Two dementia surprises

First, an eight-year study by researchers at the University of Washington found that “Older people who get cataracts removed have lower dementia risk.”

Why does it do that? It could be by increasing stimuli to the brain, as people can see better and more. Or it could be that fewer cataracts mean more blue light, which might help maintain a proper circadian rhythm.

More work needs to be done. The lead researcher cut to the chase: “There is so much that we do not know yet.”

=AND=

Viagra might be a treatment for Alzheimer’s. Cleveland Clinic genomic researchers had computers process the records of more than 7 million patients, and discovered that “sildenafil is associated with 69% reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.“

How so? It’s not about increasing blood flow, or giving these patients more reasons to pay attention to life. The theory hypothesis: Sildenafil may interfere with the molecular connections between the amyloid and tau plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. (It’s only an hypothesis at this point because the study only found an association, not a mechanism.

Wanna give out the new Covid meds?

Are you considering providing Merck’s anti-Covid molnupiravir pills to patients? The Georgia Department of Public Health would like to hear from you. It’s put together a Covid-19 Molnupiravir Pharmacy Interest Survey you can fill out to let DPH know you’re standing by.

Drug-pricing secrecy

Brought to you by SETEC Astronomy

Imagine you’re an employer, and to save on drug costs you join a coalition — a drug-pricing coalition that works with PBMs to negotiate better pricing. Let’s call it “Aon”.

After a bit, you ask Aon if you’re saving money being part of the coalition. “Sure thing,” you’re told. “You’re saving plenty — an average of about 18 percent.”

“Oh really,” you say. “Let me see the details. The numbers.”

“No,” says Aon. “That’s secret. Trust us, you’re saving money.”

A confidentiality agreement between Aon and third-party vendors stipulates that if employers hire vendors to audit the coalition’s data, vendors “shall never include [a drug’s average wholesale price], ingredient cost, or member cost share or any other information that could be used to derive the [coalition’s] proprietary pricing information” in reports they provide to employers.

And those agreements also forbid employers from permitting any third party (e.g., an accounting auditor) “to access, attempt to access, test or audit” the PBM’s electronic systems and databanks.

So are they saving money? How much are they paying PBMs through Aon? No one’s telling.

And in related news….

PBMs have reached an agreement with the feds over a lawsuit. The PBMs didn’t want to follow a Trump administration rule that required them to disclose the rebates they pay drugmakers. Instead, the Biden administration has tweaked that rule: Now the PBMs have to disclose the information to the government, but not to the public.

Cancer tastes bitter

German and Austrian researchers found that — for some reason — cancer cells contain bitter-taste receptors. Yep, the same kinds of cells that let us appreciate coffee, good chocolate, and the YouTube comments section.

Their results suggest that bitter taste receptors should also be considered as additional targets for chemotherapeutic agents in the future and should be investigated in this regard.

Captain Obvious takes several deep breaths and counts to 10

Blood pressure is up. The American Heart Association is reporting that “U.S. adults’ blood pressure levels increased during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

During the pandemic (April to December 2020), average increases in blood pressure each month ranged from 1.10 to 2.50 mm Hg higher for systolic blood pressure and 0.14 to 0.53 mm Hg for diastolic blood pressure compared to the same time period in 2019. Before the pandemic, blood pressure measures were largely unchanged when comparing study years.

Discipline is harsher. During the pandemic so far, parents were more likely to use corporal punishment with their kids (“such as shaking or spanking a child”) and do it as a reaction to general levels of stress, rather than “the stress they are feeling in the moment.” So found a study out of an Ohio State University.

“As the stress built up during the day, they may be more likely to lash out and use aggressive discipline that isn’t good for kids.”

Thinking is harder. The more people begin to worry during the pandemic, the more likely they are to make slower, risk-confused, and poorly planned decisions* — that’s what a group of Canadian researchers found after surveying more than 1,500 Americans.

[T]hose who experienced more pandemic-related worry had reduced information processing speed, ability to retain information needed to perform tasks, and heightened sensitivity to the odds they were given when taking risks. The pandemic group performed more poorly on the simple cognitive tasks than the pre-pandemic group.

* Like being willing to accept artificial maple syrup on morning pancakes.

Picking your fats

Fats are bad for you, right? Particularly saturated fats. Not so fast! Once again, there’s always nuance … at least according to epidemiologists at the University of Cambridge.

Their findings are that it’s not the amount of saturated fats, but what foods they come from.

We found that people who ate more saturated fats from red meat and butter were more likely to develop heart disease. The opposite was true for those who ate more saturated fats from cheese, yoghurt, and fish — which were actually linked to a lower risk of heart disease.

Why? Well, there are different saturated fats, for one (e.g., palmitic acid in red meat vs. pentadecanoic acid in dairy). And the foods themselves contain other nutrients that might affect how those fats are processed.

An interesting aside: Sugar, fats, and Harvard

Back in 2016, it emerged that our ‘low-fat, don’t worry about sugar‘ mindset came from a Harvard Study that turned out to have been … less than objective: “Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research.”

In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Only now are we realizing how bad sugar is, and that fats are not the boogeymen we thought. (You can just search for “sugar fat harvard 2016” and find a ton of these articles.)

But wait!

In 2018, another article came out saying that reality is a bit more complicated, and those 2016 stories were a bit oversimplified. In reality, it claims, the sugar industry isn’t to blame; those Harvard scientists were already blaming fats.

‘The long-deceased Mad Men–era Harvard scientists who stand accused of having been “paid off” to “shift the blame” to fat were, in fact, already on record in support of low-fat diets as a way to fight heart disease for nearly a decade before the sugar men came calling.