Lighting up blood sugar

Not long ago we told you about an app that can test blood oxygen level with a cell phone.

How ’bout this: Researchers at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University have developed a way to test blood sugar with one, and it’s 90% accurate. Called GlucoCheck, it uses light shone through either the ear or finger, which a camera captures and a computer (e.g., one in a phone) analyzes.

It’s still in development, but they’ve filed a patent and now plan to expand testing on people with different skin colors. Meanwhile, they’re also working on an app that will work with Amazon’s Alexa, presumably so it can automatically order you Diabetes for Dummies.

Bad Biogen! No cookie!

Drug maker Biogen is paying $900 million to the US and several states to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit that said the company was paying kickbacks to prescribers in the form of lavish speaking and consulting arrangements.

Interestingly, the government didn’t actually do anything; the payment is a result of a whistleblower lawsuit. The feds just stood on the sidelines, clearing their throats menacingly.

Biogen supposedly paid doctors for services that had no legitimate business purpose and no demand from doctors, and were unlikely to be conducted. For example, he [the whistleblower] claimed that Biogen paid “hundreds of customers” and HCPs [healthcare professionals] for consulting advice on topics that the company did not need, never intended to use, could not use, or for which Biogen already had all the information it required.

(Actually, the whistleblower didn’t just claim those things. He had recorded conversations to back him up.) The company denied the allegations, of course … while writing a $900 million check.

Don’t forget to sign!

Take a moment to sign our Change.org petition!

Ask the Defense Health Agency to amend its current PBM contract immediately so Tricare families’ don’t lose access to their trusted pharmacists, and then prove that the estimated “cost savings” is worth the risk to Tricare patients. Click below or go to GPhA.org/StopESI!

Today’s “Alcohol good or bad?” answer

The latest study says … [chicken pecks on chart] … not drinking at all increases your risk of dementia.

Using data from almost 25,000 people over 60 (from 15 epidemiological cohort studies), Australian researchers concluded:

Abstinence from alcohol appears to be associated with an increased risk for all-cause dementia. Among current drinkers, there appears to be no consistent evidence to suggest that the amount of alcohol consumed in later life is associated with dementia risk.

Take that, teetotalers!

A supplement that stops suicide

One simple supplement for people dealing with severe depression could save their lives: folic acid.

[P]atients who filled prescriptions for folic acid, also known as vitamin B9, experienced a 44% reduction in suicidal events (suicide attempts and intentional self-harm).

University of Chicago researchers first thought folic acid appearing in their subjects’ blood was a result of their taking it during pregnancy. “So we just did a quick analysis to restrict it to men. But we saw exactly the same effect in men.”

Recommendation: People at risk for suicide should start taking folic acid supplements, because “the longer a person took folic acid, the lower their risk of suicide attempt tended to be.”

Now you tell me

Fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs) — replacing a person’s gut biome with that of a healthy person to treat a C. difficile infection — is pretty effective, although a bit gross. But now University of Minnesota researchers say that patients can avoid the, er, back-room deal of a colonoscopy by simply taking a capsule.

The capsule isn’t even disgusting; it only contains the necessary microbes (freeze-dried) to fix the biome. And the U of M folks’ study found “There was no difference in the one-month or two-month cure rate between capsule and colonoscopic FMT.”

“The public need not be alarmed”

An “obscure family of viruses” that kills monkeys the way Ebola does (i.e., horrifically) is “is ‘poised for spillover’ to humans” according to the glass-half-empty folks at the University of Colorado.

“This animal virus has figured out how to gain access to human cells, multiply itself, and escape some of the important immune mechanisms we would expect to protect us from an animal virus. That’s pretty rare.”

No cases have been reported, and they aren’t sure what would have to happen for it to make the jump. But it could happen, and it’s been a week since we had a “New Virus Will Kill Us All” news story. “The authors stress that another pandemic is not imminent, and the public need not be alarmed.”