The number of the vaccines shall be three

Four shalt thou not need (yet), neither stop thou at two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then thou shalt be immune from thy viral foe.

(“New Data Suggests mRNA Vaccines Work Best As A Three-Dose Regimen”)

With obvious apologies to Monty Python.

Learning more about ketamine

Ketamine’s been getting a lot of press for its ability to treat severe depression almost instantly. (And we’re still learning about how that actually works.)

Its newest trick: Stopping suicide. A study out of Columbia University…

found that one dose of ketamine not only reduced the severity of depression in people with suicide ideation […] but also made them feel safer and less likely to harm themselves because it rapidly diminished their suicidal ideation.

Oh, and they point out that suicidal thoughts are not related to severity of depression, so this isn’t simply extending ketamine’s already-known benefit; it’s (probably?) a separate feature.

JAK inhibitors? Mix it up a bit

A JAK inhibitor is pretty standard for rheumatoid arthritis, but it doesn’t always work. Here’s the thing: JAK inhibitors have the same result but not the same mechanism. That means (Spanish rheumatologists discovered) that…

…people with difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis who do not have success with one [JAK inhibitor] can achieve success either cycling to other JAKi medications or switching to a biologic drug.

So it’s not switching, it’s cycling.

You can do it

Once again, deep breath. You made it through yesterday’s ivermectin story, you can make it through today’s piece on Medicaid expansion in Georgia.

So here’s the deal: The plan coming together would essentially extend Medicaid coverage to the 269,000 Georgians who are currently in the ‘coverage gap’ — they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to qualify for subsidized Obamacare plans. (Let’s be clear: They earn less than $12,880 a year.)

The carrot: Those people “would qualify for ACA marketplace subsidies for four years starting in January.” Starting in 2023, their out-of-pocket costs would be close to zero.

The other carrot: The feds would raise its coverage for Medicaid from 90% to 93% from 2023 through 2025, so states would pay an even smaller portion.

The stick: Georgia and the other dozen or so states that did not expand Medicaid would lose “billions in special federal Medicaid funding […] that helps hospitals with disproportionately high rates of uninsured or Medicaid patients.”

Hospitals, who have been champions of Medicaid expansion, are Not Happy At All about that stick, and you can bet they’ll be leaning on Georgia legislators because of it.

Captain Obvious mixes it up

“Study reveals ‘drastic changes’ in daily routines during UK lockdowns“. Next up, “Prisoners report incarceration changed their schedules.”

Making pancreatic cancer vulnerable

If you have a mouse with pancreatic cancer, good news out of Georgetown: Immunotherapy may now be an option. (Typically, pancreatic cancer has been immune to it.)

Their experimental drug — BXCL701 (a dipeptidyl peptidase inhibitor (as you probably guessed)) — works with immunotherapy drugs to turn them up to 11 “by increasing the number of immune cells in the immediate vicinity of the tumor, leading to a reduction in tumor growth, and in some mice, eliminating their cancer.”

The big caveat: The researchers received funding from the company that developed BXCL701.

Your grain of salt

Elsewhere

The UK has approved Merck/Ridgeback’s molnupiravir “as a treatment for people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are at increased risk of developing severe disease.” That is all. Well, almost: It’s fancy brand name is “Lagevrio,” which is also a new Olive Garden entreé.