Welcome to the presidency, Joe Ed!

A big Buzz congrats to GPhA’s newly sworn-in 2023–24 president, Joe Ed Holt of Valdosta.

If you know Joe Ed, you know the guy’s got a heart of gold — and that he’s been working hard for the pharmacy profession for a long time. He’s not only been on GPhA’s board of directors, he’s also served as a Georgia Pharmacy Foundation board member and chair of the foundation’s mental health initiative, Pharmwell.

If you know Joe Ed, you also know his story — and if you don’t you should check out “My story: Recovery is possible” in the February/March issue of Georgia Pharmacy magazine.

Congratulations and a huge high-five from everyone at GPhA!

… and welcome to GPhA’s leadership members!

Newly elected to the Board of Directors

Izabela Welch (At Large)

Thomas Sherrer (At Large)

Bryce Allfrey (At Large)

Maria Thurston (representing ACHP)

You can see all of GPhA’s leadership — new and returning — at GPhA.org/about.

Newly elected region presidents

Carl Heindel (region 1)

Amanda Cherry (region 6)

Kandon Render (region 7)

Jennifer Herrell (region 9)

Warren Koehler (region 11)

You can see the region boundaries and the region presidents at GPhA.org/regions.

Coming soon: a new kinda of pregnancy test

The world’s first saliva-based pregnancy test is (probably) coming to the US of A. (It’s already available in the UK and Ireland, and the company has applied for FDA authorization.)

The plus: You don’t have to pee on a stick.

The minuses: It’s slightly less accurate than urine-based tests, and it takes 30 excruciating minutes to get a result.

In clinical trials of more than 300 women, the test proved to be around 95% accurate when taken from the first day of a missed period.

It’ll probably retail for $12 or $13.

I’m not lazy, I’m enlarging my brain

Good news for some of us: Apparently a midday nap means a bigger brain. Sorry, a “larger total brain volume — a marker of good brain health linked to a lower risk of dementia and other diseases.” (At least for those aged 40 to 69.)

So found British researchers who compared brain size and cognitive ability between those who nap and those who don’t.

Eyebrow raiser: They determined these ‘habitual nappers’ not by interviewing co-workers, but based on 97 genetic markers that were already known to indicate — I kid you not — “people predetermined to nap.” Then they compared their brain volume to regular folks.

The research team estimated that the average difference in brain volume between people programmed to be habitual nappers and those who were not was equivalent to 2.6 to 6.5 years of ageing.

Another tidbit to take home: “Naps of 30 minutes or less provide the best short-term cognitive benefits.”

Nasal news

A seizure-scent warning device

Fun fact: Someone about to have an epileptic seizure emits an odor that can be detected by trained dogs. The problem, obviously, is that you need to have a dog with you at all times, which can be cumbersome.

Enter engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, who have developed “a miniaturized sensor system that can detect the specific gases released from the skin of people with epilepsy before a seizure.”

“We were able to identify a bouquet of eight VOCs that were unique to seizures. Of those, three VOCs were considered principal, appearing in every sample taken from someone having a seizure. These VOCs start building in concentration prior to seizure onset.”

The device is already tiny, but it currently requires a bit of gauze attached to the skin to work. That’s not a big deal, they say, and they hope to have a sellable device like a wristwatch on the market by the end of 2024. Yep, next year.

The Long Read: Up the Schnoz edition

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Medications through the nose — the idea holds a lot of promise, but it’s not as simple as reformulating a drug. Medscape has the details of the challenges and potential of nasal delivery.

The nasal route is quick, needle-free, and user-friendly, and it often requires a smaller dose than other methods, since the drug doesn’t have to pass through the digestive tract, losing potency during digestion.

The cause of morning sickness

The paper: “Fetally-encoded GDF15 and maternal GDF15 sensitivity are major determinants of nausea and vomiting in human pregnancy”.

What it means: An international group of researchers, led by Cambridge University and USC, has confirmed the cause of morning sickness. It’s a hormone called GDF15, most of which comes from the fetus and placenta.

Twist: Some women produce more GDF15 even when not pregnant, and they’re less likely to experience morning sickness.

“[T]he severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy is the result of the interaction of fetal-derived GDF15 and the mother’s sensitivity to this peptide, which is substantially determined by her prior exposure to the hormone.”

The downside: There’s no treatment for this, but at least it a researchable target.

Short Take

First they came for the Adderall and I said nothing, for I did not take Adderall

“As Adderall shortages persist, Takeda’s rival Vyvanse is now in short supply”.

Prostate-cancer combo

The FDA has approved a combination of olaparib (aka Lynparza), abiraterone, and prednisone to treat one of the most serious forms of prostate cancer — the BRCA-mutated metastatic castration-resistant type. It took a while for the approval to come through:

A study from Merck published in 2022 found that the drug combo reduced risk of death or disease progression of 34% and an average progression free survival period of more than two years.