Carter to head health subcommittee

Georgia’s Buddy Carter has been tapped to chair the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, where he promises to be “in lockstep with President Trump…

… to tackle our nation’s chronic disease epidemic, increase price transparency, incentivize competition, combat harmful health care consolidation, fight the scourge of fentanyl, and build a health care system that puts patients before profits.”

Improving the flu vaccine

Every year the flu vaccine turns out to be somewhere from 20% to 80% effective. That’s not because health officials got the strains wrong. It’s because most people will develop antibodies to just one of the three or four strains in the vaccine. If it happens to be the wrong one for that year … tough cookies.

But now Stanford scientists think they A) know why this is the case, and 2) figured a way around it — a way to make patients produce antibodies to all the strains.

The why is simple: Genetics. (It’s not, as they thought, a matter of what subtype hits the immune system first.) Not a lot to be done about that; each person’s B cells just happen to be primed differently.

The how: Instead of four separate antigens in a vaccine, they make one big one that contains all four of that year’s hemagglutinin varieties. Thus the immune system’s B cells only have to target one of the four:

[A]ny B cell that recognizes and begins ingesting one or another of the vaccine’s four hemagglutinin types ends up wolfing down the entire matrix and displaying bits of all four antigens on its surface, persuading the immune system to react to all of them despite its predisposition not to.

[…] This, in turn, makes helper T cells much more likely to stumble on a sample from the antigen they love to hate.

There’s more to it than that, of course, but this item is pretty long already. Read the article for the details, and be ready when the tech makes it out of the lab.

Shaggy’s gonna be the smart one

Well that’s a surprise: A 44-year study of 5,000 men found that those who used cannabis had less of a cognitive decline than those who didn’t use it. Specifically, “Cannabis users experienced 1.3 IQ points less decline over 44 years compared to nonusers.”

Those shifty Danes at the University of Copenhagen found it even held true if they started using it before they turned 18, and it didn’t matter how frequently they used it.

There’s only one ADHD treatment

Apparently, despite anything you might have heard, only one type of drug (well, maybe two) works to treat ADHD in the short term: stimulants (“and to a lesser degree the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine”).

That’s based on a network meta-analysis by British researchers of 100 clinical trials including almost 5,000 adults, and it takes into account both clinician- and patient-reported outcomes. Non-pharma treatments? Ineffective.

The bad news: Stimulants helped with ADHD’s emotional dysregulation, but not its other symptoms (e.g., executive function, like being organized and meeting deadlines), so “they fail to improve broader outcomes like quality of life.”

In other words, kids on stimulants had better focus, but didn’t necessarily do any better at school. So the Brits conclude that “adult ADHD most likely requires a more holistic approach to address broader challenges that impact an individual’s quality of life.”

Cancer drug scores 100% in trial

The experimental cancer drug dostarlimab (GSK calls the PD-1-blocking antibody “Jemperli”) did what can only be called an astounding job in its trials: It “completely eradicated rectal cancer tumors without the need for surgery, radiation treatment, or chemotherapy.”

Yep, it was 100% effective — that’s why it was given Breakthrough Therapy Designation status from the FDA this week, meaning it’ll be fast-tracked so patients can have access to it sooner. GSK hopes to have it available within 3 years.

“Healthy” food: Water in, Froot Loops out

It’s been 30 years, but the FDA just redefined its official designation of “healthy” food, and will soon have a spiffy graphic that food makers can put on their products.

What’s “healthy”? Per the agency, the food must…

1. Contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy, etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.
2. Adhere to specified limits for the following nutrients: saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

Out: “fortified white bread, highly sweetened yogurt, and highly sweetened cereal”

In: avocados, nuts and seeds, higher fat fish, olive oil, and water

Companies can start using the designation now as long as they pinkie-promise that their food will meet the requirements by 2028.

Speaking of healthy eating….

A new British study found that vegetarians who ate plant-based meat alternatives (looking at you, Beyond Burger) “had a 42% increased risk of depression compared to vegetarians who refrained from PBMAs.”