Fast, simple, accurate prostate cancer test

In most cases, prostate cancer is something men die with, not of, but there’s always the risk of the fast-moving deadly kind. You want to catch it early. PSA blood tests are helpful, but they’re not shiny enough to be a gold standard.

Now there’s something better: a simple saliva test developed by British scientists. The mechanism itself isn’t new — it’s essentially a DNA test — but what it tests for is: It looks at 130 genetic variations that are linked to prostate cancer.

In those with the highest genetic risk, the test returned fewer false positives than the PSA test, picked up people with cancer who would have been missed by the PSA test alone, and picked up a higher proportion of the aggressive cancers than the PSA test, the ICR said.

Oh, and it also beat MRI tests for IDing the cancer, too.

Antibiotic kills only the bad bacteria

Here’s a new antibiotic with an important trick up its sleeve: Called lolamicin^*, it kills even drug-resistant infections but without killing the good gut bacteria.

How so? It’s about a particular lipoprotein-transport system that, in a bit of really good luck, happens to be “genetically different in pathogenic and beneficial microbes.”

Treatment with standard antibiotics amoxicillin and clindamycin caused dramatic shifts in the overall structure of bacterial populations in the mouse gut, diminishing the abundance [of] several beneficial microbial groups, the team found.

“In contrast, lolamicin did not cause any drastic changes in taxonomic composition over the course of the three-day treatment or the following 28-day recovery.”

Good news, for sure. The bad news is that it’s many years away from even being a testable drug.

^* L-O-L-A lola(micin)

Post-partum pill: in case you’re curious

It’s been a bit more than six months since zuranolone, the first drug ever approved for postpartum depression, became available.

The results so far: Anecdotally, patients are really liking it. It seems to work with a minimum of side effects (e.g., drowsiness). The big issue, though, is getting insurance to pay for it without a lot of hoop-jumping.

Med chooser: A great idea not fully realized

You know how finding an antidepressant that works is so hit or miss? George Mason University scientists claim to have an answer. It’s an AI-based tool (natch) that asks a handful of questions about the patient, then compares those answers to its database of 3.7 million patients who took 10.2 million antidepressants.

“The system recommends to the patient what has worked for at least 100 other patients with the same exact^* relevant medical history,” said the team’s leader.

It’s available to use right now: Check out MeAgainMeds. (They’re clear that this is experimental — that “We are not providing medical advice, we are providing options to discuss with your physician.”)

In reality…

Sounds cool, right? Unfortunately, our quick and dirty test gave pretty useless results. For starters, it only asks age, gender, what antidepressants you’ve tried, and whether they worked.

In our test case, a middle-aged man who tried bupropion and paroxetine without success was told that “Uncommon or Multiple Antidepressants gives you the highest chances for remission.” Not helpful. And another test where the “patient” reported multiple failures was given bupropion as a suggestion … despite indicating that bupropion had been ineffective.

So it’s a cool press release, but not the most helpful tool in the toolbox.

^* Not just the same, not just the exact, but the same exact.

US, Moderna prepare for bird flu — mRNA style

It looks like the federal government is going to be funding the late-stage testing of Moderna’s bird flu mRNA vaccine. The money — “tens of millions of dollars” — will be coming from BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The goal, of course, is to get ahead of H5N1 for when it makes the jump to humans in a big way.

So far, only three people have caught bird flu from other animals (cows), but we all know that viruses tend to mutate. For its part, Moderna says, “The H5 vaccines in this trial cover the same clade as the currently circulating variant in the United States.”

Stress and dry eye

Stress has a lot of downsides, and one you may not realize is that it can make dry eyes worse. How?

• Stress leads to inflammation and white blood cells rushing to the eye surface.
• It can increase sensitivity to pain and discomfort, making symptoms stand out.
• It can cause you to have sleep issues, and sleep meds can make it worse.

The only solution — aside from reducing stress — is eyedrops, early and often.

Weird syphilis

You know the typical symptoms of syphilis, so I won’t repeat them here. (Eew.) But lately some new, different ones are cropping up more often and doctors don’t always recognize them.

That’s in part because sometimes the docs in question are ophthalmologists. The new symptoms are all eye-related, and they’re appearing without the typical ones showing up first.

For some, the world suddenly goes blurry. Others describe it as having a dust storm in your eyes, or being shaken up in a snow globe. People might see flashing lights or black spots drifting through their field of vision, or acquire a sudden sensitivity to light, worse than walking into the sunlight after having your eyes dilated.

When there are no other symptoms, it’s easy to assume something else is at work, like an eye infection or sinus issue. But left untreated, eye syphilis can lead to blindness. The question is, is this just statistics at work with all the new cases, or is this a different strain? Time will tell.

Don’t let the raccoons know about this

If, like most of us, you’ve wondered how easy it would be to get used to having a second thumb, wonder no more. Researchers at Cambridge tested a prosthetic additional thumb on members of the public and found that most people were comfortable using it almost immediately: “98% of participants were able to successfully manipulate objects using the Third Thumb during the first minute of use.”