You got your flu virus in my RSV!
You got your RSV in my flu virus!

Not scary at all: Scottish virologists have observed — I kid you not — the flu virus and RSV combining to form a single new virus that can evade the immune system.

People can get both viruses at once; that’s not news. But while investigating that process, the researchers found that…

… rather than competing with one another as some other viruses are known to do, they fused together to form a palm tree-shaped hybrid virus — with RSV forming the trunk, and influenza the leaves.

Next step: Is there something special about these two viruses? “We need to know if this happens only with influenza and RSV, or does it extend to other virus combinations as well. My guess is that it does.” Oh, joy.

Putting the pressure on Tricare and Express Scripts

You know about the Tricare issue: Thanks to its contract with Express Scripts, 15,000 independent pharmacies are about to be cut out of the Tricare network.

Just so you know, GPhA has been getting the message out, and it’s being picked up all over — not just federal and military news, but general news outlets from Yahoo to local stations across the country.

If you haven’t taken 30 seconds to sign GPhA’s Change.org petition, please do it now. We’re trying to do our best, but we can’t do that without your help!

 

When antipsychotics stop working

The lede from this story sums it up well: “Antipsychotic effectiveness declines in women after the age of 45.”

Dutch researchers (using Finnish data) found that when it comes to lozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, and risperidone, women over 45 were hospitalized for psychosis more often than men, and more often than women under 45.

Their conclusion: “[O]lder women with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders should be regarded as a vulnerable group that deserve special attention.”

Kidney patients and showerheads

A common bacteria found in showerheads — nontuberculous mycobacteria , aka NTM — can kill people whose kidneys have failed. That’s what Augusta University researchers found when crunching the numbers of NTM infections and people with end-stage renal disease.

What they found was that getting an NTM infection led to “a significant and independent increase in mortality” for those patients, thanks to their compromised immune systems.

Their takeaway: Test people with end-stage renal disease for infection (and treat it promptly).

As for avoiding those bacteria … that’s tough. They tend to accumulate in biofilms in showerheads, for example, so cleaning those can help reduce exposure, at least to some extent. But avoiding it completely is just about impossible.

Fun fact: Nontuberculous mycobacteria is more prevalent in chlorinated municipal water systems than in well water, because the chlorine kills the bacteria that keep NTM in check.

The latest list of Covid symptoms

As Covid changes, so too do the symptoms patients report. Loss of smell? Trouble breathing? Neither is as prevalent with new variants, according to a study by researchers from a bunch of big-name places^*.

Depending on whether someone is fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, or unvaccinated, the order of symptom frequency might change, but the big four are the same:

• Sore throat
• Runny nose
• Headache
• Persistent cough

Fully vaccinated people usually have milder versions of these. People with just one dose also report sneezing, while the unvaccinated frequently have a fever as well.

* MassGeneral Hospital, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, King’s College London, Stanford University School of Medicine, and the health app ZOE

Drug Take Back Day is coming!!!

It’s everyone’s favorite annual event (next to the Georgia Pharmacy Convention, of course): The DEA (official) National Rx Take Back Day. And it’s coming this Saturday, October 29, with festivities starting at 10:00 am. Don’t miss it!

The Long(ish) Read: OTC Birth Control edition

Is it time for The Pill to go over-the-counter? Lots of folks think so — and that any objections at this point are political, not medical.

Opill maker HRA Pharma has asked that FDA to approve its almost-50-year-old capital-P Pill for OTC use. So what’s going on with that? Axios explains “The road to making birth control pills over-the-counter in the U.S.”

Shameless plug: The cover story of the upcoming December/January Georgia Pharmacy magazine is all about the future of birth control. Look for it in your mailbox in a few weeks!

So here we are

We’re talking about polio. In 2022. The CDC is considering distributing the newer, oral form of the polio vaccine in New York, where the virus has resurfaced. So far only one person has been paralyzed, but wastewater surveillance shows the virus is circulating, and health officials want to nip it in the bud.

Options:

The older vaccine (a shot): Uses inactivated virus, prevents paralysis, but doesn’t stop transmission — and stopping transmission is the goal here.

The newer vaccine (a pill): Uses a weakened live virus, prevents paralysis and transmission, but runs a small risk of mutating into a virulent form that could infect the unvaccinated.

An older form of the oral vaccine has a higher risk of mutation, but that’s not what we would use here … although someone who received this older vaccine pill might be what brought polio to our shores in the first place.