Unexpected A1c fighter^*

Here’s a surprising potential treatment for type-2 diabetes: Cialis. Apparently (found Swedish researchers) PDE5 inhibitors like tadalafil taken daily…

… caused a clear improvement in metabolic control, based on measurements of HbA1c in blood samples. On average, the level of HbA1c fell by 2.50 mmol/mol.

This was only a pilot study, so — you know the drill: More research is needed.

And the lead researcher warns about patients reading too much into this: Self-medication with PDE5 inhibitors must never take place,” he said.

^* What, you expected some bad pun? Writing those is … difficult.

Congrats to the 2023 PharmDawgs!

A big shout-out to the UGA PharmD Class of 2023, commencing their new lives today with an average GPA of 3.5 and almost three-quarters already having secured their next steps — jobs or “other postgraduate opportunities.” Congrats, all 136 of you!

And also….

… to GPhA members William Huang and Jordan Khail (as well as Sharmon Osae and Brian Seagraves) who will be hooding the grads as part of the ancient tradition of commencement. W00t!

The new polypharmacy guide for seniors

The American Geriatrics Society has released the latest version of its AGS Beers Criteria for Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults — the combined list of meds that older people should use with caution, use differently, or avoid altogether, “because they often present unnecessary risks for this population.”

The link above is for the news release. Click here if you want to skip right to the full paper/report.

The best message to combat Covid vax-hesitant parents

There are reasonable parents who, perhaps scared by anti-vax misinformation, are iffy about getting their kids vaccinated against Covid, especially if it might mean Bill Gates will control their minds.

The folks at the Children’s Hospital of Chicago did some research and found that some messages worked better than others to convince parents to protect their kids.

What doesn’t work: Explaining that the vaccine is “well-tolerated” and has few side effects, even when delivered by the child’s doctor or nurse. Ditto for trying to counter all the misinformation spread by anti-vaxxers.

What does work: Hearing from other parents they trust that they vaccinated their kids. And hearing…

Some of them say that they weren’t sure at first about whether the vaccine is safe for kids. But they ended up deciding that it was the best way to fight COVID-19, and the vaccination went fine. They want to keep their kids protected.

So knowing other parents struggled with the decision and ultimately decided it was important to protect their children — that’s the ticket. (And hearing that the vaccine is safe can even help after they get that message.)

Better eggs with Prozac

Have you considered giving your pet roundworms fluoxetine? You might want to — apparently SSRIs can improve the quality of their eggs and “[decrease] chromosomal abnormalities in surviving offspring by more than twofold.”

But what if you’re more of a fruit fly person? It works for them, too.

How? They aren’t 100 percent sure, but they think the cells involved in egg development use serotonin as a messenger, so they take advantage of serotonin’s hanging around longer.

Coffee for your vision

How thick are your retinal nerve fibers? If you drink coffee or tea (two to three cups of coffee or more than four cups of tea per day) it appears to increase the thickness of the macula’s nerve layer — that’s the part of the retina that handles our central (as opposed to peripheral) vision. That’s per some new research from Chinese and Australian scientists.

Thicker is better in this case: “The thinner the layer, the higher risk of neurodegeneration.” So think of coffee and tea drinking as a way to protect those nerve cells … and your vision.

Short Takes

Covid-19 deaths down

Yes, we know they’re down in general, but the big picture is that, while in 2021 Covid caused 12% of deaths in the US, in 2022 it was down to just 5.7% — and it’s undoubtedly lower this year. In raw numbers, Covid “was the underlying cause of” the deaths of 417,000 Americans in 2021, but 187,000 Americans in 2022.

Perspective: 292,000 Americans died in all of WWII.

And that’s why…

The WHO has officially declared that, after killing 7 million people around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic is no longer a public health emergency.