Mercer trains pharmacist entrepreneurs

We’ve heard it plenty: Schools teach students how to practice pharmacy, but they don’t do enough to teach the business end of the profession.

Mercer University is trying to alleviate that with its new entrepreneurship track for student pharmacists.

“The curriculum includes required pharmacy and business courses and pharmacy electives,” according to Kay Torrance, the CoP’s director of communications & marketing, with courses like “Pharmacy Management,” “Community Pharmacy Ownership,” and our favorite, “Pharmacy Association Management.”

Synthetic CBD helps seizing rats

If you know some rats that are having issues with seizures, chemists at UC Davis might have some help for them. They’ve developed a “synthetic, non-intoxicating analogue of cannabidiol*” that can be synthesized inexpensively — not grown — and works as well as “herbal” CBD to treat seizures.

* “8,9-Dihydrocannabidiol” (H2CBD) — so I guess they slap a couple of hydrogen atoms onto a cannabidiol molecule? Whatever. Science!

FDA wants to change opioid packaging

The agency is considering requiring that opioid manufacturers supply blister packs of 5, 10, and 15 tablets, at least of some immediate release opioids.

The agency said it believes the utilization of these fixed-quantity unit-of-use blister package configurations “would substantially reduce the quantity of opioid analgesics dispensed per prescription compared to the status quo.”

Older folks really like their weed

In 2016 people over 65 were using recreational cannabis 10 times as often as the year before (so says the 2016 National Survey of Drug Use and Health). Researchers at the University of Colorado wanted to know why. The big reasons they found: reluctance to ask their physicians for a prescription for medical marijuana. It was easier (if more expensive) to buy the recreational stuff.

“Although study participants discussed recreational cannabis more negatively than medical cannabis, they felt it was more comparable to drinking alcohol, often asserting a preference for recreational cannabis over the negative effects of alcohol,” the study said.

That’s a lot of blueberries

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that eating a cup of blueberries a day reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease.

This may be because blueberries are high in naturally occurring compounds called anthocyanins, which are the flavonoids responsible for the red and blue colour in fruits.

The team pointed out that you need that full cup (about 150 grams): “Unexpectedly, we found no benefit of a smaller 75 gram (half cup) daily intake of blueberries in this at-risk group.”

The fat in the bacteria in the dirt… that’s good for you

It started with the “hygiene hypothesis” — too many people were living a sterile lifestyle, increasing cases of asthma and allergies. But that morphed into the idea that it’s not exposure to germs that helps, but exposure to particular soil microbes — specifically Mycobacterium vaccae.

When M. vaccae is injected into rats, it works like an antidepressant and has anti-inflammatory effects. Now researchers (publishing in Psychopharmacology) have narrowed it down further: It’s actually a particular lipid — 10(Z)-hexadecenoic acid — that does the trick.

Simply knowing the mechanism of action by which M. vaccae reaps benefits could boost confidence in it as a potential therapeutic. And if further studies show the novel fat alone has therapeutic effects, that molecule could become a target for drug development, he said.