Flu gets a second wind

Covid, flu, and RSV activity has been declining for several weeks, but now flu numbers have started to creep up again. And guess which state is on the short list of those with very high activity? Also:

CDC estimates that there have been at least 20 million illnesses, 230,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths from flu so far this season.

Perspective: That’s the equivalent of having 93 Boeing 737s crash with no survivors — just this season. From the flu. (That’s almost six plane crashes every week.)

Covid note

There’s a new variant of Covid appearing, in case you need to fill a space on your bingo card. This one’s called BA.2.87, and “is probably the most divergence [sic] lineage identified this year.”

Opioid treatment rules relaxed

During the pandemic, the feds made it easier for opioid addicts people addicted to opioids to get the treatment they needed. They relaxed the rules so patients didn’t need to see a provider in person to get methadone or buprenorphine.

HHS (specifically the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) has now made that rule final — the first time in 20 years there’s been a change like this. Patients will be able to take methadone home, and they’ll be able to start getting methadone or buprenorphine via telehealth rather than in person.

Federal health officials cited reports that those flexibilities increased treatment and patients’ satisfaction with their care without notable increases in diversion of methadone, which itself is an opioid.

Speaking of opioid addiction

Pregnant women who for obvious reasons want to get off opioids are slightly better off using buprenorphine than methadone, according to a study out of Harvard’s and Stanford’s schools of medicine.

Both, of course, are better for the baby than taking opioids, so if methadone is the only option, methadone is what they should take.

Blocking tumors’ accelerator pedal

In three quarters of cancers, a protein called MYC is like a nitro boost for tumor cells. As a UC Riverside researcher put it, “Normally, MYC’s activity is strictly controlled. In cancer cells, it becomes hyper active, and is not regulated properly.”

Not regulated properly? Challenge accepted.

The issue is that MYC is kind of shapeless, so it’s hard to find a structure to attack with drugs — it’s like trying to get a stranglehold on the Blob. But the Riversidians have developed and improved a peptide that binds to MYC using (as you may have guessed) sub-micro-molar affinity.

Once the peptide is in the cell, it will bind to MYC, changing MYC’s physical properties and preventing it from performing transcription activities.

They need to work on the delivery system before they can start on the road to making this into an actual drug that might keep tumors at bay.

For antipsychotics, a needle beats a pill

When someone is hospitalized for schizophrenia, they’re often given antipsychotics when they’re discharged. Those can be in the form of a long-acting injection or a daily pill.

But it seems that taking the pills is four times more likely to lead to readmission.

After 30 days, the readmission rate was 8.3 percent among patients who received oral medication and 1.9 percent among patients who received long-acting injections, which can last anywhere from two weeks to six months.

That’s what Rutgers researchers found in a new study of 30-day readmission rates at one hospital. Sure, current treatment guidelines say that injections are preferred, but patients often opt for pills instead for either financial reasons (i.e., insurance coverage) or simple fear of needles. But would they still make that choice if they knew how big the difference was?

Lawsuit to watch

PediaSure can help kids grow taller according to its maker, Abbott. Heck, it’s “clinically proven”! But a New York City grandmother is suing the company, saying that not only is that nonsense, but that the company knew it too. (She “cited three studies funded by Abbott itself that found no connection between PediaSure and growth in height.”)

Grandma says all PediaSure did was make her grandson overweight. Abbott said the case was without merit, but a judge said there was certainly enough evidence that it could go to trial. Get your popcorn.

Write on

The Non-Pharm Long Read: Oh Come On edition

Warning: Adults only, please.

What do you get when you mix screwy medical advice, conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and probably a bit too much time on 4Chan? You get the anti-masturbation movement. No, seriously.