Little women?

In a shocking article in The Conversation, two Australian biologists explain that — if you can believe it — women are not just smaller versions of men.

So when drugs work differently (and women are much more likely to have adverse drug reactions) it’s not because of the dosage. It’s because of physiology, and clinical trials need to recruit more women to save a lot of trouble down the road.

A magazine and a CE webinar

Be on the lookout for the latest issue of Georgia Pharmacy magazine, where the timely topic is contraception and the pharmacist’s role. Check your mailbox for your copy!

That’s also the topic of tomorrow morning’s live (FREE!) webinar: “Hormonal Contraception — A Clinical Practice Update for Pharmacists.” It’s from 7:30 to 8:30 am, presented by UGA professor Rebecca Stone, PharmD, and it gives one hour of CPE, too!

Melanoma vaccine passes trial

Merck’s Keytruda plus Moderna’s experimental mRNA vaccine can protect melanoma patients from recurrence or death after they’ve had surgery. That’s the result of a phase 2b trial the companies did with more than 150 patients over a year.

The good news is that patients getting the vaccine and Keytruda were 44 percent less likely to die or have the cancer recur.

The less-good news is that it’s not a one- or two-shot procedure. Trial patients received nine shots of the vaccine and Keytruda injections every three weeks for the year.

But still, it seems to be a significant breakthrough, and they’re already talking about trying the mRNA therapy with other types of tumor.

Jerks are everywhere

If you or your co-workers have ever been harassed by patients just for doing your job (or the amount of melatonin in your skin), you’re not alone. An American Society of Health System Pharmacists panel discussed that very issue, and found the problem is widespread.

According to one 2019 survey of over 5,000 pharmacists, nearly a third had experienced discrimination or harassment at work. […] The most common type of harassment reported were demeaning comments about race or ethnicity, which came mostly from male patients/customers.

They offered some advice for dealing with it, including a reminder to intervene on a colleague’s behalf, especially if you’re in a more senior position. Let ’em know you’ve got their backs.

Post-menopausal cholesterol: more than estrogen

When thinking about older women’s cholesterol levels, estrogen is pretty important — if levels drop, cholesterol can go up. (Hormone replacement therapy can help, of course).

But now University of Pittsburgh researchers say that a different hormone — AMH or anti-Müllerian hormone — is a complementary predictor.

Estrogen is important for lowering LDL cholesterol levels, but, they found, AMH can lower HDL-cholesterol.

This means that as women traverse the menopause transition, they lose estrogen and AMH, increasing both their bad and good cholesterol levels.

How important is HDL for post-menopausal women? That’s next on the researchers’ radar.

Smallpox vaccine works against mpox

The latest CDC data shows that two doses of the Jynneos smallpox vaccine does a darned good job preventing monkeypox infections.

[T]he incidence of mpox infections among unvaccinated people was nearly 10 times higher than among fully vaccinated individuals, and 7.4 times higher when compared to those who had received only one dose.

The vaccine has been given out based on lab tests and the similarities of the viruses, but this is the first human data showing it actually does work.

The agony of the set

Anyone who’s put on the television around 6:00pm knows that watching can be painful. But that’s not Buzz-worthy news. What is news is that watching TV can be literally painful.

Aussie researchers studied more than 4,000 people and found that “The more TV you watch, the more bodily pain you have over time.”

“We found that increments in TV-viewing time over time predicted bodily pain severity. Even a one-hour increase in daily TV time was significantly associated with an increase in pain severity. And those findings were even more pronounced in those living with type 2 diabetes.”

It’s probably due to sitting for too long, but it doesn’t rule out the direct effect of, say, the Lifetime Movie Network.

Elsewhere

Utah: Bad Advice

Hey, parents! — you can do your own pharmacy compounding! That’s what a Utah pharmacist is telling people.

He has taken to his social media accounts to educate followers on how you can convert amoxicillin capsules into a liquid form for your children using their prescribed dosage.

(Granted, this probably is something many folks can do … but what kind of pharmacist would suggest it publicly?) 🤦‍♂

India: Nasal booster

The Indian government has approved a nasal Covid-19 vaccine that was developed in the US of A “as a booster for people who have already received two doses of other COVID-19 vaccines.”

People who have never been vaccinated for Covid-19 are eligible, as well as those who already have received other Covid-19 vaccines.

Ohio: Bad parenting

The latest numbers from the state show 74 cases of measles in the current outbreak, including 26 kids who have been hospitalized. None of them was fully vaccinated (four were partially vaxxed).