Stay where you are

Everyone’s excited about the idea of permanent Daylight Saving Time — ending the twice-yearly nightmare of changing clocks backward and forward like some sort of animals.

Well, almost everyone. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine loves the idea of leaving the clocks alone, but it argues we should stick with standard time all year. Fall back and stay back.

[C]urrent evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.

One good thing: The issue hasn’t become politicized … yet.

J&J vax makes a comeback

The Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine became the red-headed stepchild of the pandemic — it just didn’t provide the protection that mRNA vaccines did.

Or did it?

The latest data seem to show that the J&J vaccine actually works — and works well. As one South African health official said, “It punches above its weight for a single-dose vaccine.”

Punches hard, according to the latest CDC data, which found that “the Johnson & Johnson vaccine appeared to be somewhat more protective against infection than the two alternatives.” Why?

The J.&J. vaccine may produce antibodies that decline more slowly than those produced by the other vaccines, some research suggests. Or those antibodies may become more sophisticated over time, through a biological phenomenon called affinity maturation.

Keep waving, dear

As the Omicron BA.2 variant starts to spread through Europe and Asia, the spectre of Yet Another Covid Wave appears like a creepy uncle in the window. Sick of it all? Then I guess I shouldn’t mention Omicron BA.4, aka, “Omicron-Omicron recombination,” huh?

There have been four confirmed sequences of the strain in South Africa, one in the US, and one in Puerto Rico through March 16. […] The real number of infections by this recombinant could be much higher, especially as Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 continue to rage.

Greedy pharmacy techs make outlandish demands — ‘better working conditions’

“Hospitals and health systems,” found a survey from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, “are experiencing severe shortages of pharmacy technicians.” And they’re trying — really, really trying — to get them to stay.

But what will that take? Conveniently, ASHP asked the techs, and the answer is shocking. Shocking.

Three-quarters of technicians who responded to the survey said higher pay would help retain technicians, nearly a third would like to see employers offer retention bonuses, and 25% desire a career ladder with clear pathways to promotion.

Because “Even with that strong job satisfaction, technicians are often frustrated with heavy workloads, inadequate staffing, and inadequate compensation.”

Better working conditions, higher pay, and a career path — crazy, right?

An argument for staying home

Ticks carrying the Heartland virus are in Georgia, bringing the once-rare disease to a hospital near you.

The lone star tick that carries the virus isn’t new, according to Emory environmental scientist Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, but the virus it’s carrying is rare … for now.

“We’re trying to get ahead of this virus by learning everything that we can about it before it potentially becomes a bigger problem.”

And to add to the thrill, similar viruses are carried by the Asian longhorned tick, which first appeared in Georgia last year.

Is that the best you can do?

Biogen has finally published the phase 3 results for aducanumab — aka Aduhelm, the Alzheimer’s treatment it originally priced at $56,000 a year … and that showed little if any effect (but still magically got (controversial) FDA approval).

This should settle things, right? Ha! Biogen published those results in a, shall we say, ‘not-exactly-first-rate journal,’ according to Endpoints News. But the kicker: The journal’s editor-in-chief “is a paid Biogen consultant and received almost $40,000 in payments from the company since 2014.”

The folate-dementia connection

It seems there’s a connection between dementia and serum folate (aka vitamin B9) deficiency, but it’s not clear which causes which.

While the headline from the BMJ reads, “Low blood folate may be linked to heightened dementia and death risks in older people,” the actual research explains that linked to doesn’t mean causes.

Sure, people with low folate “were 68% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia and nearly 3 times as likely to die from any cause,” but the American and Israeli researchers were clear that “reverse causation is likely.”

Testing folate levels is important regardless. Low levels either indicate existing dementia — or they portend a future risk.

Spray-on heart repair

What’s better than coronary bypass surgery? Coronary bypass surgery with gold nanoparticles.

Canadian medical researchers developed a spray — “a spritz of super-tiny particles of gold and peptides” — that can help repair a damaged heart* as either a stopgap before surgery or as part of a bypass operation.

[T]he custom-made nanogold modified with peptides […] was sprayed on the hearts of lab mice. The research found that the spray-on therapy not only resulted in an increase in cardiac function and heart electrical conductivity but that there was no off-target organ infiltration by the tiny gold particles.

“You spray, then you wait a couple of weeks, and the animals are doing just fine compared to the controls.”

* A literal damaged heart — not some kind of late-night Lifetime movie plot

The Long Read: An immune system in the palm of your hand

A bunch of our stories start off, “If you have a mouse with…” because studies often find treatments that work on mice (or zebrafish, or pangolins) but not on humans. Humans are different.

One solution is organs on a chip. They can be better than using critters to test drugs designed for humans. There are hearts on a chip, lungs, spleens, and even teeth — and Harvard biologists have now cracked one of the toughest nuts: They’ve created an immune system on a chip. It includes human B and T cells, and even the structures that control immune responses.

These “lymphoid follicle” chips…

…consist of different chambers that harbor “naïve” B cells and T cells, which together initiate the cascade of events that leads to a full immune response when they are exposed to a specific antigen.