Potential slow start to the school year

As the school year starts, an Adderall shortage is the last thing we need, and yet here we are.

Both 20-mg and 30-mg tablets of Teva’s branded ADHD drug Adderall are currently on back order in the U.S., with the company eyeing a release date in early- to mid-August.

Teva not only makes Adderall, it also makes most generic amphetamine salts, but the company says not to worry, “[We] expect full recovery for all inventory and orders in the coming weeks.”

Dues renewal is nigh!

It’s almost time to render unto Mary that which is Mary’s. (Meaning Mary Ritchie, GPhA’s director of membership.) Your GPhA 2022–23 dues invoice will be coming to your mailbox soon, so keep an eye out.

And please, if you would be so kind as to send it back quickly, it’ll make Mary’s life a bit easier. Thank you!

If you show me yours…

Would you like your pharmacy to appear in on a reality show called “Show Me” — if we promised that it would not require compromising your virtue? If so, NCPA is looking for you.

Think of it like “Kitchen Nightmares” or “Bar Rescue” but with less cursing and alcohol, and more lab coats and plastic bottles. “Show Me” will feature “NCPA members facing typical pharmacy challenges who get the help they need from some peers who’ve been there and done that.”

You and your pharmacy could be on it — you just need to apply with a video to prove you’ve got what it takes for your close up. Click here for the details, some tips, and the submission form.

Good news for Walt Disney

Being cold, it seems, inhibits cancer growth. That’s what Swedish researchers discovered, and the mechanism is actually quite simple:

[C]hilly temperatures activate heat-producing brown fat that consumes the sugars the tumors need to thrive. Similar metabolic mechanisms were found in a cancer patient exposed to a lowered room temperature.

They even did some preliminary human testing and found that being at about 60°F vs. 82°F makes a difference — “The imaging scans picked up increased brown fat and lowered tumor glucose uptake during the lower versus the higher temperature.”

The Short Read: CivicaScript Debuts edition

Yesterday, the hospital-owned nonprofit Civica Rx launched CivicaScript, and it began selling it’s first drug, abiraterone, for a lot less that the list price.

A month’s supply of abiraterone 250 mg will be sold to pharmacies for about $160 a bottle with a maximum retail price of $171 — about $3,000 less than the average price for someone with Medicare Part D coverage.

More interesting for those with crystal balls is that CivicaScript is part of a larger trend of non-profits arising to take on the pharmaceutical companies — and high drug prices — by offering cheaper generics and price transparency.

Latest Covid vaccine news

Three studies, one variant family

Separate studies out of Israel, the US, and Japan all conclude — to one degree or another — that three (or preferably four) doses of an mRNA vaccine protects people from Omicron. Not perfectly, but it reduces the risk of symptoms and hospitalization enough to say, “It’s effective.”

Novavax warning

This wouldn’t be the Covid pandemic if there wasn’t one snag after another. Today’s (well, yesterday’s) hiccup: Although the EU, like the US, has approved Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine as an alternative to the two mRNA shots out there, the European Medicines Agency now wants that vaccine to carry a warning that both myocarditis and pericarditis are potential side effects, in addition to the existing “severe allergic reactions.”

Bring cheeses into your life?

Eating a bit of Jarlsberg cheese — and only Jarlsberg cheese — “may help to stave off bone thinning,” according to a study out of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. But before you rush out to the dairy section, note that the study was funded by Tine, “Norway’s largest producer, distributor and exporter of dairy products.”

(Oh, and if you’re thinking, “I‘d rather have Camembert than Jarlsberg,” I have bad news for you.)

Side reading: Experts call into question some significant limitations of the study.