Legionnaire’s update

Sheraton Atlanta: Come on back, the quarantine’s been lifted!

CE at the Braves!

Join the Georgia Pharmacy Association for an afternoon at the Atlanta Braves — the last home game of the season, in fact.

Even better, we’re offering a one-hour CPE program before the game: “Put Me In, Coach: The Pharmacist’s Role in Sports Medicine.”

The game is Sunday, September 22, 2019. The CE starts at noon; the game begins at 1:20 p.m. It’s a mere $42.00 for GPhA members, which includes CPE and a ticket to the game. (Want to come for the game only? That’s $38.00.)

Check out GPhA.org/braves for more!

Pharmacists can cut antibiotic use

Duke researchers looked at small, understaffed community hospitals and found that half of antibiotic use was inappropriate. So they tested two ideas.

1. Pharmacists reviewed antibiotic prescriptions before refill.
2. Pharmacists reviewed antibiotic prescriptions after three days.

Idea #1 didn’t change antibiotic use. But idea #2 doubled the rate of identifying inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions. In other words, bringing pharmacists ‘officially’ into the workflow quickly cut antibiotic use considerably.

FDA takes virtual Mjölnir to approval rate

The FDA has set … no, broken … nay, shattered its generic-drug approval record, and it’s only July.

• 2019 so far: 1,028 approvals
• All of 2018: 971 approvals

The downside is that it likely will have little effect on drug prices: “[R]esearch shows that the highest driver of prescription drug costs is specialty drugs for chronic conditions such as cancer.”

Another good reason to keep your blood pressure down

Hypertension in middle age seems to lead to a greater chance of dementia later.

Or, as the study’s authors put it, “Sustained hypertension in midlife to late life and a pattern of midlife hypertension and late-life hypotension, compared with midlife and late-life normal BP, were associated with increased risk for subsequent dementia.”

A different Alzheimer’s target?

Beta-amyloid plaque has long been assumed to be the culprit in Alzheimer’s, but every effort to fight it has failed. But what if the culprit is something else? Say, lysosomes that have been ‘broken’ by undigestible proteins?

“Lysosome storage” (broken lysosomes clogging cells) might be the actual issue — at least according to UC Riverside researchers.

Although the timeframes are different…

“The brains of people who have lysosomal storage disorder, another well-studied disease, and the brains of people who have Alzheimer’s disease are similar in terms of lysosomal storage. “

Pill Club vs CVS

CVS (the PBM) apparently changed how much it reimburses pharmacies — specifically Pill Club — for birth control. This being 2019, naturally the fight went to Twitter. Enjoy an 1,100-word story about it: “The strange tale of how a battle between 2 healthcare companies morphed into a viral Twitter backlash against CVS“.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”

At least seven medical groups — including the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Osteopathic Association, American College of Physicians, American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association for Children’s Behavioral Health — joined another 16 organizations* in a joint letter condemning the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule against immigrants.

* Including the Children’s Defense Fund, Families USA, the March of Dimes, MomsRising, and the United Way

Elsewhere: Down Under edition

“Staff left shaken after pair storm Ascot Vale pharmacy with machetes”

Elsewhere: Up Yonder edition

Like the rest of the modern world*, Canada has universal health care. But what it doesn’t have is universal prescription coverage. But now a group of “more than 1,200 Canadian health care and public policy experts” have asked that all Canada’s political parties include national prescription coverage in their platforms.

They say comprehensive public medication programs have improved access and reduced costs everywhere they’ve been implemented and want to keep national pharmacare in Canada from becoming a partisan issue.

* With one small exception