The coming diabetes wave

Good news, I guess, if your diabetes-management training is up to snuff^* — CDC scientists say that 200,000 people who are under 20 today could have type 2 diabetes by 2060. And, not to be left out, cases of type 1 diabetes are also expected to jump — by 65 percent.

That’s how fast diabetes rates are increasing today. Bad news: “Even if the rate of new diabetes diagnoses among young people stayed unchanged, type 2 cases could increase nearly 70% and type 1 cases by 3% by 2060.”

^* [Insert shameless plug for GPhA’s diabetes training programs here]

Teens can now get Wegovy

The FDA has approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) for treating obesity in everyone 12 and over — it had previously been limited to adults.

The big caveat: It can be hard to find in part because it works really, really well.

Send in the Covid wave (it’s already here)

Like Adam Sandler movies, every time you think we’re done with them, a new Covid wave appears. This one is thanks to Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.5, which is quickly becoming the dominant strain; it accounted for 41 percent of new infections in December.

(Before you jump to blame China, this strain evolved in the US of A.) (Any new waves out of China won’t come for a few months, as travel restrictions were only just lifted.)

XBB.1.5 is better at evading immunity (even, to a lesser extent, for vaccinated people), and it’s a heck of a lot more virulent than earlier strains. We could be looking at a winter surge bigger than the last one. But, with the dialing back of testing and reporting, it’s hard to get an accurate picture of how bad that wave really is … until hospitalizations and deaths start to rise.

Of course, it may just be a small bump and not a wave. Check back in a couple of months.

Groovy masks are better masks

A new treatment to waterproof face-mask material could make masks safer and more comfortable.

Non-waterproof masks get damp, uncomfortable, and clogged with normal use, so germs can escape from the sides. But current waterproof coating has health risks, especially when up against a face for a long time.

Korean researchers found a better way: etching nanoscale-sized grooves into the outside of a typical N95 mask (to protect the wearer from virus particles in the air) and then the inside of the masks (to protect the air from viral particles in the people).

Those grooves work better than any coating, keeping the masks comfy and protective.

When a water droplet encounters a large groove, it flows into it, filling the space. But when it encounters a fine enough groove (one on the nanoscale, in this instance), the droplet sticks to itself instead of the walls of the indent. A tiny air cushion forms beneath the droplet, effectively repelling it.

And to show off and prove how easy it is, the team created more than 100,000 masks using the technique.

New osteoporosis guidelines

They’ve been five years in the making, but the new guidelines for treating primary osteoporosis (or low bone mass) are here.

The big takeaway: Based on new evidence, “the American College of Physicians recommends bisphosphonates as initial pharmacologic treatment to reduce the risk of fractures in males and postmenopausal females diagnosed with primary osteoporosis.”

Why some Covid tests don’t work

Rapid antigen tests actually work just fine … eventually. The problem is that the omicron variant tends to take longer to build up enough viral antigen to be detected — sometimes it’s even after symptoms appear.

The result is what seems to be false negatives, but in reality “[W]e have to accept that ‘in the first one or two days of infection with Omicron, on average, antigen tests are very poor’.”

As one infectious-disease physician put it, you can wait a few days after you’ve been exposed to make the test more accurate, or, if you already have symptoms, “You don’t even need to bother. You probably have Covid.”

Once-and-done hemophilia treatment

A new gene treatment for hemophilia B is almost here. Roche’s borderline-unpronounceable fidanacogene elaparvovec (licensed by Pfizer) just passed its phase 3 study. The Big Deal: It’s a one-time treatment for the condition, as opposed to the regular infusions needed with today’s drugs.

The results mean that Pfizer is already talking to the FDA and European Medicines Agency about approval. Expect pricing of the treatment to be €49.99 in Europe and $350,000,000 in the US.

Immune-evading tumor treatment

A holy grail of CAR-T therapy is being able to A) deploy it against solid tumors, and B) using mass-produced cells that didn’t have to come from the patient. Unfortunately, that pesky immune system gets in the way — “a severe obstacle in any type of allogeneic cell transplantation.”

But UC San Francisco scientists have now developed a way to allow transplanted cells to get where they’re needed, and to do their jobs without triggering the immune system. The trick: Rather than rely on immunosuppressants (and all the side effects), they give those transplanted cells a special weapon.

They equip those cells with special proteins on their surfaces — proteins that capture the body’s antibodies, preventing those antibodies from alerting the immune system. Sneaky, huh?