The easy migraine treatment

When it comes to treating migraines, there’s one class of meds that often overlooked: anti-hypertensives. Blood pressure drugs, found Aussie researchers, almost all help with migraine pain, but they’re often overlooked by physicians as a first-line treatment.

“[W]hile we can see from the analysis that the effect is true for almost all types of BP medicines, this is not reflected in the current clinical guidelines, which specify just one or two types (such as beta-blockers) but not the full range of therapies that could be useful.”

When your sperm get long Covid

Having trouble makin’ that baby, guys? Did you perchance have even a mild case of Covid-19? That might be your answer. Spanish researchers found that Covid-19 infection caused not only a drop in sperm count months after infection, but also a drop in sperm quality.

• Semen volume: down 20%
• Sperm concentration: down 26.5%
• Sperm count: down 37.5%
• Swimming ability (“total motility”): down 9%
• Number of live sperm: down 5%.

Worse, this wasn’t just in the sperm that were hanging about while you were infected — the effect continues into the new crop^*.

“We assumed that semen quality would improve once new sperm were being generated, but this was not the case. We do not know how long it might take for semen quality to be restored and it may be the case that COVID has caused permanent damage, even in men who suffered only a mild infection.”

^* “Crop of sperm” is either a poor choice of words or a new rock band. Your call. 

Speaking of Covid…

Having a serious Covid infection might lead to chronic pain. It certainly increases the odds, according to researchers at New York’s Upstate Medical University.

More than a quarter of the people in a study (25.5%) who had a moderate to severe infection reported chronic pain since their bout. That compared to fewer than 20% of those who were never infected. The bottom line, after the statisticians got involved, is that…

“Adjusted probabilities show that chronic pain was roughly 4 percentage points more likely among those with more symptoms during infection than among the never-infected group.”

Another weight-loss pill shines in trial

Eli Lilly’s experimental weight-loss pill “helped people lose an average of 15% of their body weight after 36 weeks,” which is as good or better than giving yourself weekly injections of one of the other GLP-1 agonists.

Called orforglipron, the pill is still in phase-2 trials, while Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide pill is a bit ahead (phase 3), but requires a 30-minute fast before and after taking it, which could be a complication considering the target audience.

The Long Read: Getting the new Alzheimer’s meds

Eisai/Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi (aka lecanemab) is likely to get full FDA approval soon, but it comes with caveats that might make it a bit tougher for patients to get. Read the deets.

Short Takes

Malaria is back

For the first time in 20 years, malaria is spreading locally in the US — and it’s in Florida and Texas. Locally is the key, because cases reported here have always been acquired elsewhere. These, though, “are believed to be locally acquired” and transmitted by mosquitos.

Weaning off opioids the right way

Getting people weaned off long-term opioids has to be done carefully, and an international group of clinicians, led out of Australia, has released a set of deprescribing guidelines. They recommend “that clinicians develop personalised deprescribing plans from the beginning for any patient being prescribed opioids” and also published detailed guidelines for creating such a plan.

Gonorrhea vax gets fast-tracked

GSK’s vaccine for people at high risk of gonorrhea has received a ‘fast-track’ designation from the FDA. Called Neisseria, it’s currently in a phase 2 trial, but the new designation will mean FDA review could happen more quickly.