Two pounds off, one pound back

You might think that someone could use one of the new GLP-1 weight loss drugs, lose the pounds (or kilos^* if they’re overseas), then — pinkie promise! — lead a healthy lifestyle and keep the weight off.

Nope! A new two-year study of tirzepatide confirms the anecdotes: It “found that people who stopped taking the medication regained much of that weight within a year.”

• People who stayed on tirzepatide: ended up losing an additional 5.5% of their weight (after losing about 21% in the first 36 weeks).
• People who stopped: regained 14% — about half what they lost.

Big caveat: The study was sponsored by Eli Lilly, so the Weill Cornell Med researchers talk a lot about how important it is to stay on drugs like Lilly’s Zepbound^®.

^* Or “stone” if they’re British — what’s up with that?

A different diabetes cause

Researchers at Case Western think they’ve found a new cause of diabetes. It’s related to an enzyme called SNO-CoA-assisted nitrosylase (SCAN) that attaches nitric oxide to proteins. Normally it helps insulin work, but too much of the enzyme ends up blocking insulin receptors.

Mouse models without the SCAN enzyme appeared to be shielded from diabetes, suggesting that too much nitric oxide on proteins may be a cause of such diseases.

They also think “nitric oxide binding excessively to key proteins” could be a cause of a lot of diseases, but it’s hard to target nitric oxide directly. By discovering the role of SCAN they think they might have a treatment path for a variety of ills.

“Unsupported” drug prices

Drugmakers keeps saying they set their prices high to pay for research and development. Even if that was true, it doesn’t explain annual price hikes, does it?

The good folks at the In­sti­tute for for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Re­view have published their annual report on 10 drugs with ‘price in­creas­es un­sup­port­ed by new clin­i­cal da­ta.’

They chose drugs among the 250 biggest-selling drugs in the US (by sales rev­enue), and that had their prices raised by more than 2% above the rate of inflation.

Of the 10 drugs that met those criteria, eight had no additional evidence to support their price hikes, and just those eight “ac­count­ed for $1.27 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al costs over one year.”

One bit of good news: This was calculated before CMS rebates became law in January. These days drug makers have to refund the government for any drugs that they’ve tried to raise the price of faster than inflation. So we’re being gouged, just not as deep.

Respiratory virus sitrep

Covid-19: Hospitalizations are up for the fourth straight week thanks to the new JN.1 “Pirola” variant — up more than 17% in a week, in fact.

Flu: Cases continue to increase, especially in the South and Southwest. “CDC estimates that there have been at least 2.6 million illnesses, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 1,600 deaths from flu so far this season.”

RSV: Cases are finally started to decrease, although after a few months of increases it’s hard to tell if this is a blip or the start of a trend.

The other cough

Apparently not every cough is related to flu, Covid, or RSV. Who knew? There’s apparently “an uptick in anecdotal reports of a brutal, long-lasting cough going around,” and physicians are reporting more cases of a lingering cough that’s not related to the Big Three.

“This chest cold has a real junky and persistent cough” […] They’ve tested negative for the flu and COVID. Plus, they aren’t responding to antibiotics, which suggests it’s “purely viral.”

No one has yet bothered to test for every possibility, so at the moment it’s likely “caused by the regular viruses that cause colds like rhinovirus, non-COVID coronaviruses or adenoviruses.”

Reps want more kids in drug studies

To make sure that drugs in development for rare disease will be available for kids more quickly, two US representatives have introduced a bill that would require pharma companies to include kids in their studies.

Then to add a little extra incentive, it would allow the FDA to penalize the companies when they don’t complete required pediatric studies on time. Oh, and it would double the funding of the NIH’s Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act program (from $25 million to $50 million).

And the best part? It’s a bipartisan bill.

Headlines that make you go “Hmmm”

“Drinking During the Super Bowl Linked to More Aggressive Parenting Among Mothers, Unlike Drinking on Valentine’s Day”