PLEASE NOTE: GPhA Buzz will be on vacation next week, May 5–11, but we’ll return to fill your inbox with pharma/medical goodies the following week.

Sleep and diabetes

“Go to sleep or you might end up with diabetes like that man on TV.”

Eat as healthily as you like, if you don’t get enough sleep you’re increasing your risk of type 2 diabetes.

Using data of 250,000 people over 12 ½ years, Swedish and Chinese researchers found that people sleeping for fewer than 6 hours a night “had a notably higher risk of developing T2D compared with those with 7 to 8 hours of sleep.” And the less sleep they got, the higher the risk — even among adults with healthy eating habits.

If they’re women, though…

They can chow down on avocados. A study by Mexican researchers found that “Females who ate 30-38 grams of avocado had significantly lower odds of diabetes than those who did not consume avocados.” But don’t hit the guac just yet (except with a few grains of salt) — the research was out of California’s Avocado Nutrition Center.

Bird flu news

It’s now been found in a dolphin. That is all.

But there’s good flu news, too

The US had a long flu season this year, but thankfully it wasn’t a severe one and it’s just about over. That’s cold comfort to the friends and families of the 24,000 people (including 148 children) who died from the flu, but it’s a lot lower number than it could have been.

Even at the peak, “we felt strained but never over-capacitated” said Dr. Jay Varkey, infectious disease physician at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital. “It felt more like a traditional respiratory virus season than when we had massive upswings of COVID confounding it.”

US birth rate keeps dropping

The birth rate in the US has been going down for decades, and after a brief pandemic “baby bump,” it’s dropped again — to the point where it’s well below the “replacement rate.” In other words, the population will begin shrinking.

[T]his continued decline comes at a time of growing concern over access to reproductive healthcare and intensely politicized debate over abortion access, as well as concerns over the economy, a lack of rights for working parents and growing fears over the future of the planet.

It’ll be interesting to see how debates about reproductive and immigration issues are affected. After all, if we aren’t making enough Americans, that “portends sluggish growth, an aging population and an economy that one day may struggle to find enough workers to fill jobs and pay the taxes required to maintain the state and care for a large elderly population.”

A “new” med for UTIs

The FDA has approved Utility Therapeutics’ Pivya — aka pivmecillinam — to treat uncomplicated urinary tract infections. This is the first “new” antibiotic approved for UTIs in something like 20 years. (New in quotes because Pivya is an old drug that’s been used in Canada and Europe for 40 years.)

Pivya is a narrow-spectrum antibiotic […] For this reason, Pivya is only approved for use in UTIs caused by Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, and Staphylococcus saprophyticus.

11 new drugs in shortage

(Links go to more details from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists or the FDA.)

Answering the hard questions

A British biochemist tackles the issue: “Does ejaculating often reduce your risk of prostate cancer?”

(Oh come now, we’re not going to spoil it by giving you the answer.)