Helping kids with asthma

Giving kids azithromycin three times a week seems to help control asthma — at least, according to a small study (120 young ‘uns) out of India.

[T]he numbers of children with well-controlled asthma according to Global Initiative for Asthma guidelines were 41 of 56 in the azithromycin group versus 10 of 56 in the control groups.

Of course there are other issues with using azithromycin as a maintenance drug, but it certaintly seems like a useful avenue to explore.

ADHD: See it in your eyes

Diagnosing ADHD and various forms of autism isn’t simple — it doesn’t show up on a blood test. But now a group of ophthalmological and neurological researchers from Australia, Canada, and the UK have found a biomarker. Or think they have.

The key is in the activity of the retina.

Using the ‘electroretinogram’ (ERG) — a diagnostic test that measures the electrical activity of the retina in response to a light stimulus — researchers found that children with ADHD showed higher overall ERG energy, whereas children with ASD showed less ERG energy.

This doesn’t just mean a faster diagnosis; they hope the finding itself will lead to other quick diagnoses for neurodevelopmental conditions.

Captain Obvious isn’t ready for kids

“Contraceptive use is primarily driven by demand for reproductive control”

Drill, baby, drill

You want to attack a tumor, but it’s surrounded by a “thick, hard-to-penetrate wall of molecular defenses.” What can you do? It’s 2022, so you turn to nanoparticles and genetic engineering, of course, just like University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researchers did.

Their creation: a type of nanoparticle that can “break down the physical barriers around tumors to reach cancer cells.” Once inside, the nanoparticles release their payload: CRISPR/Cas9. Yep, they drill in, then edit the tumor’s genes to make is susceptible to the body’s immune system, Trojan-horse-style.

So far it works in mice. “More work is needed,” of course.

Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful

I was almost tempted to pass this along to Captain Obvious, but she’s busy today. So I’ll simply share this: Being attracted to men* increases your risk of an eating disorder, according to Spanish researchers.

Regardless of sexuality, men place higher emphasis on the physical attractiveness of their romantic partners than women do, causing researchers to hypothesize that attraction to men may be a risk factor for disordered eating.

A new Covid vaccine is comin’

A Sanofi-GSK bivalent Covid-19 vaccine (half original strain, half beta variant) just passed a late-stage trial, and it worked well against Omicron. Apparently Beta “expresses similar mutations across multiple variants of concern, including Omicron,” making it a good choice for a vaccine.

In a trial involving 13,000 adults, the vaccine demonstrated an efficacy rate of 64.7% against symptomatic COVID, and 72% efficacy against infections specifically caused by the Omicron variant.

It’s even better if you’ve had Covid already — 75% effective against symptomatic disease overall, and 93.2% against Omicron specifically.

This weekend’s cool non-pharma science story

Turtles can choose to live longer

Maybe not forever (there’s always accident and disease), but turtles can effectively turn off senescence — cell death — when they feel there are ample resources available. Those shifty Danes discovered that, contrary to some theories, even after sexual maturity some animals can devote resources to cellular repair and live a long, long time.

“Contrary to widespread theories of aging, we show that many species of turtles and tortoises have found a way to slow down or even completely switch off senescence. This means that senescence is not inevitable for all organisms.”