Tornado hits just blocks from Missouri Pharmacy Association

From Bob Coleman, CEO, GPhA:

Some of you may have pharmacist friends in the Jefferson City, Missouri, area, so I wanted to send you this update I received today. Over the last two years, I’ve gotten to know their state association exec, Ron Fitzwater, very well. Ron and I see each other often at pharmacy events and sit on the PACE Board of Directors together. I was so glad to learn that he and his family are safe.

Please see the e-mail below I received from Ron and let’s keep our brothers and sisters in Missouri in our thoughts and prayers as they begin the arduous process of recovery.

Greetings,

As you know by now, Jefferson City was hit by a catastrophic tornado at approximately 11:40 PM yesterday. As of now MPA staff and families are all safe. Fortunately, there have not been any reported deaths in the county as of right now. Law enforcement, the fire department and public safety personnel from a number of nearby cities are volunteering to assist the amazing team of officers and firefighters that we have here in Jefferson City, to assist in rescue operations It is amazing to watch the cooperation in the city with neighbors helping neighbors and others.

Our preliminary look at the MPA building doesn’t show any signs of damage at this point. The same cannot be said for Capitol Avenue a couple of blocks east of us. It looks like a war zone. I talked to a number of people, including at least one association, that lost everything. Their buildings are damaged beyond repair. It is going to change the look of the city.

On top of the tornado, we are expecting flooding over the next few days. The Missouri River has reached the top of the levy (30 feet). It is expected to crest at 35-36 feet based on current data. That is now projected for Sunday. For reference, the 1993 flood crested at just over 38 feet.

Due to the ongoing emergency activities, the MPA office is closed today and won’t be re-opened until Tuesday. You can reach me by cellular telephone or e-mail if you need anything.

Best wishes for a very Happy Holiday Weekend.

Photos (provided by Ron) from Capitol Avenue about 3-5 blocks east of the MPA offices:

Congrats to the Taylors

Specifically Monica and Arnold, who just opened the Taylor Pharmacy & Wellness Center — “a pharmacy and clinic that offers prescription and over-the-counter medications, and cannabidoil products” — in Douglasville.

The heat is on (and she wants it that way)

A new study finds that women’s productivity goes down with the temperature.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, researchers reported that at colder temperatures, men scored higher than women on verbal and math tests. But as a room grew warmer, women’s scores rose significantly.

Green is good

Take a book by a 19th century botanist who researched medicinal plants in the South for the confederacy, add some modern-day Emory researchers looking for answers to antibiotic resistance, and you get a paper on how “American Civil War plant medicines inhibit growth, biofilm formation, and quorum sensing by multidrug-resistant bacteria.”

Don’t want the paper itself? Check out the article from WABE.

Meanwhile in Singapore, researchers there found that the leaves of a variety of plants “can stop the growth of breast, cervical, colon, leukemia, liver, ovarian, and uterine cancer.” They published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, but you can also read the layperson’s version in Futurity.

Drug warnings to note

The Japanese Health Ministry issued a warning about breast-cancer drug Verzenio, saying the drug “is suspected of adversely affecting patients’ lungs, after 14 recipients in Japan developed a serious lung disease and three died.”

Meanwhile the European Medical Agency has restricted use of Xeljanz (aka tofacitinib, for ulcerative colitis) while it investigates how often an in whom it produces dangerous blood clots.