Timely eating can slow Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s interrupts sleep, and, in a vicious cycle, less sleep can make the disease worse. One way to break that “circadian disruption” is intermittent fasting. The mice that UC San Diego researchers tested this on got the same amount of food, but it was given within a 6-hour window; they fasted for the other 18 hours.

Result: they “showed improvements in memory and reduced accumulation of amyloid proteins in the brain.”

Compared to control mice who were provided food at all hours, mice fed on the time-restricted schedule had better memory, were less hyperactive at night, followed a more regular sleep schedule and experienced fewer disruptions during sleep. The test mice also performed better on cognitive assessments than control mice.

And it wasn’t just on the macro level — those mice also showed improvements on the molecular level.

Covid can trigger high blood pressure

The headline ↑ almost says it all. The notable takeaways from the study out of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine:

1. The rise in post-Covid “persistently high blood pressure” affected patients who never had blood pressure issues before.
2. It even affected people with mild cases of the disease, although less frequently. More than 20% of patients who were hospitalized saw their BPs rise, and more than 10% of those with milder cases.

Good news about immunosuppressants

Taking immunosuppressants for the long haul — e.g., after a transplant — can increase a patient’s cancer risk, but what about short-term use?

According to research out of the University of Pittsburgh and Mass Eye and Ear, it’s cool: “Relatively short-term use of immunosuppressant medications to control an inflammatory disease was not associated with an increased risk of later developing cancer.” It involved 16,000 patients over 10 years, so points for going big.

Caveat: The study only looked at people with inflammatory diseases, thus “the researchers caution that the results aren’t generalizable to everyone taking immunosuppressants.”

I’ll sleep when I’m dead

Fun fact: We still don’t know why we need to sleep. So what if we didn’t? Washington State University researchers have found a way to activate brain cells called astrocytes — once thought to do little more than glue the brain together. That allowed mice to stay awake longer without being sleepy or needing to ‘catch up’ afterward.

“[W]hat we saw in this study was that despite hours of added wakefulness these mice did not differ from well-rested controls in terms of how long and how intensely they slept.”

They hope they can someday translate this into drugs that can help “improve the productivity, safety, and health of shift workers and others who work long or odd hours, such as first responders and military personnel.” And, of course, students. But first they need to make sure the lack of sleep doesn’t cause other problems in mice — then they can start testing on people.

Side note: Have you ever heard of the “Russian sleep experiment” where men were kept awake for 15 consecutive days? It’s an urban legend.

Emory gets cash to fight cancer

Emory U (and friends) have scored a $24 million ARPA-H^* grant to research ways to use mRNA technology to fight cancer. Of note, it’s the first grant awarded by ARPA-H, which was only created last year with the goal of accelerating medical breakthroughs the way DARPA does for defense tools.

^* Advanced Research Project Agency for Health

You probably don’t need to worry about this

You know what we really don’t need? A new tick-borne infection. And yet that’s what might be lurking out there. The CDC is investigating a small number of cases — 4 out of 30,000 — that involved a “novel Anaplasma bovis–like agent.”

“This is another anaplasma that affects humans so it’s the beginning of the story that we need to learn more about.”

They have no idea how big a deal this is — it might just be another similar tick-borne disease. The good news: “It’s a new species but those samples were from years ago, so it’s not an emerging infection that is now circulating.”

The Long Read: BMJ investigates Rexulti approval

This May, the FDA gave fast-track approval to the antipsychotic Rexulti (brexpiprazole) for agitation associated with dementia, despite health officials warning about too many off-label prescriptions for atypical antipsychotics to older patients. (Even the FDA itself warned of a significant increase in death.)

But as a BMJ investigative piece points out, there’s little evidence Rexulti actually works, while that danger still looms over it.

[A]mong four efficacy evaluations across the three prelicensure clinical trials, the highest efficacy observed was a 5.3 point improvement over placebo on a 174 point scale. In the two trials that assessed quality of life, no benefit for either the patient or the caregiver was demonstrated.

Funny business: The efficacy tests used to get approval showed not effect on US patients, but a significant bigger effect on eastern European and Spanish patients, which one researcher called “implausible.”