A dot to spot infection

Instead of changing a wound’s dressing (and letting in that nasty outside air), Irish researchers have a tiny solution: a dot. It’s a sensor embedded in the bandage that warns if something nasty is going on underneath.

This sensor can provide an early warning of infection before it has progressed to a chronic, persistent colonisation of the wound by microorganisms which are by then much more difficult to treat effectively with antibiotics.”

So you reduce the risk of introducing pathogens, and you also can catch any infection before it gets to the point of being in a medical training video.

Vitamin D’s at it again

A study out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that people who took vitamin D supplements had a significantly lower rate of autoimmune diseases “such as rheumatoid arthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune thyroid disease, and psoriasis.” And that’s with or without omega-3 fatty acids.

How much vitamin D? Quoth the senior author: “I suggest vitamin D 2000 IU a day and marine omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil), 1000 mg a day.”

Which way to boost?

Pfizer and Moderna are each testing Omicron-specific versions of their mRNA vaccines. Sounds like good news — better than the general Covid jab, right?

But it’s complicated. Boosting for one variant may commit “original antigenic sin” — in short, backfire by reducing the immune system’s response to Omicron.

As on immunologist explained:

It’s the concept that if you immunize with a protein of 3 parts (let’s say A, B, C), the immune system learns to respond to this. If you then come back and immunize with something similar but slightly different (A, B, D), the immune system dominantly responds against A and B, and suppresses responses against D.

On the other hand there’s the opposite worry: That re-immunizing with the original spike protein “could lock in that specificity and keep it from responding as well to Omicron or an Omicron-specific vaccine later.”

Here’s a mainstream news story on the issue.

Xeljanz warning

JAK inhibitors like Xeljanz are are new and fancy treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, but a new study says they’re also more likely to cause heart attack, stroke, and cancer than older drugs.

In fact, learning this, the FDA has changed the labeling of JAK inhibitors with a warning — and it’s officially advising that they only be prescribed if Ye Olde TNF inhibitors fail.

A cancer drug might fight HIV

Pembrolizumab is used to treat cancer (as you probably know), but it seems to have another side effect: It can chase HIV out of whatever nooks and crannies it’s been hiding in, making it easier to treat.

Researchers at Australia’s Doherty Institute found that pembrolizumab can ‘rejuvenate’ killer T cells by removing a surface protein called PD1. But get this: PD1 just happens to be what HIV uses to hide itself. And once it’s flushed out into the open, therapies can attack it.

Captain Obvious takes a Lyft

Alcohol and marijuana together make your driving worse. Or, as University of Calgary researchers put it, “The combination of cannabis and alcohol was associated with greater driving performance decrements than either drug in isolation.”

The captain was interested to learn, however, that cannabis alone impairs a driver’s lateral control and increases “lateral position variability” (much like an annoying bed-mate), but also makes you drive more slowly.

A leg to stand, er, hop on

Taking a much-needed break from Covid and opioids and diabetes and so many other issues, researchers at Tufts (and other) universities have regrown a frog’s lost leg. And no, unlike some salamanders and lizards, frogs can’t regrow a limb. Not without science.

In this case, that science involved enclosing the wound in a silicone cap “containing a silk protein gel loaded with the five-drug cocktail” that reduce inflammation, inhibit collagen production, and “encourage the new growth of nerve fibers, blood vessels, and muscle.”

The combination and the bioreactor provided a local environment and signals that tipped the scales away from the natural tendency to close off the stump, and toward the regenerative process.

Not in the news: “Tufts researchers cut off frog’s leg.”