Link between high blood pressure and diabetes

High blood pressure and diabetes go together like … like love and marriage, Scylla and Charybdis, chocolate and more chocolate.

But why? Calling it a “long-standing enigma,” British and Kiwi scientists (with help from Brazil, Germany, Lithuania, and Serbia) say they’ve solved the puzzle.

The very very short version: “A small protein cell glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) couples the body’s control of blood sugar and blood pressure,” which opens the door to treating both diabetes and obesity with one drug.

B lowers BP

When you’re dealing with drug-resistant hypertension, a (possibly) surprising tool in the toolbox might be B vitamins. It comes down to elevated homocysteine, which the researchers from the universities of Maine and Arkansas conclude is not only safe to lower, but a darned good idea. And B vitamins have the very knack.

“[S]upplementation with sufficient nondietary-sourced vitamins B2 (riboflavin), B6, folate, and B12,” they say, “can safely lower blood pressures as much as 6 to 13 mmHg.”

Congrats — and thanks for tooting our horn!

Shout-out to Mercer student pharmacist Christina Green — featured in the Pharmacists Beyond Borders newsletter after she was named a GPhA Gold Level President’s Club member.

She loves that the association involves all facets of pharmacy, from pharmacists to techs to students, in all practice settings. “It’s bigger than I initially thought,” Green said.

Fighting glioblastomas, 2022-style

Pro tip: If you want to attack glioblastomas with immune therapy, you should first blast them with radiation. Not just because it sounds really cool, but because (Mass General researchers found) short bursts of radiation “dramatically enhanced the efficiency of targeting glioblastomas with natural nanoparticle-based immunotherapy.”

This assumes, of course, that you’re using nanoparticle-based immunotherapy, like most of the cool kids.

Vaccine hesitancy

The next time someone says they’re against vaccines, won’t wear a mask, or refuse to take any kind of Covid precaution, maybe you should ask, “Who hurt you?”

People who experienced childhood trauma are more likely to feel unfairly restricted by government anti-Covid measures, to reject Covid vaccination and to support ending masking and social distancing mandates.

What do they mean by “trauma”?

[C]hildren who don’t feel close to their caregivers […] or whose caregivers use spanking or other forms of corporal punishment for discipline….

So there you have it — there might be more going on in anti-vax minds than you realize.

Helping those alcoholic monkeys

We all know it’s not easy keeping alcoholic monkeys on the wagon. But now there might be a solution: a hormone — fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21).

Vervet monkeys prefer to drink alcohol to water, unless, that is, they’re given some FGF21, in this case by University of Iowa neuroscientist/pharmacologists. After drinking the FGF21, the monkeys cut back on the booze by half. (When the treatment stopped, it took less than a month for them to be back to the bottle, though.)

Weirdness: FGF21 had the same effect on mice, and also lowered their sugar intake.

As usual, more research is required, but “FGF21 analogues may provide a potential treatment option against alcohol-use disorder and related diagnosis.”

Lose weight, get smart?

“Greater body fat” says a McMaster University study, is “found to be a risk factor for reduced cognitive function.”

The mystery, though: Being fat lowered patients’ cognitive scores even after adjusting for diabetes, hypertension, and even vascular brain injury.” The researchers don’t know why extra weight means lesser brain power. This “should prompt researchers to investigate which other pathways may link excess fat to reduced cognitive function.”

Spending on the pain

The NFL, whose former (and current) players are often in lifelong pain, announced that it is spending a whole one… million… dollars… to see if cannabis might help ease that pain.

The money will be split between research programs at UC San Diego and Canada’s University of Regina, and will, I assume, come out of the league’s 2023 week 3 “Shoelaces for a Cause” budget.

The Long Read: What’s Behind the Mask edition

Those N95 masks aren’t just a special kind of paper. There’s all sorts of science involved. Wired has the details with “The Physics of the N95 Face Mask.”