Supplementing supplements

Healthcare folks like you know that folic acid is important for pregnant mothers, and supplements are usually recommended. Ditto for taking a multivitamin. But that might not be enough.

A new study out of Australia found that standard supplements given to expectant moms, even the ones that include folic acid, didn’t give the women as much as they needed, especially riboflavin and vitamins B6.

By giving the women an “enhanced” supplement, the Aussies also found that women’s vitamin B12 levels stayed nicely elevated for at least six months after giving birth. (“This is probably important for the mother’s ability to supply her baby with vitamin B12 if she breastfeeds.”)

Takeaway: Pregnant women will likely need more than a standard multivitamin, so it’s worth either adding an extra jolt of riboflavin, B6, and B12 (and vitamin D, too), or asking their OB/Gyn for a blood test to check their micronutrient levels.

Captain Obvious tips his hat to Nancy Reagan

“It’s OK To Decline An Invitation, Study Says”

I refuse to write a “good vibrations” headline

Aminocyanine is a dye used for medical imaging, but Rice University scientists found it has an interesting property: When exposed to near-infrared light, the molecules vibrate in unison.

That vibration, it seems, can destroy cancer cells by rupturing their cell membranes — what they call a “molecular jackhammer.” And the cool thing about near-infrared light is that it can penetrate the body deep enough to activate the aminocyanine.

According to the Rice researchers…

[T]he method had a 99 percent efficiency against lab cultures of human melanoma cells, and half of the mice with melanoma tumors became cancer-free after treatment.

“This study,” said the lead researcher, “is about a different way to treat cancer using mechanical forces at the molecular scale.”

Psst … our anonymous working-conditions survey is still open

In case you haven’t weighed in, you still can take our anonymous survey on working conditions at your pharmacy. (And when we say “anonymous,” we mean it — we do not want any personal information, period.)

It’s all of four questions, plus a chance to tell us your story, if you like.

We want to share this information with the Board of Pharmacy so it will be crystal clear the kind of conditions Georgia pharmacists and technicians are dealing with.

Just head over to GPha.org/workingconditions and take the 5 minutes to share your story.

Old antibiotic, new target

Erythromycin has an interesting side effect (if that’s the right term). It can apparently help RNA when that RNA has trouble doing its splicing job. What makes that interesting is that ‘dysregulated splicing’ is a hallmark of muscular dystrophy.

In other words, erythromycin could become part of the arsenal against MS. Japanese researchers found that…

”…erythromycin reduces the toxicity of abnormal RNA and ameliorates the aberrant splicing and motor phenotype in DM1 model mice.”

They then moved to a small human trial, just to see. Good news, there: “[S]everal patients who received erythromycin showed major improvements in splicing markers.” This isn’t a huge breakthrough (and more research is needed), but they think it means erythromycin could help some patients, and it may lead to a new avenue of therapy.