Preventing long Covid?

One potential culprit for long Covid — symptoms lasting for months after the disease is done — is (are) microscopic blood clots. So the Brits are looking into whether blood thinners might protect people from getting long Covid in first place, or treat those who are dealing with.

“There needs to be more dedicated studies looking at the efficacy of anticoagulants [for long Covid], just like how we did with [treatments for] the acute unwell patients.”

The flu shot and Alzheimer’s

Vaccination twist: Getting the flu vaccine appears to cut your risk of acquiring Alzheimer’s by 40% over the next four years. And the more years you get the vaccine, the better the protection. “[T]he rate of developing Alzheimer’s was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year.”

During four-year follow-up appointments, about 5.1% of flu-vaccinated patients were found to have developed Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, 8.5% of non-vaccinated patients had developed Alzheimer’s disease during follow-up.

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center tracked the health records of almost 2 million people to figure this out, although they don’t know why it’s the case. In fact, they don’t think it’s about the flu part of the flu vaccine — they’ve found evidence that other shots produce the same effect.

Money quote: “Clearly, we have more to learn about how the immune system worsens or improves outcomes in this disease.”

The mice are alright

If you’ve been worried about how your mouse friends might be handling the latest Covid surge, we’ve got good news.

Georgia State University biologists found that mice who caught the omicron variant got less sick, had half as many deaths, and lived longer than those exposed to the alpha, beta, or delta variants — despite having far more mutations.

Six months to quit smoking

If someone is discharged from the hospital and told to quit smoking, a ‘quit smoking’ hotline doesn’t work as well as a program run by a health system that that combines medication and therapy.

Hopefully, that’s not much of a surprise.

But an interesting tidbit that researchers at Mass General Hospital found: The advantage lasts about six months. Thus, they suggest, three-month smoking-cessation programs should become six-month programs to do the most good.

Monkeypox updates

It’s evolving faster than a 16-year-old’s Pokémon collection

There was a monkeypox outbreak a few years ago (2018–19), but the strain going around today is different — a lot different, virus-wise. Depending on the headline you choose, it “may have undergone ‘accelerated evolution’,” or it “Has Mutated at an Unprecedented Rate.”

In all, the virus carries 50 new mutations not seen in previous strains detected from 2018 to 2019 […]. Scientists usually don’t expect viruses like monkeypox to gain more than one or two mutations each year.

If this was a cheesy sci-fi movie, you might yell at the screen, “That’s not how it works!” Apparently, you’d be wrong.

… and there’s probably a lot more out there

The U.S. does a lot of things right (national parks, Hollywood, free ice in restaurants), but one place we’re always playing catch up seem to be wide-scale healthcare. It’s no different with monkeypox: Lack of testing (who expected this‽) means the number of actual cases is probably a lot higher than the number of reported cases.

“We have no concept of the scale of the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S.,” says biologist Joseph Osmundson at New York University.

One big problem: “[T]he testing system set up by the CDC stopped functioning well, because it actually deters doctors from ordering a monkeypox test.”

Gut bacteria vs salt

Let’s say you love salt. But you also love your kidneys and your (low) blood pressure. Can you have your potato chips and eat them too?

Maybe, say researchers from Augusta University — if you’re a rat. Particularly a female rat. They found that the gut bacteria of rats given inulin supplements (a prebiotic fiber found in artichokes, chicory root, and onions) fermented the fiber in their large intestines. For whatever reason*, that fermentation protected the rats’ from the effects of salt.

Female rats on the inulin diet had lower blood pressure than their counterparts fed non-fermenting fiber. Though male rats did not show this same reduction in blood pressure, both sexes had less protein in their urine and damage to their kidneys than controls.

* More studies are needed.

Covid booster news

Pfizer has joined Moderna in announcing an updated Covid-19 booster that it says is more effective against Omicron. In Pfizer/BioNTech’s case, it’s two boosters: One targets just the omicron variant, one is an original vaccine with Omicron protection added. (Both work well, says the company.)

The question is, will the updated vaccines offer more than the six months protection the current ones provide?

Stay tuned, as health officials are considering what to recommend for the fall back-to-incubator season.