Ozempic-sized meals

Nestlé, one of the world’s largest food companies, is jumping on the GLP-1 bandwagon. It’s releasing a new line of $5 pizzas, pastas, and sandwiches “designed specifically for people taking drugs such as Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss.”

ICYMI: When fish oil hurts

Fish oil supplements to get those omega-3s and protect your heart? Turns out it might not be a good idea. Well, maybe.

A Chinese-American study found that rather than doing good for your heart, “people with no history of heart problems who regularly took fish oil supplements actually increased their risk of atrial fibrillation.” (It’s based on 12 years of data from 415,000 people in the UK, so it’s not a small sample size.)

That first part is the nuance: This only applies to people without heart issues. For those who already have heart disease, “regular fish oil supplementation was linked to a 15% lower risk of progressing to more severe heart problems.”

Big ol’ caveats: This was just observational, and it doesn’t take into account the dose that patients were using. (Higher doses had already been associated with heart issues.) Nor does it determine whether the fish oil is the issue or the omega-3s — what about people who take algae-based versions?

Plant virus vs metastases

The cowpea mosaic virus might not be good for black-eyed peas, but it has the mouse world a-tizzy. Scientists at UC San Diego say a treatment made from the virus “is effective at protecting against a broad range of metastatic cancers in mice.”

By “broad range” they meant colon, ovarian, melanoma, and breast cancer. And note that “protecting” part — it prevents tumors, rather than eliminating them. “We are providing a systemic treatment to wake up the body’s immune system to eliminate the disease before metastases even form and settle,” said the lead researcher.

That’s a useful tool post-tumor surgery, when there’s always a risk of “metastatic seeding” from bits of the tumor that a surgeon missed.

Next up: Expanding the testing beyond mice.

Thems’ offers cheap semaglutide

Hims and Hers, the telehealth company, says it’s going to start selling compounded versions of semaglutide … for $199 a month, cash only. It can do this while the drug is in shortage — after that, the FDA won’t allow compounded versions of the drug.

Axios made much of the Hims and Hers stock price going up, but once the shortage is over that’s gonna take a hit. (And don’t forget the patients who suddenly lose that $199 price and realize they have to keep taking semaglutide….) We’re not suggesting you short-sell the stock, but ….

Captain Obvious knows everything floats down there

“Sewage overflows linked to increase in gastrointestinal illnesses”

Repeat after me

Getting repeated Covid-19 vaccines does not, as some scientists worried, mean the shots become less effective. (The thought was that immunity from the first shots might reduce the effect of later ones.) In fact, Washington University School of Medicine researchers found that more shots might actually be merrier.

[P]eople who were repeatedly vaccinated for COVID-19 — initially receiving shots aimed at the original variant, followed by boosters and updated vaccines targeting variants — generated antibodies capable of neutralizing a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants and even some distantly related coronaviruses.

It’s possible that getting regular Covid shots might not only protect against existing Covid variants, but eventually help the body build immunity to new variants as well as “some other coronavirus species as well, even ones that have not yet emerged to infect humans.”

What about the flu vaccine?

If immunity can wane from multiple vaccinations, what about the flu vaccine that we get every year? Chinese scientists looked at about 4,000 patients — half who got the flu, half who didn’t — over four flu seasons. They found that nope, repeated vaccinations didn’t reduce the effectiveness. (They also found that having been vaccinated in the last two seasons helped reduce the risk in the current year, but obviously not as much as getting the latest shot.)

Still nothing to see here

A Michigan farm worker has become the second person to contract H5N1 bird flu from working with cows.