Today’s Covid-19 treatment comes from…

Cloves. And basil — holy basil. Specifically it’s a liquid called eugenol that can be extracted from those, according to neurologists at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center.

“Eugenol binds to the spike protein of coronavirus, preventing it from attaching to healthy cells and entering them. This new intervention has been effective in reducing fever and inflammation in the lungs, and has improved heart function and locomotor functions, in our mouse models.”

What’s interesting is that the eugenol “interacted with the residue of the spike S1 protein, not ACE2,” meaning it might have a different mechanism than other treatments.

The asthma-tumor connection

People who have asthma are less likely to have brain tumors. That’s not news, but it’s also never been understood. Until now. (Sort of.)

It’s all about the T cells. Washington University researchers found those T cells activated by asthma secrete a protein called decorin, which is bad stuff for the airways.

But in the brain, decorin is good stuff because it blocks immune cells called microglia … good because “Activated microglia promote the growth and development of brain tumors.”

Not that you’d give asthma to brain-tumor patients, but it might be possible to reprogram a tumor patient’s T cells.

“But what if we could trick the T cells into thinking they’re asthma T cells when they enter the brain, so they no longer support brain tumor formation and growth? These findings open the door to new kinds of therapies targeting T cells and their interactions with cells in the brain.”

And, of course, the finding opens up the possibility of using decorin (or a similar compound) to treat tumors.

One step closer to building a body

Next on the list of lab-grown organs: Stomachs. Meaning stomachs-in-a-dish that have distinct glands, nerve cells that can control muscle contractions, and produce acid.

Scientifically interesting: The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital researchers who made these stomachs used three different lines of human stem cells, created multi-layered organoids, and transplanted them into mice where they “grew a thousand-fold in volume […] to form mini organs plainly visible to the naked eye.”

Covid tidbits

You want a booster: In one of the first analyses of Pfizer boosters, Israeli researchers (looking at the records of 843,208 participants) found that people who got the Pfizer booster had 90% lower mortality due to Covid-19 than those who only had two Pfizer shots.

Toll the bell: More than 800,000 Americans have now died from Covid-19 — that’s the highest per-capita death toll among the world’s wealthiest nations, and #30 out of the 38 OECD members (slightly worse than Mexico, but slightly better than Slovenia).

Killing the seniors: Of those 800,000, 75% were 65 or older. And a full 1 in 100 older Americans has died from Covid-19.

Building a better vaccine: By adding a particular protein fragment to a Covid-19 vaccine, you can (in theory) create a vaccine that is immune (ha ha) to changes in the virus’s spike protein.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus (and other coronaviruses) contain a viral polymerase protein that, unlike the spike protein, is unlikely to change. Add a fragment of that to the vaccine, say UCLA researchers, and it will activate a different set of T cells and “create a longer-lasting immune response and increase protection against new variants of the virus.”

Captain Obvious hangs out with Scrooge McDuck

In what really can’t be a shock to anyone, drug makers have raised the prices of brand-name drugs by four times the rate of inflation over the past five years.

And the drugmakers specifically targeted the U.S. market: “Internal documents showed drugmakers targeted the U.S. market for price increases in part because Medicare cannot negotiate lower prices.”

Oh, and that tired old cry of “But you’ll stifle development!” is — yet again — proven to be nonsense:

From 2016-20, the 14 leading drugmakers spent $577 billion on stock buybacks and dividends, $56 billion more than they spent on research and development during the period.

And even when they did spend on R&D, “a significant amount of their research and development dollars” were used to prolong their monopolies, not actually develop drugs.

Cosmetics of doom

A bunch of hair-care products really shouldn’t be used during pregnancy. They contain all sorts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals — the kinds of chemicals that can mess with hormone levels and cause problems during pregnancy … and for the baby.

Researchers, including two epidemiologists from UGA*, found…

… that the use of hair products, particularly hair dyes, bleach, relaxers and mousse are associated with lower levels of sex steroid hormones, which have a critical role maintaining pregnancy and fetal development. Disruptions of these hormones may contribute to adverse maternal and pregnancy outcomes like growth restriction, preterm birth, and low birth weight.

* Zaira Rosario and José Cordero, since you asked

Medical shocker

Using one drug could interfere with other drugs … even if that drug is illegal in half the country.

(Saving you a click: “Using cannabis alongside other drugs may come with a significant risk of harmful drug-drug interactions, new research by scientists at Washington State University suggests.”)

Don’t let the bedbugs bite

Sure, bedbugs love our body odor and warmth, but you know what they don’t like (according to University of Kentucky researchers)? Our skin lipids. In fact, they hate them so much they go to live in the mattress instead.

Why? Who cares! (They don’t know yet.) It could mean new ways to control the little demons.

“There may be several potential management opportunities from our finding. It’s possible that our findings could be used to deter bed bugs from hitchhiking on people’s belongings, thus reducing their spread.”