Shameless convention plug

If you and your pharmacy are making enough money, you can skip this item.

If, on the other hand, you’re thinking about ways to expand by providing patients (and payors) with some enhanced service offerings, take note:

Payer Opportunities for Community Practice is just one of the great CE courses at the Georgia Pharmacy Convention. If you’re an owner or manager, this is an obvious choice — you’ll get great ideas for how you and your team can do more and earn more.

If you’re an employee, this class is a great way to prepare to move ahead — come to a new job prepared with great ideas. (And because you were a convention attendee, we promise never to tell ’em where you got them.)

Click here! Register now!

Send in the pox (it’s already here)

Monkeypox has arrived on American shores. A man in Massachusetts has it, as do some folks in Canada. Britain has at least nine cases, Portugal has at least five, Spain has 23. You get the picture.

What’s most unusual?

• It might be sexually transmitted, rather than contracted by interaction with certain game animals.
• Human-to-human transmission is also new; monkeypox doesn’t normally cause an outbreak or cluster.
• This variant causes pustules on the palms. Yay.

As for the disease itself, the smallpox vaccine offers protection, and antivirals work well at this point. And if you get it? Disgusting, but rarely fatal. Good news: Those pustules eventually fall off.

Someone’s getting twitchy

Copenhagen-based vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic has started production of its smallpox vaccine. Just in case. It even has a contract — but, typical for those shifty Danes, it’s with “an undisclosed European country.”

Losartan vs frailty

The latest entry in the ‘meds that turn out to do more’ chronicles is that of losartan. Led by a geriatrics researcher at the University of Texas, a new study found that everyone’s favorite blood pressure med “may help improve measures of frailty in prefrail older adults.”

After six months on the drug…

“The frailty scores in these patients were lower after taking the losartan and they also had improved physical function. […] We found that the losartan group had improvements in their molecular levels as well, meaning changes in things like their metabolism and stress markers.”

Snitches get … well, they get our thanks

Rat out a PBM. There are laws in Georgia that prohibit steering and retroactive claim adjustments, for example, and that require fair audits. But — and this may come as a shock to some — we’ve heard that the PBMs don’t always obey the law.

As hard as that is to believe, if you happen to run into such a case, the good folks at NCPA have made it easy to file a report in Georgia or another state (if you happen to cross lines).

NCPA has launched a new resource to help pharmacists and patients report possible violations to state insurance regulators and push them to enforce the laws on the books. Click for NCPA’s PBM Complaints tool.

To fly for the little guy

President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to help deal with the baby-formula shortage. Among other things, this means ingredient suppliers must prioritize formula makers.

More interesting is that it will launch Operation Fly Formula (seriously), which will allow the HHS and USDA “to use Department of Defense commercial aircraft to pick up overseas infant formula that meets U.S. health and safety standards, so it can get to store shelves faster.”

Pineapple trap

Most of the time, people throw away the leaves of a pineapple (or try to grow a tree*), but do you know what pineapple leaves can do? Absorb fat.

So researchers from the National University of Singapore decided to try some upcycling — turning those leaves into “fat trappers” that can compete with fancy weight-loss supplements.

“After ingestion, the capsule or cracker absorbs fatty compounds (such as animal fats) and form fat-coated fibre lumps. These fat-coated lumps will then be passed out from the digestive system in one to three days, similar to other foods we consume.”

SIDS ‘breakthrough’ — did we speak too soon?

Last week we reported on a breakthrough against Sudden Infant Death Syndrome — a biomarker that might be able to predict it. Welp, turns out it might have been an exaggeration. The Scientist explains.

There are two issues covered in the story: First is the misreporting — in other media — that the cause of SIDS was found. (It’s just a biomarker.) More important, though, is whether the study even found a reliable biomarker, or was just “oversold science.”

Big Cranberry would like a word

A European study funded by the Cranberry Institute found that “Cranberries could improve memory and ward off dementia.”