Women fight better, not harder

We’ve known for a while that men are more vulnerable than women to infection. (Here’s an article from 11 years ago.) But why? A new study might have the answer — it’s all about a gene called UTX.

It’s weird, see, that men have more natural-killer (NK) immune cells, but women fight infection better. The reasons (UCLA researchers think) is that women’s NK cells are more efficient than men’s, thanks to an extra copy of that UTX gene.

UTX acts as an epigenetic regulator to boost NK cell anti-viral function […] “It turns out that females have more UTX in their NK cells than do males, which allows them to fight viral infections more efficiently.”

And that means, they say, “[W]e will need to incorporate sex as a biological factor in treatment decisions and immunotherapy design.”

Congress takes on PBM spread pricing

A big shout-out to Georgia’s US representatives Buddy Carter and Rick Allen — they were part of the bipartisan group that introduced the Drug Price Transparency in Medicaid Act, which would ban PBM spread pricing in Medicaid programs. I.e., no longer would PBMs be allowed to charge Medicaid more for a medication than it paid to pharmacies.

Said Carter:

“PBMs have been allowed to rob patients, small businesses, and taxpayers blind for decades. […] With this bill, we can hold PBMs accountable for their role in increasing the cost of health care and pocketing taxpayer money.”

Captain Obvious needs at least an hour

“Thirty-Minute Lecture Not Enough for Residents to Develop a Thorough Understanding of Spinal Cord Injury Emergencies”

Today Ozempic, tomorrow … something else

A not-always-healthy fixation not only on weight loss, but on quick-fix weight loss, won’t end with Ozempic. So muses a Northeastern U psychologist.

“There have been weight loss drugs since the 1930s. They inevitably are shown to have dangerous side effects. They are typically popular for a short term and then are revealed to be dangerous and are replaced with something else.”

Then again, anecdotes are pretty powerful

Got low-back pain? Pop an ibuprofen or Tylenol, right? Or maybe don’t bother. A new analysis in the BMJ found that there’s actually very little evidence (of the non-anecdotal variety) that analgesics actually work for acute low- back pain. In fact, that even extends to muscle relaxants and anti-convulsants.

That’s not to say they don’t work, just that there’s “considerable uncertainty around effects for pain intensity and safety.”

Help for hamsters

With all the effort put into human vaccines against Covid-19, you’re probably wondering “What about the hamsters?” Fear not, dear reader, for UCLA researchers were also concerned, and they’ve gone ahead and developed not only a Covid-19 vaccine for hamsters, but one that’s inexpensive, universal, and given orally.

Unlike current human vaccines, this one is based on the nucleocapsid protein — that’s important because it tends to evolve more slowly than other proteins, giving the vaccine its “universal” feature — “the vaccine is resistant to the incessant mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein upon which virtually all current vaccines are based.”

The Long Read: Cannabis and brain formation

Smoking while pregnant: bad. Alcohol while pregnant: bad. So why would cannabis (or its derivatives) be any different?

They’re not, as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist explains — they’re dangerous for developing brains, period.

Short Takes

Breaking (up) bad

The Biden Administration will be breaking up the Congress-created United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) — the almost 40-year-old non-profit that has been running the nation’s organ-transplant network … poorly.

Shortages are widespread

New drug shortages rose 30% in just a year — between 2021 and 2022. “Towards the end of 2022, a peak of 295 individual drugs were considered in short supply — impacting treatment for everything from colds to cancer.”

Side note: Somatropin, the growth hormone, is the latest to get press.