High-five Ashish!

Shout-out to GPhA member Ashish Advani — he appeared on Fox5’s Good Day Atlanta to talk about supplements, and how pharmacists can help determine which ones are helping, which aren’t doing anything, and whether they’re OK to take together. Check it out!

Facebook crackdown

With so many of America’s best and brightest getting their news from random Facebook posts, the company has said that it’s going to try to reduce the number of bogus-health claims.

Facebook said it will take actions to reduce posts making assertions about a “miracle cure”, and against the ones aimed to promote products or services on health-related claims, such as a pill for weight loss.

Diabetes? Treat depression too

A study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that giving antidepressants (except MAO inhibitors) to patients with diabetes can reduce their risk of death — we’re talking by 35 percent.

Don’t feel like reading a paper? (And who can blame you?) Click here for the news article.

What happens when you get older?

You start adding “the” to the name of diseases (“the gout”). You remember when everything cost a nickel. You pine for your MySpace page. And you start making your meds easy for your grandkids to get ahold of.

Another reason to use a VPN*

Log into the Wi-Fi network in the waiting room? Get ready to see ads for medication as a new “service” tracks who’s waiting for the physician. (And yes, it will also track how many scripts that doc writes for those meds.)

* Virtual private network: software that essentially hides who and where you are

Cybersquatting drug names

Pound randomly on keyboard. Register domain names from the letters you see (wgehduqb.com?). Wait for the lawyers to call. “Adamis says rival Kaléo co-opted its Symjepi trademark.”

The long read: Climate Change edition

“Why pharma needs to care about global warming”

Pharma needs to start planning ahead. This includes reviewing the need to increase global supplies of drugs and vaccines against climate crisis-induced diseases, whether non-communicable or infectious in nature. It may also be necessary to enhance research efforts related to the treatment of infectious and tropical diseases.”