUA, meaning people who said they don’t want to take “experimental” medications won’t be able to to use it. Full approval could take months.

In related news, the company has graciously agreed to allow the treatment to be manufactured around the world so poorer countries will be able to afford it.

HIV: And then there were two

A woman in Argentina is apparently only the second person known to have completely eradicated HIV from her body “without the help of drugs, a bone marrow transplant […] or any other treatment.”

They’re calling her the “Esperanza Patient” and she and a California woman named Loreen Willenberg appear to be the only two people whose bodies have wiped out HIV on their own. (Doctors have cured HIV infection twice — in the “Berlin Patient” and the “London Patient,” by using complicated, painful, and expensive bone marrow transplants.)

“This gives us hope that the human immune system is powerful enough to control HIV and eliminate all the functional virus.”

How it happened and whether it can be duplicated — well, that’s still to be discovered.

Aspirin makes UTIs worse

If you have a zebrafish with a UTI, think twice before giving it aspirin (or warfarin). New research out of Australia’s Centenary Institute found that anticoagulants like aspirin are likely to make urinary tract infections worse by “prevent[ing] natural clotting that would have helped to contain bacteria in the blood.”

The Huldufólk will have to wait

The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Iceland are the three latest countries to be added to the CDC’s “Level 4” list for Covid-19 risk (“Prepare Will In Advance”) as the disease surges once again through Europe.

Bird flu is lurking

Avian influenza A — the bird flu — has been spreading through Europe and Asia over the past few weeks (although we’re not yet using the word “sweeping”).

Epidemiologists are concerned because it moves quickly, has a high mortality rate for birds, and it can jump to humans. In fact, at least 21 people in China have contracted it this year.

But a virus that’s just affecting a small number of people in China doesn’t seem like anything the rest of the world should worry about, does it?