Medical Bulletin 12/June/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Metformin lowers the risk of getting long COVID

In a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, University of Minnesota researchers found that metformin, a drug commonly used to treat diabetes, prevents the development of long COVID.

The study, called COVID-OUT, investigated if early outpatient COVID-19 treatment with metformin, ivermectin or fluvoxamine could prevent long COVID. Long COVID is a chronic illness that can affect up to 10% of people who have had COVID-19.

Reference:

Outpatient treatment of COVID-19 and incidence of post-COVID-19 condition over 10 months (COVID-OUT): a multicentre, randomised, quadruple-blind, parallel-group, phase 3 trial,The Lancet Infectious Diseases, DOI 10.1016/S1473-3099(23)00299-2

Brain network connections associated with anosognosia identified

Anosognosia is a condition in which a patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition. Visual anosognosia, also called Anton syndrome, is associated with complete cortical blindness and unawareness of vision loss.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, sought to identify brain network connections associated with anosognosia. The investigators analyzed the connectivity patterns of 267 lesion locations associated with either vision loss (with and without awareness) or weakness (with and without awareness).

Reference:

Network Localization of Awareness in Visual and Motor Anosognosia,Annals of Neurology, DOI 10.1002/ana.26709

Common type of high blood pressure’s cause and cure discovered

The cause is a tiny benign nodule, present in one-in-twenty people with hypertension. The nodule produces a hormone, aldosterone, that controls how much salt is in the body. The new discovery is a gene variant in some of these nodules which leads to a vast, but intermittent, over-production of the hormone.

The gene variant discovered today causes several problems which makes it hard for doctors to diagnose some patients with hypertension. Firstly, the variant affects a protein called CADM1 and stops cells in the body from ‘talking’ to each other and saying that it is time to stop making aldosterone. The fluctuating release of aldosterone throughout the day is also an issue for doctors, which at its peak causes salt overload and hypertension. This fluctuation explains why patients with the gene variant can elude diagnosis unless they happen to have blood tests at different times of day.

Reference:

'Somatic mutations of CADM1 in aldosterone-producing adenomas and gap junction-dependent regulation of aldosterone production',Nature Genetics,DOI 10.1038/s41588-023-01403-