Are these stories related, y’think?

“Moderna CEO to testify in senate on proposed vaccine price hike” — Stéphane Bancel was invited by Senator Bernie Sanders to testify “on the drugmaker’s plans to raise the price of its coronavirus vaccine.”

“Moderna promises to provide vaccines at no out-of-pocket cost” — “…regardless of their insurance status, once the US government stops covering the cost of the shots.”

Do you care? Of course you do

Medication therapy management — it’s one of the best ways you can care for your patients (and get paid for doing it).

A big step to providing MTM, though, is making sure you’re giving— and getting — the most you can. Patients will appreciate that, not to mention the lovely certificate on your wall.

Learn how to provide the best MTM you can when GPhA presents, “APhA’s Delivering Medication Therapy Management Services: A Certificate Training Program for Pharmacists.”

Sunday, March 19, 2023 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Live via Zoom

Click here to get the details, see the instructor, and register!

Foraging, fructose, and Alzheimer’s

Could Alzheimer’s be caused by sugar? Yes, but not table sugar. University of Colorado researchers think fructose might play an important role.

Their logic: Early humans’ survival response required “focus, rapid assessment, impulsivity, exploratory behavior, and risk taking” and nothing else — for example, “recent memories and attention to time” just weren’t important.

That’s where fructose comes into play. When the body needs to forage, fructose activates that ‘foraging mode’:

[F]ructose reduces blood flow to the brain’s cerebral cortex involved in self-control, as well as the hippocampus and thalamus. Meanwhile, blood flow increased around the visual cortex associated with food reward. All of this stimulated the foraging response.

Today, high-fat/-sugar/-salt food prompts excess fructose production, triggering (they suggest) that same foraging mode — and might even explain why some Alzheimer’s patients wander off, perhaps searching for something to eat.

Double-duty drugs

Lasmiditan for kidneys

The migraine drug lasmiditan, aka Reyvow, can treat acute kidney injury … in mice, at least. That’s per a University of Arizona study.

[I]t stimulated recovery of kidney function such as mitochondrial biogenesis […], improved vascular integrity, reduced fibrosis, and reduced proximal tubule damage.

Pioglitazone for dementia

Diabetics who take pioglitazone “were less likely to later develop dementia than those who did not take the drug,” according to a Korean study. The authors pointed out, though that ’The study does not prove that the drug reduces the risk of dementia for people with diabetes. It only shows an association.’

Narcan ready for OTC

An FDA advisory panel has unanimously approved making Narcan available over the counter. Note that we said “Narcan,” not “naloxone.” That’s because the panel specifically referred to the Emergent BioSolutions version, although it seems likely that other naloxone delivery systems will eventually follow.

The FDA doesn’t have to listen to the panel, which also recommended some labeling changes to simplify using the drug. The agency will make its final decision by March 29.

Maybe they can come up with another excuse

Yet another study — this one out of Britain and published in the British Medical Journal — finds that, despite pharma company claims that high prices are needed to fund innovation, it’s just not true.

• “Most industry spending is not on research and development”
• “Most new drugs provide little or no added clinical value”
• “Most of these companies also spent more on share buybacks and paying out dividends than on research and development”

The justification of high drug prices also ignores the sizeable public investments in drug discovery and development […]; more than a quarter of new drugs approved by the FDA from 2008 to 2017 were linked to public investment during the late stages of development. This means that society is potentially paying twice for new drugs, first in the form of publicly subsidised research and second through high product prices.

Elsewhere: Then there were 10

North Carolina is on the verge of becoming the 40th state to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. The plan has bipartisan support and does not include a work requirement. In unrelated news, state police there are asking residents not to be alarmed by the flying pigs.

The Long Read: Virus Hunting edition

Viruses jumping from animals to humans are rare, but when they do they can be … problematic. It’s led to efforts to catalog animal viruses before they spillover to humans.

But what if spillovers happen frequently, but don’t often spread? Maybe we should instead be looking inside humans for the next pandemic.