“Last year, Gilead released data showing that an HIV drug, called lenacapavir, could provide virtually complete protection against infection with just a single injection every six months. The drug, now under regulatory review, was greeted as a breakthrough, the closest thing the field has ever had to a vaccine.

On Tuesday, Gilead published early data suggesting a new formulation of the drug  could be used to prevent infection with just a single shot every year.”

From STAT.

“Losing a sense of smell and taste are among more than 200 different symptoms reported by people with long Covid.

Now surgeons at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) have cured a dozen patients, each of whom had suffered a profound loss of smell after a Covid infection. All had experienced the problem for more than two years and other treatments, such as smell training and corticosteroids, had failed.

In a study aiming to find new ways to resolve the issue, surgeons tried a technique called functional septorhinoplasty (fSRP), which is typically used to correct any deviation of the nasal septum, increasing the size of nasal passageways.

This boosts airflow into the olfactory region, at the roof of the nasal cavity, which controls smell. Doctors said the surgery enabled an increased amount of odorants – chemical compounds that have a smell – to reach the roof of the nose, where sense of smell is located.”

From The Guardian.

“For several decades now, doctors have utilized a non-surgical technique called extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) to break up kidney stones so they can be passed with the urine.

In a nutshell, the process involves subjecting the stones to high-intensity, externally applied acoustic pulses. While it spares patients from having to undergo surgery, they still typically must be sedated or even anesthetized, as the intense acoustic pulses can otherwise be painful.

Additionally, the procedure must be performed in a dedicated room using fairly large equipment. What’s more, the pulses may damage healthy tissue adjacent to the kidney stones. That’s where the new ‘Lithovortex’ treatment comes in…

Instead of hitting the stones straight-on, as is the case with ESWL pulses, these beams spin around the stones like twister tornados. As they do so, they produce shear forces on the stones that cause them to disintegrate.

Importantly, the vortex beams are so effective that they only need to be half as strong as the pulses utilized in ESWL, plus they take half as long to get the job done. This means that patients don’t need to be sedated, there is very little risk of tissue damage, and the procedure can be performed in an out-patient clinic.”

From New Atlas.

“The discovery of a new preclinical compound with strong antifungal activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens is described in Nature. The drug, named mandimycin, is a member of a known family of bacterial products with antifungal properties, the polyene macrolides. Unlike known compounds in this family, mandimycin binds to a novel target in the fungal cell membrane and is therefore active against a range of pathogens that are resistant to related compounds.”

From Phys.org.