It’s harder to relax on the Pill

Here’s an odd side effect of hormonal birth control pills: Being social doesn’t reduce stress.

Normally, a bit of social activity (board games and singing songs, in this case) lowers the levels of the stress hormone ACTH in women. But when they did blood tests, a group of those shifty Danes working with US researchers found a big caveat:

The study showed that 15 minutes of social activity after having a blood sample taken lowers stress hormone levels in women who are not on the birth-control pill. In contrast, women who are on birth-control pills do not experience any reduction of their ACTH levels.

It might be due to the pills suppressing progesterone production, but they’re still working on the details. They also found that the effect of social activity on stress depends on where in their menstrual cycles the women were.

Child vax program cuts coming soon

Georgia (and every state) will be paying more for child-vaccination programs, as federal funds were reduced as part of the 2023 debt-ceiling deal; cutting vaccines for kids apparently seemed like a good idea. The CDC’s nationwide $680 million federal immunization grant is drying up, which will mean about a 10% cut in aid to states.

A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Public Health, Nancy Nydam, acknowledged that a funding cut for child immunizations was coming but said the agency hadn’t received additional details as of Monday afternoon.

The CDC isn’t happy about it because unvaccinated kids are more likely to get sick — and that will require bigger spending down the road. “There will be no easy solution for this,” the agency wrote. “We know that this change will require some tough decisions.”

Paper (well, pine) production for painkiller pills

Did you know that the ingredients in acetaminophen and ibuprofen are made from crude oil? Uh-huh. And with sustainability and, you know, not screwing up the Earth any more on a lot of company’s minds, British researchers have “developed a new method to make precursor materials for these drugs from renewable sources.”

Those sources? Pine trees. Which is a lot better than saying “a chemical called beta-pinene, which is a component of turpentine.” The good thing is that it’s left over from paper manufacturing.

And let’s say you don’t care about sustainability one way or the other. Getting away from oil-based production also means avoiding the price fluctuations oil is subject to every time Vladimir Putin sees something he wants.

Who holds the settlement wallet

States are slowly but surely choosing who will decide how to spend their share of the Big Opioid Settlements, with a lot of juggling. Will the decision-making boards represent the right people geographically, demographically, and needs wise? Will there be too many law enforcement reps? Too many from cities? Too many from a particular specialty? Not enough racial diversity?

Members run the gamut from doctors, researchers, and county health directors to law enforcement officers, town managers, and business owners, as well as people in recovery and parents who’ve lost children to addiction.

Georgia’s board will consist of eight members: four appointed by the governor (plus a non-voting chair) and four chosen by local governments. Like many of the states’ boards, Georgia’s is advisory only; it doesn’t have decision-making power.

So far only the governor’s reps have been chosen:

• David Dove, executive counsel, Governor’s Office (non-voting chairman)
• Xavier Crockett, director of the Division of Health Protection, Georgia Department of Public Health
• Cassandra Price, director of the Division of Addictive Diseases, Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
• Gary Sisk, sheriff of Catoosa County
• Grant Thomas, director of the Office of Health Strategy and Coordination, Governor’s Office

Short Takes

The potential for a homegrown pandemic

Guess which country — thanks to a whole lot of “fur-farming, the exotic pet trade, hunting and trapping, industrial animal agriculture, backyard chicken production, roadside zoos, and more” combined with lax regulations — is a prime location for the emergence of the next zoonotic pandemic?

You got it (assuming you figured out it was the USA).

All of the animal industries the report examines are far less regulated than they should be and far less than the public believes they currently are. Today, wide regulatory gaps exist through which pathogens can spillover and spread, leaving the public constantly vulnerable to zoonotic disease.

Gonna have an evolution

An artificial life form created at Indiana University — essentially cells with the absolute minimum amount of DNA needed to survive — is evolving despite “no wiggle room for mutations”. It really shouldn’t be able to.

“It appears there’s something about life that’s really robust. We can simplify it down to just the bare essentials, but that doesn’t stop evolution from going to work.”