ICYMI: New Covid vaccine gets the thumbs-up

The FDA has authorized the first new Covid vaccine in a while: Novavax’s non-mRNA shot, which is hopes will be palatable to people who don’t understand the difference between mRNA and DNA and won’t take either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

If the CDC also approves the Novavax shot (after a July 19 meeting), it will be available free to patients; there are 3.2 million doses ready to be shipped. Like the others, it’s a two-dose regimen, but no booster has been tested yet.

2x(40<40)

Congrats to GPhA members AdeSubomi O. Adeyemo of Stone Mountain, now working as an epidemic intelligence service officer for the CDC, and Kevin Florence of Athens, owner of ADD Drug Store — both were named to the UGA Alumni Association’s 2022 Class of 40 Under 40!

Double Duty™

Stop a headache, lose some weight

Triptans — you know, the migraine drugs? — happen to target the serotonin 1B receptor. So what? It turns out that hitting that receptor suppresses appetite. In other word, yes, a migraine drug can help with weight loss, as University of Texas neuroscientists discovered.

After 24 days, mice given a daily dose of the drug frovatriptan lost, on average, 3.6% of their body weight, while mice not given a triptan gained an average of 5.1% of their body weight.

So why don’t people with migraines get skinnier? “Since triptans are generally prescribed for short-term use during migraines, [lead researcher Chen Liu] suspects that patients would not have noticed the longer-term impacts on appetite and weight in the past.”

Did the Aussies cure type 1 diabetes?

Probably not, but they seem excited and their discovery seems fairly important. In short, they’ve found a way to “correct faulty regulatory T-cells to better prevent the immune system from going haywire and causing diabetes.”

Fix the white blood cells and the pancreas is free to keep producing insulin. And their research on the “biological agent” they call “sRAGE” has already been duplicated by Novo Nordisk and published in the journal Diabetes.

“We’ve already started working with companies overseas to explore ways of delivering the treatment in tablet form and we’re optimistic about starting clinical trials within three years.”

The Neverending Story: The Next Chapter

No, this is never going to end, is it? It’ll be a perpetual flu season, but with the spectre of long Covid hanging over it. Ugh.

The latest: While Omicron variant BA.5 is circulating fast and evading vaccines, a new subvariant has emerged. And it’s worse.

Omicron BA.2.75 (nicknamed “Centaurus”) has appeared in at least 10 countries, including the U.S. It seems to spread faster than even BA.5, and its unusual mutations mean it may be able to evade antibodies.

If you must stress eat, eat chocolate (if you’re a rat)

Chocolate (the good, dark stuff) isn’t just good for your brain in general — or for turning that apology up to 11. It turns out that eating it can be good for reducing stress, but a particular kind: “chronic isolation stress.”

That’s because (Iranian researchers discovered) it affects the synapses in the brain’s hippocampal CA1 area. Rats in their study who got the chocolate lost weight and had more plasticity in their neurons (i.e., they were able to respond better to stress).

Will that apply to humans? TBD.

HHS confusion and consternation

Yesterday we told you how HHS had said, essentially, that pharmacists had to be careful about refusing to dispense mifepristone and misoprostol — a patient who had a miscarriage might need it, for example, and refusing it could be a civil rights violation.

But APhA is pushing back for a couple of reasons. First, it can put pharmacists between a rock and … another rock, if state law prohibits them from dispensing those drugs under any circumstance, but federal civil rights law says they can’t discriminate. (And HHS’s guidance was just that, guidance, although it does have that civil right law behind it.)

Second, APhA says, it interferes with pharmacists’ professional judgement:

The guidance also takes away a pharmacists’ professional judgment to make “determinations regarding the suitability of a prescribed medication for a patient; or advising patients about medications and how to take them.”

Of course, that unlocks a different minefield: When should a pharmacist’s judgement override a prescriber’s? (Don’t look at me. I’m just the messenger.)

When to avoid vitamin D

Vitamin D is one of Buzz’s favorite supplements. How can it help you? Let us count the ways. But there appears to be one case where vitamin D can do more harm than good (and we don’t mean overdosing on it).

Taiwanese researchers have found that “Vitamin D supplementation worsens Alzheimer’s progression” — that’s based on both animal testing and human cohorts. It can make Alzheimer’s worse, they say, and “it is likely that it increased the risk of dementia in older people.”

For younger people, though, the benefits of vitamin D are many-fold. But when the ravages of age take hold, it may be time to reconsider.