The smoke that keeps on giving

If a guy is exposed to secondhand smoke, his kids (!) have a greater risk of getting asthma. Yeah, that’s epigenetics* for ya. Tobacco smoke changes the cells that will go on to produce sperm.

Aussie researchers, using data that’s been collected over the past 54 years…

“…found that the risk of non-allergic asthma in children increases by 59 per cent if their fathers were exposed to second-hand smoke in childhood, compared to children whose fathers were not exposed.”

Their next study: What other lung diseases might Dad pass on?

* If you call it “Lamarckism,” biologists get very angry.

Why not teach diabetes management?

If you provide diabetes education, you oughta get paid for it, right? So take a big step toward getting your Diabetes Self-Management Education accreditation — then you can launch your own DSME program and start billing payors (including Medicare)^* while helping your patients manage their condition.

That big step? Diabetes Accreditation Boot Camp from NCPA and PharmFurther.

It’s a 100% live, online program that starts October 12 and then meets weekly for six weeks, and includes individual consultation — and a lot more.

Registration closes October 9, so click here for the details and to sign up.

* Currently you can bill $120/hour for one-on-one education, and $28/hour/person for group education up to 20 people.

Try CBD post menopause

Slowly but surely, scientists are teasing out what CBD is actually good for (as opposed to just anecdotes from Reddit).

The latest, out of Rutgers, is good news for post-menopausal women: CBD, it seems, can counter the effects of estrogen deficiency … at least in mice.

Their bloodstreams more readily disposed of glucose, and they burned more energy. In addition, their bone density improved, they had less inflammation in gut and bone tissues and they possessed higher levels of beneficial gut bacteria.

Covid notes

Vax beats exposure

If you’re not vaccinated and you get — and survive — Covid-19, after a year there’s a 36% chance you’ll no longer have detectable antibodies. Ergo, even if you were sick, get a vaccination.

Blood-test triage

A new blood test evaluated at the University of Virginia can predict who is more likely to get a severe Covid infection — good to know so you can start treatment ASAP.

Here comes BA.4.6

The latest Omicron subvariant now accounts for almost one in 10 cases in the US.

• Bad (preliminary) news: It seems to be a bit more transmissible than BA.5.
• Good news: “[T]here have been no reports yet that this variant is causing more severe symptoms.”
• Bad news: “[P]eople who had received three doses of Pfizer’s original COVID vaccine produce fewer antibodies in response to BA.4.6 than to BA.4 or BA.5.

* Technically a sub-sub-variant of good ol’ BA.4

“It’s still kind of a mystery”

“How does acetaminophen work?” you ask. A Tufts professor answers … well, sort of. The bottom line is that, “it works, but scientists don’t know how it works.”

The most promising, yet still speculative, explanation is that it works on one of the cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes. […] But the effect of acetaminophen at the pain site is too weak to be responsible for relief. However, acetaminophen might block the enzyme production in the brain, thus blocking the further transmission of the pain nerve impulses.

’S not your father’s lubricant

With monkeypox in the news and various STDs spreading faster, it’s a good time to find ways to make sex safer. If you’re like Swedish researchers, the first thing you think of is cow mucus.

That’s right. The Swedes have created a synthetic prophylactic gel — a lubricant — derived from bovine mucin. Yes, cow mucus.

In the lab, its virus-trapping properties made it “70 percent effective in lab tests against HIV, and 80 percent effective against herpes.” It has no side effects, and because its mechanism is mechanical, there’s no risk of viruses developing resistance.

Two vaccines, but how many arms?

I call the Atlantic “The World’s Most Depressing Magazine” for a reason. “A Vaccine in Each Arm Could Be a Painful Mistake,” it says, “But two vaccines in the same arm might be worse.”

Thanks. Thanks for that.

An anti-diarrhea drug factory … in a pill

Childhood diarrhea kills way too many kids, but there’s a potential solution on the horizon: Put a drug factory in their guts.

That’s what Northwestern chemical biologists came up with. It’s genetically engineered E. coli that produces both antibodies against pathogens (such as the Shigella bacterium and the Cryptosporidium parasite) and a fibrous scaffolding “on which antibodies lie in wait.”

The idea is for the engineered treatment to be delivered orally. It would start working as soon as it hit the digestive system. “Our product is like a little factory that makes the drug inside the colon.”

Right now it’s just in the lab, but animal testing is coming soon. (And they’re already looking ahead to using the technology for other gut issues, like inflammatory bowel disease.)

They grow up so fast these days

Being exposed to the blue light from smartphone and tablet screens is causing kids to hit puberty early. They reduce the body’s production of melatonin — and melatonin is what’s supposed to be putting the brakes on reproductive hormones.

The Turkish endocrinologists who reported this also suggest it might be partly to blame for the recent phenomenon of girls beginning puberty (on average) a year earlier.

Captain Obvious pretends to be asleep

“Waking up to check on the baby is associated with reduced sexual activity postpartum, study finds”