UGA’s got a faster Covid test

Covid tests: They can be fast or they can be accurate. You choose.

Unless, that is, you use the the new test developed by UGA scientists (including an engineer, two physicists, and an infectious disease specialist).

As you probably guessed, it uses a localized surface plasmon resonance virus sensor that they developed — it’s based on human ACE-2 functionalized silver nanotriangle arrays. Naturally.

The point is, it’s faster than even a rapid test, but it’s much more accurate — and it can be used on any existing Covid-19 variant. They hope to package it as a $10 device that connects to a smartphone.

Hey, folks from Mercer, PCOM, and South: Wondering why all the UGA news? The folks there send it to me! I would love love love to write about happening at your schools. Please take a minute to add andrew@gphabuzz.com to your press lists, and we can make that happen!

True, but misleading

“US life expectancy continues historic decline with another drop in 2021” is the headline. And it’s probably true — thank you, Covid.

And while it’s accurate (and awful), it’s also a blip on a line; it’s what happens when 980,000 Americans die unexpectedly in two years. But it doesn’t mean that suddenly everyone will a die a year or two early. These are averages.

It’s like saying “People in the Middle Ages only lived to 35.” No. That was an average thanks to lots of infant deaths. They lived into their 70s and 80s. Ditto today: A lot of lives were cut short, but overall we’re still likely to live just as long.

So no, don’t sell your Hallmark stock because you think sales of “Happy 80th Birthday!” cards are about to collapse.

Say what?

Here’s an interesting tidbit for the virtual water cooler: Smoking tobacco is associated with hearing loss, but not smoking marijuana.

The study’s authors, out of the universities of Colorado and Mississippi, did note that “However, sole use of cannabis was relatively rare” so you have to be careful about drawing conclusions.

APhA’s hot hot hot immunization program is coming up

Sign up for “APhA’s Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery: A Certificate Program for Pharmacists” on Sunday, May 22. It’s from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm at GPhA’s World Headquarters in Sandy Springs.

Note: This is always a popular course, so the sooner you sign up the lower your chance of being left out and laughed at behind your back.

Get to GPhA.org/immunization for the details and to register. Now!

The kisspeptin of life

You might think of kisspeptin as one of those hormones involved in puberty and reproduction — or maybe “that hormone named after Hershey’s Kisses.” And you’d be right.

But get this: Kisspeptin might also protect people from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Kisspeptin (Rutgers researchers found, binds to a protein in the liver called KISS1R, and it prevented mice on a Western diet from developing NAFLD, including steatohepatitis and fibrosis.

So now the trick will be turning this discovery — the kisspeptin receptor signaling pathway — into an actual therapy for fatty liver.

Smell you … sooner?

Loss of smell is one of the hallmarks of Covid-19, and one of the most annoying. But there may be help in the form of camostat mesylate, the med usually used to treat pancreatitis.

It was already being looked at as a treatment for Covid (along with every other drug on the planet). No joy. But a Yale team testing it found that, while it didn’t affect the Covid viral load, it did give some Covid sufferers their sense of smell back.

That was enough for Yale to pull out everyone’s favorite descriptor: “If the drug were to be approved for this purpose, the doctors believe it could be a game-changer.”

ICYMI: Aduhelm’s out (mostly)

Medicare finalized its decision — it won’t cover Biogen’s super-expensive (and mostly ineffective) Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, except for patients in clinical trials. But it did say it would cover certain unapproved drugs that demonstrate a clinical benefit … in certain cases.

Good news: Medicare had raised its premiums, expecting to have to pay for Aduhelm. Now it may lower them.

Elsewhere: California’s oopsie

Public-private partnerships — hiring a private company to do public work — can be great. Unless, perhaps, the private company you hire gets bought by one you wouldn’t have hired. “California Handed Its Medicaid Drug Program to One Company. Then Came a Corporate Takeover.”

The Long Read: Cancer Vaccines edition

Not long ago, the idea of a vaccine against cancer would have seemed ludicrous. Now, not so much — think HPV. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Check out “New generation of cancer-preventing vaccines could wipe out tumors before they form.” Spoiler: They’re not just in the lab; human trials are happening.