What are these unapproved GLP-1 treatments?

Of the unapproved GLP-1s being sold online, Eli Lilly's retatrutide, which looks highly promising in phase three trials, appears to be the most popular, in large part due to social media influencers raving about it.

Peter Warisky, who's research director for Public Citizens Health Research Group and the author of a recent report about illegal sales of retatrutide, calls it a cultural phenomenon.

Retatrutide is a triple agonist, which means it activates three different metabolic hormone receptors.

Some research suggests it leads to greater weight loss than the approved GLP-1 drugs.

But as the authors of one of those studies noted, there haven't been head-to-head comparisons of the treatments, and some people might not tolerate retatrutide as well as they would other GLP-1 therapies.

So what's driving people to buy weight loss therapies online?

Well, as I mentioned, retatrutide has been the darling of social media influencers who've posted comments and videos extolling it as superior to approved weight loss drugs such as semaglutide.

But people can reduce their chances of developing dementia, right? What is known about modifiable risk factors for the disorder?

Scientists for years have been searching for a cure for dementia, but it's only been in the past decade or so that researchers have conducted clinical trials of measures that might protect against developing the disorder in the first place.

Much of the focus of the trials has been on cardiovascular health.

which appears to be tightly tied with brain health.

And studies have found that one of the biggest risk factors for cardiovascular disease and dementia is hypertension.

For example, a trial in rural China enrolled 34,000 people ages 40 and older who had uncontrolled hypertension.

They were randomly assigned to an intervention group whose target was a systolic blood pressure below 130 and a diastolic blood pressure below 80, or to usual care.

What are some of the other modifiable risk factors that connect heart health with brain health?

But the mRNA flu vaccine is not for everyone, right?

For now at least, that's right.

It's approved only for people 50 and older.

Moderna has not yet disclosed whether it plans to seek approval for younger adults or kids and teens.

The shot's pivotal phase three trial enrolled about forty-one thousand people fifty years or older and found it to be approximately twenty-seven percent more effective than standard-dose conventional flu vaccine.

The catch is that for people sixty-five or older, the standard of care in the US is a high-dose flu vaccine, which was not used as a comparator in the multinational phase three trial.

For that reason, the FDA granted traditional approval of the mRNA flu vaccine only for people fifty through sixty-four years of age.

Okay, tell us more about the advantage of using mRNA technology to make flu vaccines.

So tell us about this blood test.

Well, the US Food and Drug Administration cleared the first blood test to assess the likelihood of amyloid plaque in the brain a little over a year ago.

The Lumipulse test, manufactured by Fujirebio, is for people 50 and older who have Alzheimer disease symptoms, and it's supposed to be used only by specialty clinics.

Now, not that long ago, the only way to confirm that someone with dementia had Alzheimer disease was an autopsy.

Then two tools became available to help diagnose Alzheimer disease while people were still alive.

One is amyloid positron emission tomography, or PET.

The other is a lumbar puncture to extract a small sample of cerebrospinal fluid.

So how was this determined?

So Rita, what's the concept behind these new tests?

Well, you know, for various reasons, many people don't get the cancer screenings recommended for them.

I mean, they might not like prepping for a colonoscopy or feeling the discomfort of a mammogram.

Plus, proven screening methods are available for only five cancers: breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate.

Now, wouldn't it be great if you could screen for a whole bunch of cancers with a single blood test? That's the thinking behind a handful of tests now on the market in the US.

None of these so-called multi-cancer early detection tests, or MCED tests, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, which means that if you want one, chances are you're probably gonna have to pay for it out of pocket, and that could run you as much as nearly $1,000.

But some businesses are offering them for free to employees and their families, which is one reason their use has been growing.

So what do we know about how well these tests actually work?