Today’s Covid treatment…

…is baricitinib, the arthritis drug, which “reduced hospitalized Covid-19 patients’ risk of dying by 13%,” in what’s billed as the world’s largest trial of coronavirus treatments.

Specifically, it works for people hospitalized with Covid and already on other medications. In those cases, it can reduce the chance of death even further.

Jocularity! Jocularity!

Come let your metaphorical hair down for a few hours with the Academy of Employee Pharmacists! It’s an afternoon of merriment, joviality, and — dare we say it — verve at the Scofflaw Brewing Company in Atlanta, April 23 from 2:00 to 7:00pm.

The whole time costs a mere $10, and that includes two drink tickets. You won’t find a better time for that price without breaking a few laws. And yes, student pharmacists are invited … as long as they promise to keep the hooliganism to a minimum. You know who you are.

All you need to do is register so they know how many to expect — click here to do just that.

Benzos can turn the brain against itself

Taking benzos for a long time eventually affects the brain, and not in a good way. Eventually, found German researchers, long-term use “leads to the loss of neural connections in the brain” by binding to and activating the brain’s microglia.

Instead of their normal clean-up job, those microglia start acting like over-achieving janitors, throwing out the good with the bad — in this case, they attack perfectly good synapses. End result: cognitive impairment.

Veggie tales

Eating more vegetables is good for your heart. Everyone knows that. But what if everyone was wrong? (Cue the dramatic music.)

A group of British and Chinese public health researchers decided to look into it via the health data of almost 400,000 people. What they found was … interesting.

First, “Higher intakes of raw, but not cooked, vegetables were associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk.”

But here’s the kicker. When they looked into the confounding variables — i.e., what else in the lifestyle of those those raw-vegetable-eaters might be a factor — the beneficial effect dropped by more than 80 percent.

In other words, it wasn’t the vegetables that reduced the risk, it was the overall lifestyle of people who ate more of them.

Rare disease slips into Georgia

Georgia is one of four states that experienced an outbreak of melioidosis according to a CDC report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The source? Bacteria in Better Homes and Gardens-brand aromatherapy spray (“lavender and chamomile” scent) imported from India.

The bacteria that causes melioidosis — B. pseudomallei — occurs naturally in soil and water — just rarely in the U.S. And when it comes here, it’s usually because someone travelled to a tropical country and brought it home. In these cases, it hitched a ride in the worst possible product: an indoor aerosol.

(The Georgia patient, a 12-year-old boy, died in the hospital from a combination of melioidosis and Covid-19.)

Insulin challenge

President Biden: Let’s make insulin only $35 a month.

Congress: Yeah!*

Civica: Heck, approve our biologics applications and we’ll do it for $30. Insured or not.

The company “plans to manufacture and market three of the most common forms of insulin: glargine, lispro and aspart” at the Virginia factory it’s building starting (hopefully) in 2024. It should be able to produce enough vials and pre-filled syringes for about 50 million patients per year.

* Unless drug companies ‘lobby’ us more, or it becomes too political, or people forget about this after the elections….

His brain shrank three sizes that day

Another month, another alcohol study. This one, out of the University of Pennsylvania, finds that [stirs tea leaves] even light drinking shrinks your brain.

Alcohol has never been great for the brain, but moderate drinking has been thought to be okay, or even (depending on the study) good for you. Not so, says this group. It doesn’t take much booze at all:

[N]egative associations between alcohol intake and brain macrostructure and microstructure are already apparent in individuals consuming an average of only one to two daily alcohol units. (Emphasis ours.)

And by “brain macrostructure and microstructure” they mean shrinking your gray matter and messing with the structure of your white matter. According to the press release, in fact, going from “alcohol unit” a day (i.e., half a beer) to two units is like aging your brain two years.

On the other hand…

Drinking wine with dinner cuts your risk of type 2 diabetes, according to an American Heart Association study out of Tulane, based on data of more than 300,000 adults taken from the venerable UK Biobank.

The caveats: It should only be one glass (for women) or two (for men), and it has to be with a meal. In that case, it “was associated with a 14% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared to consuming alcohol without eating food.”

Oh, and forget beer or liquor — those can raise your diabetes risk.

Shake it till you make it

Why get out and walk or run for exercise when you can just … vibrate?