A pill for diabetic cats

If you have (or know) a diabetic cat, great news — seriously. A new daily pill can replace insulin shots … but only in cats that haven’t been taking injectable insulin.

Elanco’s Bexacat was approved in December and it’s expected to hit the (metaphorical) counters in the next few weeks.

In studies involving more than 300 diabetic cats, Bexacat improved glucose control and decreased at least one symptom of diabetes in more than 80% of newly diagnosed, healthy animals.

Big ol’ caveats: It only works for otherwise-healthy cats; some animals in the studies died, so it’s got a black-box warning. The wholesale price is about $53 a month.

While we’re talking about cats and diabetes…

The FDA has approved bexaflilozin for adult (human!) type 2 diabetes. The feline connection: Bexaflilozin was originally developed to treat cats.

The pharma deets:

The phase 3 trials showed significant HbA1c and fasting glucose reductions by the 24th week when used as a monotherapy, in combination with metformin, or as an additional treatment for those already being treated with sulfonylureas, metformin, insulin and DPP-4 inhibitors.

Amazon adds $5 all-you-can-fill prescription service

Amazon has jumped into the ultra-cheap-generics game with a new program for its Prime members: RxPass. The gist: For $5 a month, customers can fill as many prescriptions as they need … but only from a list of about 50 generic meds, and the program doesn’t take insurance. (Click here to see the list.)

This is, of course, Amazon’s way of joining Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs in the “cheap generics without insurance” game, although in Amazon’s case it also requires a $15 monthly Prime membership.

When the sun sets on the PREP Act

So the PREP Act — which allows pharmacists and technicians to provide Covid-19 and other vaccinations nationwide — is going to sunset in 2024. What happens then? Chaos. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together….

Georgia (yes, thanks to GPhA advocacy) already allowed pharmacists to administer most vaccinations, but still, count on patient confusion if and when it happens — and many GPhA emails and press releases.

Lookin’ good with fish oil

Fish oil supplements might not only protect against cardiovascular and kidney issues, they might make men sexier — if you’re a mouse, at least.

It seems that those omega-3 fatty acids that are so important to health can also cause hair loss via an autoimmune reaction. So found a University of Iowa immunologist who was studying obesity.

The mice fed the omega-3–rich fish oil lost a considerable amount of hair along their shoulders. Meanwhile, the mice fed cocoa butter (which contains saturated fats) and the low-fat diet control mice exhibited no hair loss at all.

What’s going on? The science in a nutshell: The omega-3s cause the skin to generate two inflammatory cytokines — IL-36 and TNF-a — which end up killing hair follicle stem cells.

The next question: In what other areas of the body might these fatty acids might accumulate, and what could they do there?

Today’s anti-aging drug

Do you want to live longer? Start taking rilmenidine. If you’re a roundworm, anyway.

British longevity researchers found that …

… animals treated with rilmenidine, currently used to treat hypertension, at young and older ages increases lifespan and improves health markers, mimicking the effects of caloric restriction.

How will it translate to humans? Wait and see.

Yeah, whatever: Antidepressant blunting explained

Why do some people taking SSRIs feel emotionally “blunted” — not getting excited when their team makes the playoffs for the first time in six years, or simply having trouble even finding pleasure at all?

British researchers, with help from some of those shifty Danes, found that long-term use of an SSRI (escitalopram in this case) caused “reduced reinforcement sensitivity” — trouble learning from feedback.

In other words, both punishments and rewards didn’t mean as much to them. As one team member explained:

“[Antidepressants] take away some of the emotional pain that people who experience depression feel, but, unfortunately, it seems that they also take away some of the enjoyment […] we can now see that this is because they become less sensitive to rewards, which provide important feedback.”

The Long Read: Alternate Reality edition

It’s gone beyond anti-vaxxers touting bogus ideas and debunked papers. A column in Forbes explain how “In The U.S., Conspiracy Theories And Alternate Facts Undermine Public Health And Cause Death” (and features at least one Georgia legislator).