PCOM gets dressed

A hearty congratulations to the new student pharmacists from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, who donned their white coats for the first time!

Silence is golden (but Beethoven is a fine choice)

If you’ve been thinking “My patients and customers probably don’t get enough holiday music,” and started playing your own … stop. Too much holiday music is bad for you — so says science.

[T]he brain becomes oversaturated, triggering a negative response. If you’re already worried about money, work, or seeing family during the holidays, the constant inundation of cheerful tunes may reinforce your stress instead of relieving it.

Oh, and it’s not good for you, either:

“People working in the shops [have to tune out] Christmas music, because if they don’t, it really does stop you from being able to focus on anything else…You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing.”

Drug price moratorium is over

Pfizer, and presumably the rest of the pharmaceutical industry, is preparing to raise list prices on its drugs in January.

The drug giant will increase the list price of about 10 percent of its drugs Jan. 15, the company announced Friday. Most of the increases will be 5 percent, though Pfizer will raise three drugs’ list prices by 3 percent and one drug’s by 9 percent.

But won’t raising prices make drugs less affordable? No, says the company:

“We believe the best means to address affordability of medicines is to reduce the growing out-of-pocket costs that consumers are facing due to high deductibles and co-insurance, and ensure that patients receive the benefit of rebates at the pharmacy counter,” Pfizer’s outgoing CEO Ian Read said in a statement.

Revenge on Montezuma

The FDA has approved Aemcolo (generic: rifamycin) “for the treatment of adult patients with travelers’ diarrhea caused by noninvasive strains of Escherichia coli.”

Up to 40 percent of travellers are affected by this. Zoiks!

ID that pathogen for less than a buck

A new 72-cent test (yes, you read that right) can detect any of dozens of diseases, from dengue, Ebola, hepatitis, and malaria to various cancers. It fits in the palm of your hand, needs no equipment, and requires little training to use.

You have to know what you’re testing for, but tests for dozens of diseases are already available and more are being developed. Health workers can test several patients at once for one disease, or can test one patient for several. It’s all cartridge-based. (Above link to the U.S. news story. Click here for the press release from the National University of Singapore.)

60 Minutes targets Kaleo

It’s the company that makes a naloxone injector, and in the midst of the opioid crisis, it jacked the price of its injector from $575 in July 2014 to $4,100 by January 2017.

Kaleo complemented its price increases with a strategy focusing on getting doctors’ offices to sign paperwork declaring Evzio medically necessary to ensure coverage by Medicare Part D through a formulary exception.

Nuts to you!

The good news is that a treatment for peanut allergies looks to be doing well in its phase-three trials. The less-than-good news: “Desensitization was not easy on the patients.”

When one size doesn’t fit all*

When you see someone in that section looking a little confused, you can be prepared to help with this useful article from — as always — Medical News Today.

Don’t forget the swine flu in China

If you want to keep track of the coming apocalypse, you could do worse than reading “Emerging Infectious Diseases.” In the latest issue: “Multidrug-resistant Salmonella emerges in US.”

Elsewhere: Anti-Science Edition

The biggest chickenpox outbreak in 20 years is hitting a North Carolina private school, where a large number of families claim “religious” exemptions from vaccination.

Wondering what various religions actually have to say about vaccination? Check this out.