Illegal drugs — hiding in plain sight

Drug traffickers, it seems, are pretty good at chemistry. The trick that’s appearing now: Creating drugs that only do their thing when metabolized by the body.

These prodrugs are hard to detect by the usual methods that look for, say, LSD because it’s not a drug when it’s in pill form — only when it’s metabolized. Typical screening tools aren’t looking for, say, ALD-52, “a prodrug that is converted by the body into LSD after the removal of two carbon and one oxygen atom.”

It’s not just LSD. There are prodrug versions of other meds like ecstasy and GHB, and possibly more than just haven’t been discovered — that’s the problem.

Since the list of these compounds is not known and minute chemical changes can lead to different patterns to be analysed, these new drugs are easy to miss.

Day at the Braves 2023!

Take you out to the ball game! Join GPhA staff, members, and their friends for Braves baseball at the third annual GPhA Day at the Braves! It’s Sunday, September 10 at 1:35 pm when Atlanta will be hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Our seats are in the Terrace Reserved Section 240 and are only $50 per ticket.

Important: GPhA’s seating has sold out fast these last two years, so don’t wait — order your tickets today!

Prebiotics the hard way

Fun fact: There are (San Jose State University scientists say) just five foods that are best for getting your good bacteria the old fashioned way: Dandelion greens, garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, and onions.

Black-eyed peas and asparagus were also high on the list. At the other end of the list, with little to no prebiotic content, were dairy products, oils, eggs and meats.

Nothing against eating dandelions or artichokes, but it seems a lot simpler to choose one of the many options at — wait for it — your local pharmacy.

Another reason to take your D

A preliminary study finds that vitamin D supplements might reduce the severity of psoriasis. The key word being might.

As the author put it, “Our study suggests that following a vitamin D-rich diet or starting oral vitamin D supplementation may provide some benefit to psoriasis patients, but further research is certainly warranted.”

What’s not clear is whether it makes a difference in someone who has normal vitamin D levels, or only for people with low vitamin D. As the author said, “We found that lower serum vitamin D levels were associated with more severe psoriasis,” but didn’t look at how adding extra vitamin D might affect the severity.

Mom was right after all

It seems if you watched too much TV as a kid it really can make you sick — it just takes some time. Kiwi researchers found that kids who watched more television were more likely to have metabolic syndrome as an adult.

So that high blood pressure? High glucose? Excess body fat? High cholesterol? Maybe you can blame it on the tube: “[T]hose who watched more television between the ages of 5 and 15 were more likely to have these conditions at age 45.”

And if you’re thinking to cut back now, it’s too late. “There was little evidence that watching less television as an adult reduced the association between childhood television viewing and adult health.”

Insulin: lower price, higher demand

In January, the Inflation Reduction Act capped the price of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries at $35 a month. Will it make a difference? Turns out it already is.

The data are easy enough to find, so USC/University of Wisconsin researchers did just that. Since January, insulin fills among Medicare Part D patients has ticked up just under 1% a month. That’s a small percentage, obviously, but when you consider how many people take insulin, it’s more noticeable:

[T]he analysis suggests that Medicare beneficiaries filled about 50,000 more insulin prescriptions per month that were $35 or less, and about 20,000 of these fills would not have taken place if not for the policy.

Odd side note: The number of non-Medicare patients filling their insulin prescriptions fell during the same period, even when the out of pocket cost was $35 or lower.

Short Takes

Cigna in hot water over AI denials

AI is helping healthcare a lot, but there’s at least one area where it’s a problem: insurance claims. Cigna is facing a class action suit after a ProPublica investigation found that an AI was reviewing — and rejecting — claims “in a matter of seconds,” that physicians didn’t even bother to review.

Over two months last year, the company denied more than 300,000 claims, spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each claim, Propublica reported. While medical doctors signed off on the denials, the system didn’t require them to open patient medical records for the review.

Disease is purple

Please don’t let your political beliefs affect your judgement when it comes to your health. You can’t believe illness away.