Weight loss: Shake it, shake it up

You know what’s missing from all those new weight loss drugs? Machinery. Fear not, as MIT engineers are here to help. They’ve developed a vibrating pill that tricks your* stomach into thinking it’s full.

“I wondered if we could activate stretch receptors in the stomach by vibrating them and having them perceive that the entire stomach has been expanded, to create an illusory sense of distension that could modulate hormones and eating patterns.”

So said the bioengineer who led the development team, and who then discovered that yes, yes it could. “The researchers tracked hormone levels during the periods when the device was vibrating and found that they mirrored the hormone release patterns seen following a meal, even when the animals had fasted.”

Next up: Trying to scale production so they can start human trials.

^*  Hopefully not yours. Maybe a grad student’s.

Tylenol, pregnancy, and language

Pregnant women might want to be careful with taking acetaminophen (aka paracetamol, aka Tylenol). It can, it seems, delay the child’s language development — especially for boys and especially if Mom took it during her third trimester.

Caveat, per the Northeastern researchers who discovered this: It may not actually be the acetaminophen; it could be whatever is giving Mom a reason to take it, e.g., a fever or illness. So … more research is needed.

Statins in the news

Statins vs asthma

Besides lowering cholesterol, statins also have an anti-inflammatory effect, so UC Davis pulmonologists thought they might work against asthma. But … no joy. At least not with oral statins.

But when you take the liver out of the equation by giving the statins in an inhaled form, they work as a bronchodilator — just via a different mechanism than steroids.

You want the science?

Instead of working through the cell surface receptors, the statins target the signaling cascade inside the ASM [airway smooth muscle]. This targeting happens partially through the cholesterol pathway and partially through cholesterol-independent pathways related to ASM’s protein structure.

Considering the side effects of steroids, and of course the excitement of finding a new treatment, the UC folks are hoping to move to human trials Real Soon Now, for both asthma and COPD.

Pairing statins with hormones

When women take hormone treatment after menopause, there’s a risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE)— dangerous blood clots that can occur with certain hormones.

Good news: Statins, it seems, can help reduce that risk, based on data from 224,000 women crunched by University of Texas Medical Branch researchers.

That not only means the obvious (women taking hormone therapy can reduce their risk), but that women who have avoided hormone treatment because of the clotting risk might be able to use hormones after all, as long as they also take a statin.

Side note: These same researchers found that the risk of VTE was greater with oral estrogen than with other delivery mechanisms. For what that’s worth.

The Long Read: Vitamin D Reality Check edition

There’s been a lot of hype about what vitamin D can do for a body (and we’ve sung that song a few times ourselves). But a lot of that hype has been, well, hype.

Thus an article in Scientific American goes into the rise and fall of vitamin D as all-purpose hero. Much of the “evidence” was based on observational studies, and when a randomized controlled study was run, the results were very different:

Not only did vitamin D not make a dent in rates of cancer or heart disease, but the trial also found that vitamin D did not prevent falls, improve cognitive function, reduce atrial fibrillation, change body composition, reduce migraine frequency, improve stroke outcomes, decrease age-related macular degeneration, reduce knee pain or even reduce the risk of bone fractures.

Toss in some confusion about the right amount a person should have (and the fact that the head of the group that wrote the vitamin D guidelines “has received at least $100,000 from various companies involved in making vitamin D supplements and tests”) and it turns out that we might be doing just fine, D-wise.

“Avoid bad decisions” is Captain Obvious’s resolution

“‘Morning After’ Pill Sales Surge on Day After New Year’s Eve”.

So this is a class 1 recall

Philips, fresh off recalls and lawsuits over its CPAP machines, has announced another one. This time it’s MRI machines … because of the risk of explosions.

Not only could an explosion be strong enough to cause significant damage to the scanner and its surroundings, but it could also result in chemical exposure and suffocation by displacing the room’s oxygen. Dangerous flying debris could cause brain and eye injuries, lacerations, fractures, bruises and even death, the FDA said.

“The company has told customers to immediately stop using their affected Panorama systems.” Ya think?