More proof the End Times are here

Laugh? Cry? Bang your head against the wall? Your call: There is a nationwide laxative shortage that’s even affecting hospitals because (deep breath) TikTok ‘influencers’ are pushing laxatives as a ‘budget Ozempic’.

(Wife of Buzz: “Next up: Strong surge in the bidet market.”)

[ I considered putting an image here, but honestly there’s nothing that would be in remotely good taste. ]

Well that didn’t take long

The very day the FDA concluded that phenylephrine is ineffective as a decongestant, a lawsuit was filed against Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble saying they should have known their products didn’t really clear stuffy noses.

The plaintiff, Steve Audelo, said he bought Johnson & Johnson’s Sudafed PE and Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion, and Procter & Gamble’s Vicks NyQuil, based on the companies’ “false and deceptive” claims that the products worked. […] He is seeking at least $5 million in damages for people who bought the products in the United States in the last five years.

(Before it requires phenylephrine products to be pulled, the FDA is asking the public whether it still wants to be able to buy ineffective decongestants.)

Georgia’s health emergency

In case you’re not aware, HHS has declared a public health emergency in Georgia in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia. This “gives the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) health care providers and suppliers greater flexibility in meeting emergency health needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.”

The gist: Penalties are suspended for not following certain HIPAA privacy regulations but “only with respect to hospitals in the designated geographic area that have hospital disaster protocols in operation during the time the waiver is in effect.”

The PHE also means deadlines for some of the “required activities” are waived in case hurricane damage makes it hard to send in certain forms and such.

If you’re affected, do not use those previous two paragraphs as a guide. The details that you need are here, courtesy of HHS.

AIP meets and greets

l to r: Marquess, Sherrer, Hamrick

GPhA’s AIP does a lot of good for its members, but it can do even more when it partners with organizations like CPESN. That’s why AIP VP Jonathan Marquess met with pharmacist and CPESN director Jonathan Hamrick, PharmD to discuss ways they could work together to help AIP members. (As a bonus, Marquess also got a chance to meet face-to-face with GPhA board member Thomas Sherrer.)

Night owls in danger

The Brigham and Women’s Hospital headline says it all: “‘Night Owls’ More Likely Than ‘Early Birds’ to Develop Diabetes.” Well, night women; the study is based on data from almost 64,000 women over the course of 8 years.

Regardless, it’s sad. Normal people (that is, those who don’t enjoy getting up at the crack of dawn^*) have — get this — “a 19 percent increased risk of diabetes after accounting for lifestyle factors.”

Among those in the study with the healthiest lifestyles, only 6 percent had evening chronotypes. Among those with the unhealthiest lifestyles, 25 percent were evening chronotypes.

* Kidding! Kidding! 

A different antidepressant mechanism

Antidepressants may not only affect how serotonin or norepinephrine is absorbed, but could even reduce a patient’s negative memories. Or, as the Rice University psychology researchers put it, the drugs “shift memory dynamics toward healthy function.”

In (very) rough strokes the idea is that antidepressants might keep the brain from retaining more detail about negative memories than about positive ones (‘enhanced discrimination of negative stimuli’) —which is apparently something a misbehaving brain can do.

Why don’t diabetics’ wounds heal?

It’s common knowledge that having diabetes also means some wounds take longer to heal, but only now has the mechanism been uncovered. Thank you, University of Pittsburgh scientists.

The Buzz Rule: In 95% of cases, the problem is either inflammation or gut bacteria. In this case it’s inflammation.

Normally a wound has some inflammation as macrophages do their healing bit. Eventually, though, the cells involved send a signal via exosomes: ‘Okay, you can chill now’ and the macrophages stand down. The inflammation goes away.

But in diabetics, those exosomes are defective — i.e., the messenger loses some of the messages in route, like a Confederate soldier before the Battle of Antietam^*. The macrophages don’t stop, the inflammation continues, and the wound doesn’t heal.

“If signals contained within exosomes are correct, the macrophage knows how to resolve inflammation in the wound. In diabetes, crosstalk between keratinocytes and macrophages is compromised, so macrophages keep driving inflammation and the wound can’t heal.”

* Google “Special Order 191” if you’re confused.