We’ll say it again: You really don’t want Covid

The bad news: 59% of Covid patients experience organ damage in their heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, and spleen, and it continues up to a year after infection according to a new British study.

The good news: It’s typically mild. The organ damage, that is. But…

While 59% of them experienced impairment in a single organ, 29% were found to have multi-organ impairment one year after a Covid infection.

The other good news — sort of — is that between six months to a year later, the number of patients suffering from various Covid-related ailments dropped a bit. (A bit. We’re talking 10 to 12 percent.) So … yay?

Vegetarian Enfamil recall

ICYMI, Reckitt has recalled two batches of its Enfamil ProSobee Simply Plant-Based Infant Formula “because of possible cross-contamination with Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria.”

These are 12.9 oz. containers of powder.

Per the Georgia DPH:

Recalled product batches are ZL2HZF and ZL2HZZ, both with a UPC code of 300871214415 and a “Use by Date” of “1 Mar 2024.”

Skin pill’s surprising other use

So you know the psoriasis drug apremilast (aka Otezla)? Turns out it can also treat — wait for it — alcohol use disorder.

Yep. People taking it “reduced their alcohol intake by more than half — from five drinks per day to two,” according to Oregon Health & Science University neuroscientists.

They found the connection by looking for compounds that might “counteract the expression of genes known to be linked to heavy alcohol use.” Apremilast, oddly enough, was one of those compounds. They tested it in mice, then in humans.

They found that apremilast triggered an increase in activity in the nucleus accumbens, the region of the brain involved in controlling alcohol intake.

Of course, you know the drill by now: More research is needed, including seeing its effect on people who want help vs. those who don’t.

Statins, diabetes, and hip fractures

Diabetics are more likely to suffer hip fractures thanks to osteoporosis, but Taiwanese researchers found a surprising preventative: statins.

They looked at the health records of more than 188,000 people with type 2 diabetes and divided them into a statin group and a non-users group. They found …

… 1.48% of the statin group and 3.17% of the nonusers sustained a hip fracture. Adults who used statins had a lower risk for hip fractures than nonusers. Men were less likely to sustain a fracture than women.

So there weren’t a lot of hip fractures, but statin users were still half as likely to suffer one. (And get this: They also found that the higher the dose, the lower the risk of hip fracture.)

Another HIV patient cured

A fifth person has been cured of HIV. A 52-year-old German man — “the Dusseldorf patient” — was treated with stem cells a decade ago and hasn’t taken HIV meds for four years. The virus is gone from his body, and now the people treating him have declared him cured.

“It’s really cure, and not just, you know, long term remission.”

Howzit work, you ask? In brief, the stem-cell donors had a particular mutation that happens to delete the CCR5 protein, which HIV needs to enter cells, making them effectively HIV-proof.

Short Takes

Our short influencer nightmare is over

Lilly’s diabetes weight-loss drug Mounjaro is back in stock.

Vape to quit

It’s official, at least for the next 20 minutes: “[T]here is enough evidence to support e-cigarettes’ use as a first-line aid for smoking cessation in adults.”

Merck slinks back into its corner

Did you know Merck was a player in the Covid-treatment game? It isn’t, really, but not for lack of trying. The company’s latest setback: Its version of molnupiravir, called Lagevrio, “was not effective at cutting the risk of coronavirus infections in people living with someone infected with the virus.”

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times

Francisco Franco is still dead, and ivermectin still doesn’t help treat Covid — even at higher doses and with longer duration. But you keep testing it, Duke researchers. (In fact, there are at least 10 ivermectin studies in the pipeline around the world!)