Covid options are lacking

So you get Covid. Blech. If you’re not at high risk for hospitalization, you’re (technically) not eligible for Paxlovid; there’s not a lot for you to do even if the symptoms are bad. You can rest, or you can go about your life potentially putting others at risk. There’s no in-between.

Well, not in the US.

In other parts of the world there are anti-virals other than Paxlovid that cut the duration of symptoms (and contagiousness) available to the public.

Simnotrelvir, for example, is used in China and helps people recover faster, but its maker hasn’t applied for FDA approval. Ensitrelvir is available in Japan where it also shortens the duration of some symptoms and also seems to cut the risk of long Covid — that’s according to an Emory researcher, who also says it might lead to fewer “rebounds.”

Ensitrelvir is on the FDA’s fast-track approval pipeline, but there’s no way to know if or when it could be available. Meanwhile the risk of Paxlovid losing its effectiveness hangs over it all.

ICYMI: ADHD med recall

Azurity Pharmaceuticals has recalled one lot of its Zenzedi (dextroamphetamine sulfate) ADHD meds because the bottles contain carbinoxamine. Oops.

The recalled lot has the lot number F230169A and an expiration date of June 2025. Azurity said it has not received any reports of serious injury related to the medication swap.

Shout-out to the Nebraska pharmacist who noticed the problem.

A genetic test for GLP-1 effectiveness

(Ugh. That headline sounds like an academic paper. Sorry.)

Anyway, there are apparently a few reasons someone can eat too much, and according to researchers from the Mayo Clinic, the big ones are…

“Hungry gut” patients, who tend to snack between meals because food moves quickly through their digestive tract, and “hungry brain” patients, who tend to need additional calories to feel full.

(There are also “emotional eaters” and those with a slow metabolism.)

A genetic test those Mayoians developed can tell which category a patient belongs to, and that’s important: GLP-1 drugs work best with “hungry gut” patients, while “hungry brain” patients will probably do better with Qsymia.

“In our studies, if we find someone who is hungry brain-positive and put them on Qsymia, we get better [results]. And while Wegovy is $1,259 a month, you can get with a coupon Qysmia for $100 and it doesn’t have those ugly side effects.”

As one of them points out, although the test costs about $500, it can save a lot more in the long run. “‘We’re not going to solve the obesity crisis by treating 100 million people’ with drugs like Wegovy.”

Alzheimer’s transmitted (sort of) human to human

From the 1960s to the 1980s, some children were given cadaver-derived human growth hormone before it was pulled from the market because of potential contamination that led to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

That contamination? Amyloid-beta protein. The same stuff that’s associated with Alzheimer’s. In fact, that contamination half a century ago didn’t just cause some patients to develop CJD. It also transmitted Alzheimer’s disease.

British researchers found this to be the case in a handful of patients who, decades later, developed Alzheimer’s. It’s disturbing because it …

… provides the first evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in living people that appears to have been medically acquired and due to transmission of the amyloid-beta protein.

To be clear, those people aren’t contagious. Still, it shows that the protein buildup that characterizes Alzheimer’s can be transferred from person to person — even if one of them is dead.

Diseases on the rise

Measles

Measles cases continue to appear in the county, and the CDC “urged vigilance among health providers across the U.S.” to watch for symptoms among their patients.

Officials have tracked seven cases of measles being brought into the country and two U.S. outbreaks with more than five cases each, the CDC said. Most cases were in young children and adolescents who had not received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine even though they were eligible.

As one expert pointed out, “We’re going to see more kids seriously ill, hospitalized and even die. And what’s so tragic about this, these are all preventable.”

Syphilis

Syphilis in the US is at the highest level since 1950. Whoa.

The US saw more than 207,000 cases of syphilis in 2022 — that’s up 17% from the previous year, and the infection rate (i.e., cases per 100k people) jumped 9%. More heterosexual people are getting it, and so are more newborns. Any way you look at it, it’s a problem.

The good news: The rate of new gonorrhea cases fell for the first time in a decade, and chlamydia cases remain relatively flat. Why the discrepancy? They don’t know.

Asthma

There’s more asthma showing up in teenagers in states where marijuana is legal. It’s not that the teens are smoking more (there’s mixed evidence of that) — rather that they’re being exposed to more secondhand smoke, as non-tobacco smokers are indulging a bit of weed.

Captain Obvious does his cardio

“A healthy lifestyle combined with statin use can improve life expectancy.”