Diseases of age: point of order

With age comes a host of diseases, and three of the more deadly ones are congestive heart failure, diabetes, and psychosis.

British statisticians found a surprising bit of info: The order that you get those diseases can affect your life expectancy in a big way.

People who developed the same conditions in a different order were less affected. So, for example, a 50-year-old man in an area of average deprivation could experience a difference in his life expectancy of more than 10 years, depending on the order in which he developed the three diseases.

The worst order: diabetes → psychosis → congestive heart failure, which means an average loss of 13 years in life expectancy. The combination of those diseases also makes a big difference, i.e., “For example, people diagnosed with psychosis and diabetes – in any order – had a higher life expectancy than those diagnosed with psychosis alone.”

The last of GPHA’s 2023 certificate programs are Coming up

Get the point-of-care testing training your mom would want you to have

Point-of-care testing is a big business these days, with OTC tests for every drug, disease, and condition you can think of, from marijuana use to lycanthropy.

Be ready to help your customers when they turn into patients. Don’t just know the ins and outs of point-of-care testing, have the certificate on the wall to prove it.

Lucky for you, GPhA is offering the gold-standard class: the NASPA Pharmacy-based Point-of-Care Testing Certificate Program.

Earn 20 hours of CPE with the combo of the in-person and home-study program for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

The live portion is Sunday, October 8, from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm in the GPhA Sandy Springs classroom [map]. (The home portion is, you know, at home.)

The hot immunization program is back

It’s popular for a reason! You’ll walk — nay, strut out of the class with comprehensive knowledge, skills, and resources to provide patients with the best immunization services, period. It’s APhA’s Pharmacy-Based Immunization Delivery: A Certificate Program for Pharmacists.

• 20 hours of CE (!)
• the latest immunization skills taught by experts you know
• a certificate to impress your patients (and your boss)

That 20 hours of CE includes the live seminar with hands-on training and assessment, plus online self study. The seminar and training is Sunday, December 3, 2023 from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm in the GPhA classroom in Sandy Springs [map].

There are more immunizations available than ever, so be sure you’re up to date (and can prove it, too).

RSV vax for fetuses

In a world first, the FDA has approved Pfizer’s Abrysvo RSV vaccine to protect babies in the womb for up to about 6 months. It’s already approved for people 60 and over. The vaccine generates antibodies in pregnant women, who then pass ’em on to the fetuses.

The maternal antibodies disappear over time, but the goal is to give newborns enough protection to get through their first RSV season without developing severe illness.

Two more steps before the shots roll out: The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices must weigh in^*, and then CDC Director Mandy Cohen needs to sign off.

^* It’s expected to call a special meeting to do so, rather than wait till the regular October meeting. What, you were looking for something snarky just because this is a footnote?

The heat is on

The Georgia Department of Health is warning everyone to take extra care with the extremely high temps and humidity coming these next few days — over 90° without considering the heat index. Get that sunscreen and those water bottles on the end caps, folks.

Find the genes, find the illness

When kids are sick, it can take a while to figure out exactly what’s causing it. Even when “a while” is a few hours, that means going home from the doctor without a diagnosis or prescription.

British researchers and an international team, though, say they have proof-of-concept of a new test that’s virtually instant and can identify the most common childhood diseases by determining what genes have been turned on or off. Different diseases, it turns out, cause different gene expression.

“This body of work has enabled us to identify the molecular signature of a wide range of diseases based on 161 genes, out of thousands of genes in the human genome.”

Three vaccines vs Eris

Novavax joins Pfizer and Moderna saying that its Covid vaccine — which is protein-based rather than mRNA-based — works against the Eris subvariant. The questions remain: Will the new Pi variant take over from Omicron, and what will that mean?

A probiotic vs MS

If you have a mouse with multiple sclerosis, you’re probably considering various treatments. Here’s a new one: Harvard researchers engineered a probiotic that they say can “suppress autoimmunity in the brain” — the condition that often leads to diseases like MS.

“[T]he technique,” they say, “offered a more precise way to target brain inflammation, while minimizing negative side effects compared with standard therapies.”

The idea is to put a “brake” on the immune system — something that the bodies of people with autoimmune diseases often can’t do.

The researchers also found that this biochemical brake can be activated with lactate, a molecule involved in many metabolic processes. Next, the researchers genetically engineered probiotic bacteria to produce lactate.

“By using synthetic biology to get probiotic bacteria to produce specific compounds relevant to diseases, we can take the benefits of probiotics and amp them up to the max.”