Women and long Covid

Longer than you think, ladies, longer than you think: Women are more likely to have long Covid symptoms, “including anxiety, depression, or poor sleep quality,” than men, according to medical researchers from Spain (plus two of those shifty Danes).

And, they found, there’s no way to tell at admission — aside from more women reporting headache, everyone has about the same rates of the same symptoms.

This isn’t our number two story

We know a healthy gut biome is important for a gazillion reasons, but the way you get there is … well, not pleasant for a lot of folks: the fecal microbiota transplant.

Now, though, a front-door pill might be able to accomplish the same thing. Seres Therapeutics’ SER-109 “is derived from human feces purified to winnow down the resident microbes.” What’s left are bacteria in spores, including those from the Firmicutes phylum that can keep C. diff infections under control.

One researcher sees SER-109 as “a good bridge” between fecal transplants and more tailored therapies, “which he hopes will emerge as researchers get better at analyzing individual patients’ microbiomes—and figuring out which microbial species they need.”

(Captain Obvious gives his approval to this quote: “Many patients want to avoid the discomfort of colonoscopies, and will opt for a pill if it’s available.”)

Speaking of the good captain….

Captain Obvious

…is never coming to St. Eligius again: “5 hour + emergency care wait before admission linked to heightened death risk”.

…hangs out on IRC and Usenet’s alt.capt.obvious* newsgroup: “Internet use lessens extreme social isolation risk during COVID-19”.

* “I’ll take obscure geek references for $400, Alex.”

And speaking of taking drugs by mouth…

If you have patients with high-risk rheumatic heart disease, the latest info — courtesy of the American Heart Association — is that they should take oral penicillin, not injectable.

A growing body of evidence indicates that some people thought to have an allergic response to injectable penicillin, the standard treatment for rheumatic heart disease, may instead be experiencing a cardiac reaction to the medicine.

Artificial kids‘ pancreas gets a thumbs up

Continuous glucose monitors don’t work well for young kids, so parents might use “sensor-augmented pump therapy” — basically, they monitor the kid’s blood sugar and trigger the injector as necessary.

But what if you had an inexpensive but immensely powerful computer that fit in the palm of your hand? Could it do the monitoring?

Why yes, Cambridge scientists realized, and thus developed CamAPS FX — what they call an artificial pancreas. It’s a smartphone app combined with a glucose monitor and insulin pump that “automatically adjust[s] the amount of insulin it delivers based on predicted or real-time glucose levels.” And it works.

On average, children spent around three-quarters of their day (71.6%) in the target range for their glucose levels when using CamAPS FX – almost nine percentage points higher compared to the control period, accounting for an additional 125 minutes per day in the target range. The children spent less than a quarter (22.9%) of their time with raised blood sugar levels […] almost nine percentage points lower than during the control period.

I cannot be the only one who immediately thought “The Covid 19”

“Nearly half (48%) of adult Americans gained weight during the pandemic.” (Published in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews.)

Sick of social media

In what might be a shock to some, it seems a lot of social media use isn’t good for your health. Researchers from the University at Buffalo and an Ohio State University looked at a variety of measures of health, including inflammation, somatic symptoms (i.e., “feeling sick”), and how often they had to visit the doctor.

Results:

Social media use was correlated with higher levels of CRP—a biomarker of chronic inflammation […]. Social media use was also related to experiencing more frequent somatic symptoms, and to behavioral health indices such as more visits to the doctor or health centers for an illness.

A correction and clarification

In yesterday’s Buzz our headline mentioned “mask mandates” when it should have been “vaccine mandates.” Oops — sorry about that!

The story itself caused some confusion about if and whether pharmacy staff in Georgia is required to be vaccinated. As we got the story from NCPA, by way of clarification we’ll quote its item:

Retail pharmacies are not included in the list of providers and suppliers in the CMS vaccine mandate interim final rule. Therefore, the IFR does not directly affect retail pharmacies that do not work with facilities that participate in Medicare or Medicaid programs. However, the interim rule could potentially affect pharmacies that provide services under a contract or arrangement with a listed facility that does participate in Medicare or Medicaid programs.

You can read the entire piece over at NCPA’s newsroom.