Always read the fine print

You may have read about the new gun safety bill passed by Congress and signed by the President. But did you know that someone slipped in a section to help PBMs?

Yep, toward the end of the gun safety bill is a section that has nothing to do with guns or safety. It simply extends the PBMs’ protection from anti-kickback rules for another year.

Congress, for whatever reason (cough—money?—cough) shielded PBMs from the Federal Anti-kickback Statute until 2026, so PBMs could continue to accept bribes rebates from drug makers to include their products in formularies.

But now someone has quietly extended that until 2027.

The virus my friend, is blowin’ in the wind….

Scottish researchers had an idea: Using data from the Met Office (the UK’s version of the National Weather Service), they tracked wind direction vs Covid cases after a hotspot was recorded.

And what did they find? An “Increase in COVID-19 downwind following a wind change.”

Yay.

Universal vaccines

For flu

The National Institutes of Health is beginning the first human trials of a potential universal flu vaccine. It worked gangbusters in mice (we’re talking 100 percent effective against death from six strains) as both an injection and a nasal spray.

The novel vaccine has been dubbed BPL-1357 and is a multivalent, whole-virus vaccine containing inactivated copies of four particular strains of influenza: H1N9, H3N8, H5N1, and H7N3. The viruses have been inactivated using a chemical known as beta-propiolactone (BPL).

For coronaviruses

Once upon a time, “coronavirus” didn’t mean “Covid-19” — there are other coronaviruses out there. Pfizer and BioNTech didn’t forget. They’re preparing human trials of vaccines against a wide variety of coronaviruses.

That’s vaccines, plural.

[They] include T-cell-enhancing shots, designed to primarily protect against severe disease if the virus becomes more dangerous, and pan-coronavirus shots that protect against the broader family of viruses and its mutations.

Please make a note of this

Walgreens now identifies as AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy.

Not only will this put it higher in alphabetical lists, it cements the company’s relationship with the National Retail Store Sign-Changer’s Union.

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind….

Noroviruses aren’t just spread through fecal matter. It turns out (NIH scientists found) that they can infect the salivary glands — of mice, at least — and be spread through saliva.

The transmission of these so-called enteric viruses through saliva suggests that coughing, talking, sneezing, sharing food and utensils, and even kissing all have the potential for spreading the viruses. The new findings still need to be confirmed in human studies.

Monoxide to the gut

Sure, carbon monoxide can kill you if you inhale it, but if it doesn’t kill you it can make your stronger. Specifically, it can reduce inflammation (and help tissues regenerate) in the digestive tract.

But how do you get a gas into the gut? Two words: Pop Rocks. Yes, the fizzy candy. MIT researchers “came up with the idea of incorporating the gas into a foam, much the way that chefs use carbon dioxide to create foams infused with fruits, vegetables, or other flavors.”

They were able to control the dose and the delivery rate, and deliver the gas so it could reach the lower GI tract and even the liver, where (in mice) it “greatly reduce[d] the amount of inflammation and tissue damage seen there.”

Another potential Alzheimer’s breakthrough

An antidepressant (imipramine) and an antipsychotic (olanzapine) seem to have a significant effect on people with Alzheimer’s. Researchers at the University of Colorado were looking to target something other than amyloid-beta and tau buildups. They focused on the the APOE4 protein, which increases Alzheimer’s risk.

Both imipramine and olanzapine “block the catalytic effect of APOE4 on the formation of amyloids in the brain,” so they hoped their retrospective study would find some effect. It turned out to be a lot stronger than they expected.

“The people who received these drugs developed better cognition and actually improved in their clinical diagnosis. Compared to those who did not take these drugs, they reverted from Alzheimer’s disease to mild cognitive impairment or from mild cognitive impairment to normal.”

Next up: rodent tests and possibly human trials.

Elmo doesn’t know APA citation style

Fresh off his battle with Big Bird, United States Senator Ted Cruz is now picking a fight with … Elmo. The issue: Elmo urged that kids be vaccinated against Covid, but didn’t cite the scientific evidence in his tweet.