Enemy of my enemy

What happens if you get both Covid and the flu? Duke University researchers decided to find out. Although the temptation must have been to use UNC fans, they instead turned to golden hamsters.

Their interesting finding: The influenza A virus “interferes with SARS-CoV-2 replication in the lung, even more than 1 week after IAV clearance.”

So yep, the flu virus prevents the Covid virus from replicating. But the reverse isn’t true — the flu virus “exhibited robust replication” with or without SARS-CoV-2.

Takeaway: There’s something about the flu virus that fights Covid. And thus — wait for it — more research is needed.

So, about BA.5…

The Omicron variant (which oughta get its own Greek letter, if you ask me) now accounts for about 65 percent of U.S. cases, according to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

Oooookay, you say, that’s nice.

Here’s the thing: It can “at least partially sidestep some of the immunity people may have from prior infections and vaccinations.”

“Not only is it more infectious, but your prior immunity doesn’t count for as much as it used to. And that means that the old saw that, ‘I just had Covid a month ago, and so I have Covid immunity superpowers, I’m not going to get it again’ — that no longer holds.”

Oh, and possibly the most annoying part: It has a reproduction number of 18.6 (compared to R 3.3 for the original strain), meaning one person infects an average of 18.6 others. That number is higher than measles (18.0) which until now was the world’s most virulent virus. Yay!

ADHD adherence

What are four reasons adult ADHD patients may not take their meds? The long version is published in ADDitude magazine, but here’s the short-and-sweet guide:

1. They don’t understand why they’ve been prescribed it. (Especially true when “the motivation to start medication doesn’t come from the patient, but from another adult like a spouse or employer.”
2. They don’t think it works because the dose is too low. “Ask the patient to rate the medication on a scale from one to ten. […] Anything below a six usually means that it’s time to try a different medication or dose.”
3. They have ADHD — they simply forget to take it!
4. “Unsupportive Clinician Attitudes.” ADHD meds can be maintenance meds, but not every prescriber realizes that.

So put it in while you’re cooking

“Higher frequency of adding salt to foods is associated with a higher hazard of all-cause premature mortality and lower life expectancy.”

Kiss the cook … after he eats

When you put men in the sun, they eat more. No, really.

An international group of researchers “were looking into the ways that sunlight can lead to skin cancer in mice when they noticed that the male mice seemed to grow hungrier when exposed to UV light.”

So naturally they turned to humans — and what d’ya know? They discovered “that exposure to more sunlight over the summer leads to an increase in eating — but only in men, who “consumed approximately 15% more calories during the summer.”

Why? It’s all about the ghrelin, the “hunger hormone,” which they found is produced when guys are exposed to UV radiation. Estrogen, though, interferes with the UV-to-ghrelin reaction, so sunlight doesn’t affect women.

Podcast of the week

The thymus (not the thyroid) doesn’t get a lot of press. But when you hear exactly how it trains the immune system to know “self” from “non-self” — and how close science is to making anti-rejection drugs obsolete in organ transplants — you’ll have newfound respect.

Check out RadioLab’s episode “My Thymus, Myself” from your favorite podcast app.

This is your brain on video games

People who play video games* have more efficient decision-making skills — at least in terms of motor reflexes — than non-players. And it shows in their brains.

That’s what Georgia State researchers found after an (admittedly small) study that used both observation (how fast do they react) and fMRI imaging to see what was up in their brains.

The study also notes there was no trade-off between speed and accuracy of response — the video game players were better on both measures. “This lack of speed-accuracy trade-off would indicate video game playing as a good candidate for cognitive training as it pertains to decision-making,”

* Think Call of Duty, not Minecraft