Tongue news

If you thought there were only four uses for your tongue, turns out you’re wrong. You can now add “diagnosis” to the list.

If you let the right computer look at your tongue (and get over the “Eew” factor) it can identify a whole bunch of diseases, including “diabetes, stroke, anemia, asthma, liver and gallbladder conditions, Covid-19, and a range of vascular and gastrointestinal issues.”

That’s what engineers in Australia and Iraq found after they trained an AI on tongue images of people with various conditions. Eventually the computer was able to offer a diagnosis just by looking at tongues — and had a 98% accuracy rate.

“The colour, shape and thickness of the tongue can reveal a litany of health conditions.”

Want more tongue?

Even without a computer, you can still tell if someone has some disease just by looking at their tongue. A British neuroscientist explains how in “Black hairy, strawberry and geographic – what the state of your tongue can say about your health”.

Mail-order summer blues

Fun fact: Federal rules for storing meds don’t apply to mail-order delivery. That means that, as summers get hotter, lots of mail-order meds could be having problems.

[T]he temperatures inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, according to drivers — far exceeding the range of 68 to 77 degrees recommended by the national organization that sets standards for drug handling.

The mail-order folks say they use temperature-controlled packaging, but when researchers actually tested that with thermometers, they “found that the packages had spent more than two-thirds of their transit time outside the appropriate temperature range, ‘regardless of the shipping method, carrier, or season’.”

Unexpected diseases

Parvovirus: The CDC has issued an alert after it noticed an uptick in cases of parvovirus in kids 5 to 9 years old.

The biggest concern is for pregnant women and those who are immunocompromised if they haven’t previously had parvovirus B19 infection. In nonimmune pregnant women, 5-10% will develop fetal anemia, severe edema of the fetus (hydrops), or death of the fetus.

“Sloth fever”: Just in case you were bored with all the existing diseases, here comes sloth fever — “Dubbed a ‘mysterious threat’ in the Lancet journal, little is known about the emerging disease.”

It comes from the oropouche virus, and it seems to have started in South America and Cuba before jumping to Germany, Italy, and Spain. And when Germany, Italy, and Spain are involved, there might be trouble.

Oh, and it’s killed at least two people in their 20s.

Another blow to moderate drinking

This time it’s specifically about older adults. “Even light drinking was associated with an increase in cancer deaths among older adults,” according to a team of British, American, and Spanish researchers. They based that on 12 years of data from 135,000 adults aged 60 and older.

The researchers found no reduction in heart disease deaths among light or moderate drinkers, regardless of this health or socioeconomic status, when compared with occasional drinkers.

[…]

On the other hand, alcohol probably raises the risk of cancer “from the first drop.”

Gummies have downsides

Ever wonder about gummy vitamins and supplements and whether they’re bad for your teeth? A dentist from Tufts University weighs in. (Spoiler: Gummies are worse than chewables, both are potentially bad for your teeth, but in some cases the benefits might outweigh the risks.)

Hit me with your best spot

Half of doctors and 58% of civilians say that pharma ads on television are helpful. Maybe you think, “Yeah, that makes sense,” but at the Buzz offices our reaction was, “There’s no accounting for taste.”

The survey from ZoomRx was small (100 people), and …

A “significant majority” of the patients surveyed said they’d spoken to their doctors about medications they’d seen in DTC ads […] while doctors acknowledged that the ads can help facilitate those potentially helpful conversations.

We hate to admit it, but some of the responses make sense. If an ad gets someone to seek help, that’s good — “Doc, can we talk about my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis?” And one patient said an ad alerted them to a new treatment for an autoimmune disease.

Then again…

[W]hile physician viewers hold on to the clinical information provided in an ad, patients’ biggest takeaways often focus on nonclinical elements like the music used or celebrity spokespeople featured.

(sigh)

Obligatory “Only the US and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer pharma advertising.

The Long(ish) Q&A: Stopping GLP-1s

There are a bunch of reasons someone might want to stop taking semaglutide or tirzepatide, from cost to side effects to “I reached my goal.” But whether cold turkey or tapering off, it’s not easy.

“The most common question is, ‘How long do I have to take it?’ The proper answer is probably forever.”