FDA pushing the envelope

The FDA is considering requiring opioid prescriptions (outpatient ones) to come with “prepaid mail-back envelopes” for patients to return any unneeded meds. The idea is that pharmacists would provide the envelope and educate the patient, “Don’t give the leftovers to Cousin Chuck.”

Presumably it will be easier for patients to find this envelope several days or weeks later, rather than have to locate one of those elusive toilets. And it’s apparently safe to send special ‘unneeded medication’ envelopes through the postal system. (To be fair, it would prevent them from entering the sewage system.)

Swapping salts

A cost-effective way to prevent strokes in patients with hypertension: Have them use a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride instead.

After an average of almost five years years, they found that “[R]eplacing regular salt with salt substitute reduced the risk of stroke by 14%” and people using the substitute had an average of “0.054 more quality-adjusted life years” — that’s about 20 days. It also cost less.

So … spend less, lower your risk of heart attack or stroke, and get 20 extra good days every five years. Sounds like a win.

Conveniently, Morton makes just such a product.

Hepatitis reaches alert status

The other day we told you about a Mysterious Hepatitis Outbreak among kids in Europe and Alabama. Now there are cases in North Carolina, and the CDC has officially issued an alert.

They cause still seems to be an adenovirus, but at the moment it’s still “hepatitis of unknown origin.”

Upon investigation, a review of hospital records identified four additional cases, all of whom had liver injury and adenovirus infection; laboratory tests identified that some of these children had adenovirus type 41, which more commonly causes pediatric acute gastroenteritis. No known epidemiological link or common exposures were found among these children.

You got your Covid shot in my flu vaccine!

Novavax has a Covid-19 vaccine (authorized in 40 countries). It also has a flu vaccine (in stage 3 trials). So why not combine the two like a giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?

That’s just what the company did, and the combo vaccine got a thumbs up after its first clinical trial. A phase 2 trial should begin later this year “aimed toward optimizing the right dose for the Covid and flu antigens,” and hopefully a phase 3 trial by the 2023 flu season.

Speaking of the vaccine…

How long does a Covid vaccination last? The latest study comes out of Kaiser Permanente in California, and this time the Wheel of Ever-Changing Studies says … the Pfizer vaccine (“BNT162b2”), including a booster, is great for three months.

And after that? Well, then it dropped to just about 53% effective against ER visits and hospitalization. (That’s versus the omicron variant; it’s a bit better against Delta.)

What does that mean? Boosters!

In the future, additional doses of current, adapted, or novel Covid-19 vaccines might be needed to maintain high protection against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and maintain sufficient vaccine-induced pressure on future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks.

Either that or wait for a different study to come out….

Killing us

Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death for Americans in 2021 — just as it was in 2020. Heart disease, as usual, topped the list, with cancer at #2. (“Unintentional injuries” and strokes were numbers 4 and 5, if you’re curious; unintentional injuries is mostly overdose deaths.)

Covid killed about 460,000 Americans in 2021, on top of the 351,000 it killed the year before.

Your weekend non-pharma science story

Dutch researchers at the University of Amsterdam are working hard to design the perfect piece of chocolate. They can’t compete with the Swiss on ingredients, so they’re angling to corner the “mouthfeel” angle..