Judge approves CVS/Aetna merger

He had some reservations, and didn’t like being treated as a “rubber stamp,” but in the end judge Richard Leon signed off on the $69+ billion deal.

But let’s not forget that GPhA, with help from other Georgia associations, won major concessions from the companies before the state insurance commissioner would sign off on the deal — check them out at GPhA.org/cvs-aetna.

Mushrooming research

Johns Hopkins is launching the world’s largest center for researching psychedelics “to study the mind and identify therapies for diseases such as addiction, PTSD, and Alzheimer’s.” A $17 million grant from private donors will kickstart the research.

Much of the early work with psychedelics has focused on psilocybin, the chemical found in so-called magic mushrooms. Further studies will determine the chemical’s effectiveness as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (formerly known as chronic Lyme disease), anorexia nervosa, and alcohol use in people with major depression.

Tramadol and hypoglycemia

It seems users of the popular opioid might see their blood sugar drop significantly. So finds pharmacy researchers from UC San Diego (and published in Nature’s Scientific Reports).

The researchers also looked at other widely prescribed opioids and similar acting, non-opioid medications, such serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (Cymbalta, Effexor XR) and NMDA receptors (ketamine and memantine). Only tramadol produced a significant risk of developing hypoglycemia in patients.

Birth control and UTIs — there’s an app for that

Planned Parenthood is expanding its Planned Parenthood Direct app to all 50 states by next year. (It currently operates in only 27.) The app allows women to get birth control and treatment for UTIs by mail without having to physically come to a clinic or doctor’s office.

Mail order birth control has soared in popularity as reproductive health advocates try to find solutions to so-called “contraception deserts” in rural areas. About 19.5 million people live in these deserts.

Under your tongue

The War on Peanut Allergies continues, with a new potential weapon: sublingual immunotherapy — aka SLIT, aka “putting a miniscule amount of liquefied peanut protein under the tongue, where it is absorbed immediately into the blood stream to desensitize the immune system to larger amounts of peanut protein.”

The technique has passed its phase 2 trial. It’s not expected to allow kids with allergies to eat a handful of peanuts, but it is hoped to protect them from tiny, accidental exposures.

The long read: Medical care in lockup

“Death and politics roil a Georgia jail” from Reuters

[The report] described staff shortages, unclear health guidelines and failures to give inmates prescribed medications. Such failings, they warned, could trigger “potential loss of life.” Indeed, that September, six weeks before the second report was issued, an inmate strangled himself with a telephone cord.