Beer vs Alzheimer’s?

Sure, why not? It makes for a good headline — “Could beer help protect against Alzheimer’s disease?” — although the reality is much less interesting.

That reality: “chemicals extracted from hop flowers can, in lab dishes, inhibit the clumping of amyloid beta proteins.”

So maybe, suggest the European researchers who did the study, a very hoppy beer could have some benefits. The emphasis is very much on maybe.

I want a new drug….

A new antibiotic

How about a new antibiotic to replace polymyxin B and colistin? With gram-negative superbug infections becoming a bigger issue — and current treatments having “significant toxicity issues” — Aussie researchers are happy to see good results from their initial human trials of a drug they call QPX9003.

What defines “good”? So far QPX9003 seems to be safe, tolerable, and able to be “administered at significantly higher doses than polymyxin B and colistin without adverse effects.”

A new class of hypertension treatment

It’s called baxdrostat, and it just passed its phase 2 trials for treating hypertension when other drugs fail.

What’s different? Baxdrostat is the first of a new drug class — one that that inhibits the enzyme that makes aldosterone, as opposed to, say, spironolactone, which blocks the mineralocorticoid receptor.

Not only did it drop patients’ blood pressure, by doing so it confirmed “that this type of hypertension is partly due to excess production of the aldosterone hormone.”

Cutting triglycerides … but not heart attacks

You might think that lowering triglycerides would be good for the heart. Seems obvious. So when Harvard researchers found a new triglyceride-lowering drug — pemafibrate — they figured it would also reduce cardiovascular risk for folks with type-2 diabetes.

Nope.

“Many of us in the scientific community thought lowering triglycerides with this medication class in this population should have worked because high triglycerides are a pretty good marker of who’s at risk. Unfortunately, our results showed no lowering of cardiovascular event rates.”

So what does this mean for treating patients with both type 2 diabetes and hypertriglyceridemia? “We need to find another solution to this problem.”

Much ado about button

Lilly is making a Very Big Deal about its “fully connected and personalised diabetes management platform^*” called Tempo. But what is it?

It’s an attachment (a “reusable Smart Button”) that goes onto a special insulin pen. A connected app records when the pen is used and the size of the dose.

And that’s it. It’s designed to help overcome “challenges with the complexities of insulin dosing,” and not at all to get people to use the company’s brand-name insulin products.

* It uses “digital technology” … as opposed to early versions which apparently relied on gears, pulleys, and vacuum tubes.

Why processed foods are bad

Lots of news has said that processed and ultra-processed foods are making us fat, but the question is why? It’s not just added sugar (because not all processed foods have a lot).

Australian researchers have the answer.

Cutting to the chase: The body craves protein. Processed foods don’t have a lot, so we need to eat a lot more of them to satisfy that demand — “our bodies eat to satisfy a protein target.” (Also, Oreos taste good.)

As people consume more junk foods or highly processed and refined foods, they dilute their dietary protein and increase their risk of being overweight and obese.

Solution: Eat more protein first thing in the morning to reduce your craving for processed food.

Dementia: Good news and bad

The bad news (which came out last week): “One in 10 Older Americans Has Dementia” according to a study out of Columbia University, “while another 22% have mild cognitive impairment.”

Yeah — almost a third of Americans are cognitively impaired^*.

The good news: A new study by the Rand Corporation found that dementia rates among US seniors dropped big-time from 2000 to 2016.

• In 2000: 12.2% of seniors had dementia.
• In 2016: Only 8.5% of them did.

And there are sex differences:

• In 2000, dementia affected 10.2% of men over 65 and 13.6% of women
• In 2016 it was down to 7.0% of men and 9.7% of women

But why? It could be a combination of better education, less smoking, and “better treatment of key cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure” as well as people listening to advice about lowering their risk.

Above link is to the news story, click here for the Rand study.

* And we’re supposed to govern ourselves? George III is laughing in his grave^†.
^† Not that he should be throwing that first stone.

Captain Obvious listens to Lofi Girl

“New Research Suggests Political Events Impact Sleep” — “Study Finds Association Between Elections and Sleep, Alcohol Consumption and Overall Public Mood”.

Note: This was written Tuesday morning, before any results of the elections, so don’t read into it.

Cartoon war — what is it good for?

If you let little kids watch violent television (or, I suppose, YouTube videos) you risk making them psychologically impaired, emotionally distressed, and academically deficient.

So report Canadian researchers after studying nearly 2,000 kids over eight years, including interviews with parents and teachers.

“Just like witnessing violence in real life, being repeatedly exposed to a hostile and violent world populated by sometimes grotesque-looking creatures could trigger fear and stress and lead these children to perceive society as dangerous and frightening. And this can lead to habitually overreacting in ambiguous social situations.”