The eyes might soon have it

Drug-delivery eye lenses (from SpyGlass Pharma) have passed their first human test. They were able to deliver bimatoprost to treat glaucoma, resulting in “a 45% reduction in intraocular pressure.”

These are intraocular lenses — the kind that are implanted to replace the eyes’ natural lenses, usually to correct vision. But natural lenses also don’t deliver drugs, so take a back seat there, Mother Nature.

Super cool: They deliver the drug for years, eliminating the need for eye drops. “SpyGlass envisages physicians implanting the device during routine cataract surgery.”

For your pregnant patients

Women in a family way who have severe preeclampsia will do well to take extended-release nifedipine daily — that’s from new research out of an Ohio State University and released by the good folks at the American Heart Association.

Women treated with the medicine were less likely to experience dangerously high blood pressure that would require treatment with fast-acting medicines.

Can we make it? Yes we can!

We learned in 2020 that the US relies a bit too much on foreign manufacturers for some of our essential meds and ingredients. We need to make more, here.

And it turns out we can — and not in a “We’re America!” way. We actually have a ton of unused capacity.

The folks at Washington University in St. Louis wanted to see exactly how much we could ramp up production if push came to shove, so they looked at 37 generic pharmaceutical manufacturing sites.

They found the sites are producing at just half of their production capacity annually, with an aggregate excess capacity of nearly 50%.
[…]

If the sites got up and running, nearly 30 billion additional doses of essential and critical medicines could be produced in the U.S. without the expense and effort of building new manufacturing plants.

Even better, if — as President Biden has said — we want to actually use that capacity now (rather than just know it’s available), within two years 87% of them could be churning out meds at full steam.

FTC to NCPA: Yeah, we’re going after PBMs

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan told NCPA CEO Douglas Hoey that yes, the agency would be looking closely at PBM practices. (If you can’t get to that story, here’s a PDF of it.)

“We’re kind of looking at middlemen across the board to try to understand, how could we be making sure that these markets are really serving people and not just the narrow self interests of gatekeepers.”

While she obviously can’t make promises about specific actions, Khan did say that there were at least two laws on the books that could be brought to bear, and the agency ‘has the work underway to reactivate^* them.’

What laws, you ask, Google at the ready? There’s “Section Five — unfair methods of competition authority” and the Robinson-Patman Act (passed in the 1930s!).

* In July 2021, the FTC rescinded its previous guidance about Section Five, signalling that it “may take action against a broader range of conduct it deems to be unfair.”

Fast Parkinson’s test

Let’s say you wanted to diagnose Parkinson’s quickly. Four minutes wasn’t quick enough — you want to do it in three.

I know what you’re thinking. Use paper spray ionisation mass spectrometry combined with ion mobility separation, right? Of course, and that’s just what chemists at the University of Manchester, England, England did.

Their new tests uses sebum, which it processes through a mass spectrometer to identify any of the 500 biomarkers of people with Parkinson’s. The test takes three minutes, and can confirm a diagnosis more quickly, leading to an earlier start for treatment.

The lice man doesn’t need to cometh

Buried toward the end of a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics is a surprising recommendation: Don’t bother checking kids for lice in the classroom.

The dreaded letter home — “Someone in your child’s class has head lice, and he or she will tell you who” — is a rite of passage for parents. But the AAP says it’s just not worth the time for teachers to check.

Seeing those white nits (eew) doesn’t actually mean the kid will have lice. (“Only 18% of those with nits alone converted to having an active infestation during 14 days of observation.”) Teachers have better things to do.

Screening for nits alone is not an accurate way of predicting which children or adolescents are or will become infested, and screening for head lice has not been proven to have a significant effect on the incidence of head lice in a school community over time.

How weighted blankets work

Some people swear by weighted blankets as a cozy way to combat insomnia. No one knows why it works, just that it does.

Well now we know, thanks to the work of Uppsala University pharmaceutical bioscience researchers. The answer: Using one increases the body’s melatonin … provided the body is a young adult (because that’s all they tested it on). And they ruled out other factors.

“Using a weighted blanket increased melatonin concentrations in saliva by about 30%. However, no differences in oxytocin, cortisol, and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system were observed.”

Of course the sample size was small, so — you know what comes next: More research is needed.

Social woes (almost a Captain Obvious file)

TikTok, Facebook, Insta … not only do they feel depressing, it turns out they are depressing. That is, “young adults who use more social media are significantly more likely to develop depression within six months regardless of personality type.”

The issue? “Problematic social comparison” — actually believing that the people on your feed are happier and more successful than you. (Pro tip: They aren’t.) And the negative stuff, i.e., the YouTube comments section, doesn’t help.