Take two aspirin and call me at halftime

Being a rabid fan can be bad for your heart, and Bayer wants to take this fact as an opportunity to remind people of that — it’s sponsoring a new ad campaign.

Bayer said in a press release that it is “showing up for fans who put their whole hearts into their fandom” and is encouraging fans (and non-fans) to “prioritize their heart health by assessing their risk factors for cardiovascular disease.”

Click here to watch the video it sponsored.

Did you know there’s a generic Chantix?

About 18 months ago, Pfizer stopped making Chantix while it works out some production issues — carcinogens appearing in the pills. Soon after, though, the FDA approved a generic varenicline that would fill the Chantix-sized gap.

You would think the number varenicline prescriptions would remain about the same, as when any generic enters the market. But that’s not what happened. Instead, a study by pharmacy researchers found that “After Chantix production was halted, a significant reduction in the prescribed varenicline was observed.”

Why? Because people — including prescribers and pharmacists — don’t know about the generic varenicline. The recall got the press, but the alternative didn’t.

When metformin fails

Metformin treatment doesn’t work for a lot of patients with type 2 diabetes. In fact, looking at data for more than 22,000 patients, Mayo Clinic researchers found that failure is pretty darned common.

The study […] found that over 30% of the study population experienced metformin failure, defined as either failure to achieve or maintain HbA1c less than 7% within 18 months or the use of additional glucose-lowering medications.

The strongest predictor: baseline HbA1c. When it’s high, failure is a more-common option. Oh, and this all held true across a “large, diverse population.”

Same old song

Once again, a study (this one out of Washington University) finds that a lot of adults — 56 percent — have received antibiotics for viral infections.

Laws can’t keep up with the times

In 1993, the Comprehensive Child Immunization Act (CCIA) provided free vaccinations to kids whose parents couldn’t afford them — more than half of American children, in fact. W00t.

But with an RSV vaccine for babies called nirsevimab on the horizon (and expected to be FDA approved this year), a bit of wording in the law might mean a lot of kids can’t get the shot.

The “for babies” part is important. That’s when kids are most vulnerable to RSV; when they’re older it’s more like a nasty cold. Of the three RSV vaccines coming down the pike, only nirsevimab is an monoclonal antibody and only nirsevimab is likely to be approved for infants.

Unfortunately, the CCIA doesn’t include antibody shots, meaning the Vaccines for Children program might not cover nirsevimab.

Failing to do so would “consign thousands upon thousands of infants to hospitalization and serious illness for semantic reasons despite existence of an immunization that functionally performs just like a seasonal vaccine.”

The CDC will have to decide, and then there might be even be legal challenges from the usual suspects. Wait and see.

Coffee and BP

Regular coffee consumption, say Italian researchers, leads to lower blood pressure. That’s based on an observational study of about 1,500 men and women and no, it wasn’t funded by the coffee industry.

As usual, it wasn’t the caffeine — other compounds in coffee play a role. The study was published in the journal Nutrients, if you want to check out the science.

“The results are very clear: peripheral blood pressure was significantly lower in individuals consuming one to three cups of coffee a day than in non-coffee drinkers. “And for the first time, we were also able to confirm these effects with regard to the central aortic pressure, the one close to the heart, where we observe an almost identical phenomenon with entirely similar values for habitual coffee drinkers compared to non-coffee drinkers.”

Today’s non-pharma, cool medical story

It’s not just celebrities and legislators who are stealing the blood of the young in order to live forever. (Did you know Tom Cruise is 84 years old?) Researchers in California now have the oldest living lab rat: Sima, who is almost four years old thanks to infusions of blood plasma taken from young animals. She’s almost a year older than most rats live — the equivalent of a 120-year-old human.

Good news: The trial therapy doesn’t require human plasma; pigs, cows, goats, and sheep are potential donors.

^* Technically the oldest living Spague-Dawley rat, if that matters.