Someone has some ’splainin’ to do

Facts:

• The past 15 years of Alzheimer’s research has been focused on the build-up of amyloid beta plaque as the cause of the disease.
• This is all based on a single 2006 paper.
• Billions of dollars have been funneled into that approach, and others have been sidelined.
• Not a single treatment targeting those plaques has worked.
• Questions are now arising about the validity of that paper’s data.

A six-month investigation by Charles Piller, an award-winning reporter for Science magazine, finds that key research published in 2006 may have included fabricated data.

Read on.

New vaccine gets the full thumbs-up

The CDC has officially approved Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine — it’s good enough to be a “primary series option for adults ages 18 years and older.” So if people are afraid of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines — you know, the ones that alter your DNA to be susceptible to the 5G signals that help target the Jewish Space Lasers and force you to eat processed meat — this is an option.

Actually legit studies (we checked the funding sources)

Cocoa is safe for blood pressure

Cocoa (well, the flavanols in it) can lower blood pressure and reduce arterial stiffness. That’s actually been know for a while. The new news: It only does that when BP is high or arteries are stiff, according to British researchers. That means there’s little risk of patients’ BP going too low after sneaking into the Hershey factory.

Green tea for metabolic syndrome

Taking green tea extract for just four weeks* can not only reduce blood sugar levels, it can also improve reduce GI inflammation and — perhaps most importantly, say the Ohio State nutrition researchers who ran the study — reduce the chance of “leaky gut.”

“What this tells us is that within one month we’re able to lower blood glucose in both people with metabolic syndrome and healthy people, and the lowering of blood glucose appears to be related to decreasing leaky gut and decreasing gut inflammation — regardless of health status.”

* The equivalent of five cups a day.

Pharmacists caught in the crosshairs of poorly written laws

Pro tip: If you’re going to outlaw abortion, don’t write the law in a knee-jerk way. Otherwise you end up putting pharmacists and other providers in a tricky spot, as many medications have multiple uses.

Much of the current focus is on methotrexate, an immunosuppressant used to treat some cancers and inflammatory diseases that also can cause miscarriages and is used to treat ectopic pregnancies.

It’s part of a cohort of drugs that might be classified as “abortion-inducing” by states that have banned abortion, leading to uncertainty about other uses.

And then you get into drugs like isotretinoin (aka Accutane), which “is only prescribed if patients pledge to be on two forms of birth control through a federal database, and patients must present negative pregnancy tests for refills.”

Bros gonna bro

What do you know if you’ve been convicted of fraud and banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life? If you’re Martin Shkreli (former CEO of Turing Pharma), you launch a new company called “Druglike” that “will be used to power early-stage drug discovery projects.”

But don’t worry, he’s not violating his parole. Why, the company even said it’s “not engaged in pharmaceutical research or drug development.” So that settles that.

* It uses “a novel blockchain consensus mechanism“ to “disrupt the current in silico computational chemistry software industry.”

Risky business

Out of bed you daisy head

Frequent napping, say Chinese researchers, could lead to cardiovascular problems. It “was associated with a 12% higher risk of developing high blood pressure and a 24% high risk of having a stroke compared to never napping.”

So, squeeze, Rabban. Squeeze hard.

Having a weak handgrip, Austrian researchers say, is “a powerful predictor of mortality.”

Captain Obvious knows math is hard

“Each Opioid Prescription Refill Increases Risk of Family Members’ Misuse”.

Bonus! Being cut open can apparently be painful: “Patients who undergo surgery are three times more likely to get an opioid prescription than those who do not have surgery.”

The Long Read: Enough Blame to Go Around edition

Blaming the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma for their role in the opioid crisis is a starting point. A history professor — and self-described “historian of addictive pharmaceuticals” explains, though, that it “isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems.”

Drugmakers script or influence the professional guidelines that encourage prescribing. They underwrite professional organizations and pay medical experts to spread the word. They fund and channel patient advocacy organizations into supporting the medicines they manufacture.

And then they lobby for legislation, regulations and anything else that can gin up more demand for their drugs.

Ask anyone who’s been on a flight to Orlando

Some headlines stand on their own: “Children really are the best contraception”.