Are you in the Rome or Cartersville areas?

Georgia Power coal ash might be contaminating the ground water.

Before the year ends, support the foundation’s mission

The Georgia Pharmacy Foundation has major plans for 2019, and it needs your help so it can help the pharmacy community.

Pharmacist burnout. The opioid crisis. Student debt. Those are the three issues the foundation is tackling in 2019, but now is the time to make a tax-deductible donation. The goal is to raise $10,000 by December 31, and that goal is well within reach!

Help the mission. Help the foundation serve pharmacists, technicians, and student pharmacists.

All you need to do is click here or visit GPhA.org/foundation to make your donation. Thank you!

“The time has come for pharmacists to step up and invest in our communities. The foundation can and will do more than ever to be a part of this.” —Jim Bartling, Chairman, Georgia Pharmacy Foundation

AI predicts OD

Cigna is using artificial intelligence to figure out which patients are most likely to overdose on opioids.

[T]he company […] began building a predictive model, using machine learning and predictive analytics, that identifies customers likely to overdose within the next month.

A combination of 16 datasets are used to inform the algorithms, including data about patients’ behavioral health claims, chronic disease history and interactions with pharmacies.

Come and see: Kentucky judge says seal can be broken

How exactly did Purdue Pharma market OxyContin? The company wants to keep that a secret out of fear of lawsuits, but a panel of three Kentucky judges ruled unanimously that the records — from a case Kentucky settled with the company in 2015 — should be unsealed.

¡Bienvenidos colegas hispanos!

A warm GPhA welcome to the newly formed National Hispanic Pharmacists Association!

FDA warns people not to eat inedible decorations

Sadly, we’re not talking about munching on that delicious string of Christmas lights. The FDA is warning that “some decorative glitters and dusts promoted for use on foods may, in fact, contain materials that should not be eaten.”

In other words, just because you bought that “luster dust, disco dust, twinkle dust, sparkle dust, highlighter, shimmer powder, pearl dust, and petal dust” over the Internet doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat.
Hint: Make sure the label says “edible.” And preferably not in Chinese.

If the label simply says “non-toxic” or “for decorative purposes only” and does not include an ingredients list, you should not use the product directly on foods.

You must remember this/it’s in your uterus

The uterus plays a role in … memory?

In a study on the rat model, senior author Prof. Heather Bimonte-Nelson and colleagues demonstrated that removing the uterus — a surgical procedure known as hysterectomy — has a definite impact on spatial memory.

The sting of the scorpion

We’ve talked about anti-virals from frog mucus and antibiotics from dragon’s blood — now check this out: using scorpion venom as an anti-inflammatory.

Researchers in Cuba have found that the venom of the blue scorpion, whose scientific name is Rhopalurus junceus, endemic to the Caribbean island, appears to have anti-inflammatory and pain relief properties, and may be able to delay tumor growth in some cancer patients.

But the best line about one farmer who deliberately gets himself stung to relieve pain:

…he sometimes keeps a scorpion under his straw hat like a lucky charm. It likes the shade and humidity, he says, so just curls up and sleeps.

ICYMI: ACA edition

There’s no way you missed this, right? A judge in Texas ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. But no, that doesn’t mean that 12 million people just lost their health insurance. The case will have to wind its way through the Appeals Court and almost certainly to the Supreme Court. The big question: If one part of a law is unconstitutional, does that render the entire law moot? (And, if so, can you guess how many laws that would affect?)

The long read: J&J Baby Powder and asbestos

It’s a he said/she said mess, but Reuters looks into the case to see what Johnson & Johnson knew, when it knew it, and how bad the information really was.