A depressing gut microbe

Depression is usually caused by neurochemical issues — think serotonin. But a new study found that in some cases is might come from … gut bacteria. (Seriously, is there anything the gut biome isn’t responsible for?)

This comes out of Finland, where researchers were looking for connections between chronic disease and the microbiome. They found two gut bacteria that “seemed to play a causal role” in depression; and one, Morganella, seemed to be pretty direct: The more of the bacteria in the gut, the more likely the patient developed depression.

Now what?

The “holy grail” is to identify a missing microbe that could be given as supplement […] But it’s less clear how Morganella could be eliminated from the gut to relieve symptoms. “That’s a bit more challenging.”

Captain Obvious ties a string around his finger

“Smartphone reminders can improve memory for older adults with dementia.” And if you think that there’s more to it — that using reminders actually improves their ‘wetware’ memory — you’d be wrong.

Money quote:

“We were successfully able to train the adults to use the technology, and also the adults that used the personal assistants the most had the best memory performance.”

When time is of the essence

When a patient is diagnosed with HIV infection, the quicker they start antiretroviral therapy the better. But sometimes there’s a big gap between diagnosis and when therapy starts.

Who can make a difference? You guessed it: Pharmacists who are on the care team and meet with patients from the beginning.

Pharmacy Practice News has two cases where patient care was improved big-time simply by bringing in, you know, the medication experts:

[P]harmacists now serve important clinical functions, such as identifying candidates for rapid [antiretroviral therapy], evaluating symptoms, performing physical exams, and assessing risk for treatment-related adverse events and opportunistic infections. Pharmacists also evaluate a patient’s readiness to start treatment, provide counseling and education, and address potential psychosocial barriers to adherence.

Long Covid risk

Answering a common question about breakthrough infections, Israeli researchers report that “People who’ve both been vaccinated and had COVID-19 are less likely to report fatigue and other health problems than unvaccinated people.”

And if you do get it?

Here’s one way to treat the “cognitive deficits” of long Covid: Electricity! German researchers thought the issue might be blood flow in the eyes and brain, so they gave patients a bit of “microcurrent stimulation” for 10-13 days: what they call “non-invasive brain stimulation” or NIBS.

And what d’ya know, “In both patients NIBS markedly improved cognition and partially reversed visual field loss within three to four days.”

The investigators propose that hypometabolic neurons are the probable biological cause of the neurological deficits manifested as long-COVID symptoms, and that NIBS reactivates these “silent” neurons by reoxygenation, which is the presumed basis of recovery.

What if you’re afraid of German doctors and electricity?

Keep in mind that this is based on just two case studies: Diphenhydramine (aka, Benadryl) seems to help with long Covid, according to researchers at UC Irvine.

Both took over-the-counter antihistamines to treat other conditions […] and experienced improved cognition and much less fatigue the next morning.

In fact, the patients reported that those bennies helped with other symptoms, including “exercise intolerance, chest pain, headaches, a rash and bruising,” and “abdominal pain, as well as the rashes and lesions known as ‘COVID toes’.”

Cannabis and platelets

We’re still learning all the interesting effects marijuana has on health (now that it’s easier to do studies). The latest: THC seems to interfere with platelets.

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University found this after feeding rhesus macaques THC cookies (!) every morning for months.

The research team compared blood samples of the animals before and after the trial and found that THC reduced platelet aggregation […] and lowered production of thromboxane, a lipid involved in clotting. However, THC did not affect clotting times.

It’s not a huge issue for day-to-day life, but, they point out, it’s worth noting for patients who are pregnant or about to undergo surgery.

Keep away from the loud, coughing kid

As Omicron surges, so are reported cases of croup in kids. But it’s not the kind caused by parainfluenza — this is caused by Covid-19, because Omicron just loves the upper airway.

The Long (fun) Read: What Happened to Bran? edition

For a long time, everyone knew how important it was to eat bran. Lots of bran. These days, not so much because “it was mostly a clear-cut case of the supposed cure being worse than the disease.”