TTHealthWatch is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech.
Elizabeth: That’s what we’re talking about this week on TT HealthWatch, your weekly look at the medical headlines from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso.
Elizabeth: Rick, for both of us, gosh, COVID, continuing apace in rapid increases in hospitalizations in both our necks of the woods.
Then they followed them over the course of time and said, “OK, we know what the incidence of diabetes was pre-pandemic, during the pandemic in kids that didn’t have infection, and those with acute respiratory infection.
Depending on which population they looked at, it increased the risk anywhere from 31% to 166%.
Elizabeth: I think the thing I’m wondering about is whether this resolves over time and I don’t think we know the answer to that one yet.
It could be that the virus is directly attacking pancreatic cells, or it could be an immune response doing that.
I would note on a positive, though, aspect of SARS-CoV-2 infection in kids right now that, at least with the Omicron variant, it appears that MIS-C is occurring less often in kids than it was before.
Gosh, I don’t know about you, but I have been hearing about all these people out there buying all these rapid antigen tests that they can use at home to see whether or not they have got COVID, and the prices have skyrocketed.
This raises the issue of, well, how often do these rapid antigen tests give a false positive result? This is clearly really important right now for, I would suggest, people who work in health care.
They administered almost a million of these things over 537 workplaces — and they only gleaned 1,322 positive results among those folks — and then they confirmed the positives with PCR.
Ultimately, this turned out to be the number of false positive results, 0.05% of these screens.
Then when they drilled down a little bit further, they realize that that was due to just two batches of this particular rapid test device.
So cannabis is the second most commonly used recreational drug worldwide — alcohol being number one.
Canada actually tried to establish guidelines to limit drivers that could be potentially impaired with cannabis.
No surprise; what happened is after legalization the prevalence of cannabis use, in those drivers that were tested, went up about two- to three-fold.
What they did mention is, they need to continue to have surveillance and they need to look at ways to put some teeth into it so that we have fewer people that are smoking and driving, and particularly older individuals.
This is the use of two different diabetes drugs, semaglutide and liraglutide, in overweight adults to see whether or not it could result in weight loss.
sites and it enrolled people with a body mass index of 30 or greater, or 27 or greater with one or more weight-related comorbidities like hypertension, but who did not have diabetes — 338 folks, the majority of whom were women.
They also found that there were gastrointestinal adverse events, some of them serious, 84% approximately with semaglutide and 82% with liraglutide.
As you said, they are used for diabetes, but it was noticed that people that were diabetic and received them had weight loss, and they are now approved for weight loss in people without diabetes.
By the way, there were other manifestations; it had a better reduction in blood pressure, a better reduction in triglycerides, and a better reduction in cholesterol as well.
It’s the same amount of weight loss that oftentimes occurs following bariatric surgery and it’s what we are recommending — that there is a 5% to 15% weight loss — to receive the cardiovascular benefits.
The material on this site is for informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment provided by a qualified health care provider.