A marker for diabetes (and cancer)

Here’s a weird one: People who have a high level of the protein prostasin in their blood are significantly more likely to have diabetes. Why? The Swedish and Chinese researchers who discovered the connection aren’t sure. Is it somehow helping cause the diabetes? Is it a marker for a different cause?

Regardless, “those with the highest levels of prostasin […] were almost twice as likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest levels.”

But wait, there’s more. Those who also had a high level of blood sugar (perhaps the were already diabetic) were at much higher risk of dying from cancer.

For every doubling in prostasin concentration, the risk of cancer death rose by 24% in those without high blood sugar, and by 139% in those with high blood sugar.

The diabetes-cancer connection was already known, but this might give insight into the mechanism. And it certainly makes for a blood test to pay attention to.

What else has Covid?

Wondering which animals around the world have been infected with Covid-19? There’s now an interactive dashboard for that.

After fentanyl

As adding fentanyl to street drugs becomes passé, the latest deadly additive is … xylazine. Yeah, the animal tranquilizer is showing up (ironically) as an additive to fentanyl and cocaine.

It started being reported in Puerto Rico, Philly, and now Massachusetts (in anywhere from 28 to 90% of the drugs tested — but we all know it won’t be long before it’s everywhere. The danger is not that someone might OD on xylazine, but that, as a sedative, it will make an opioid overdose worse by slowing the heart.

There’s a lot of speculation about how and why xylazine is on the rise. It may be added to fentanyl or heroin to help extend the effects of an opioid high. Dealers also may be using this relatively inexpensive and easy-to-order sedative because of supply chain gaps with other drugs.

Oh, yeah, and it’s not easily detectable with a test strip (like fentanyl) nor affected by naloxone.

mRNA for monkeypox

Moderna says it’s considering turning its mRNA-vaccine muscle toward making monkeypox vaccines. It depends, of course, on whether cases continue to rise and spread and, presumably whether those deep government pockets will be where the payment comes from.

“Our platform is pretty well established and our ability to rapidly scale has been demonstrated. If we were to go after a monkeypox clinical development program, it would be to very quickly progress toward an approvable set of endpoints in a clinical study.”

But can the mRNA tech handle that large monkeypox viral protein? Perhaps we’ll find out.

The addiction drugs they can’t get

People who have an opioid-abuse problem aren’t getting the meds they need to quit. In fact, say NYU researchers, “Almost 90 Percent of People with Opioid Use Disorder [are] Not Receiving Lifesaving Medication.”

Part of the problem is obvious: More than 70% of residential treatment programs don’t offer methadone, buprenorphine, or extended-release naltrexone — drugs that can cut (or potentially eliminate) half or more of overdoses while helping people quit.

“We need to rethink how treatment for opioid use disorder is delivered, eliminate stigma, make it easier for people to enter and remain in treatment, as well as ensure that all treatment programs provide and encourage use of evidence-based medications that we know save lives.”

Quickie Covid data

The most reliable info to date on long Covid: 1 in 8 people infected end up with it. That’s based on a Dutch study of more than 76,000 people and 23 symptoms that are officially (or semi-officially) associated with persistent symptoms.

What makes this study different is that the Dutchies took into account that some of these symptoms existed before Covid infection, so they can’t really be attributed to long Covid. (“Symptoms such as fatigue and headaches might be worsened during the pandemic also in people without Covid-19, for example.”)

Killing bacteria

A new kind of germ killer

There are lots of ways to try to tackle the issue of antibiotic resistance including phages (see below) and augmenting or repurposing old drugs. But Aussie researchers have an new idea: proteins.

Specifically, they’re looking at guanylate-binding proteins, which the human immune system uses as one of its weapons to kill bacteria. By themselves or combined with antibiotics, GBPs could be — after much more research of course — another new weapon. Resistance may eventually be futile after all.

“We are now finding more and more GBPs that can kill different types of drug-resistant bacteria. This includes bacteria that can cause meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis. […] The ultimate goal is to use these proteins to eliminate meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis entirely.”

You can’t fight the phage cocktail

Bacteriophages — bacteria-killing viruses — are one of the most promising tools against drug-resistant germs. But once you introduce them to kill the bacteria, you start an arms race between the good viruses and the bad bacteria.

Israeli and German microbiome researchers have a possible solution, and it almost seems obvious: One phage good? More phages better! Looking to fight gut inflammation, they’re “using a cocktail of phages that use multiple lines of attack against Klebsiella pneumonia bacteria, preventing them from evolving resistance to the mixture.”

And because phages target a single bacteria (unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics) this cocktail doesn’t affect anything else in the gut. The downside? Phages have to be found, and it took them five years (“a a painstaking fishing expedition”) to isolate phages that attack K. pneumonia.

A tiny change to drug pricing looms

Congress is set to pass the “Inflation Reduction Act” which would allow Medicare to negotiate the prices of [insert drumroll] a whopping 10 drugs … in 2026. That would go up to a staggering* 20 drugs by 2029. (For comparison, the rest of the world can negotiate the prices of every drug.)

The pharmaceutical industry is against the bill, of course, threatening to stop trying so hard to develop new drugs if their executives and shareholders face lower paychecks.

* This is sarcasm.