This one simple solution could end the opioid epidemic!

Seriously. Well, maybe not end it, but potentially put a dent in it. Ready? Tell prescribers when their patients die from overdoses.

Yep, that simple. A study out of USC…

…shows that notifying clinicians through an informational letter from their county’s medical examiner that a patient had suffered a fatal overdose reduced the number of opioid prescriptions they wrote for up to a year.

The lead author’s name is Jason Doctor, so you know it’s legit.

While you’re writing letters to prescribers…

Reminding them to check the state prescription monitoring program apparently gets more of them to — wait for it — check the state prescription monitoring program.

The Columbia-led study focused on Minnesota patients who were prescribed both opioids and benzos, and they found a reminder letter (on paper!) was a simple and “cost-effective evidence-based strategy to promote safer prescribing.”

The researchers found that letters mentioning the mandate to check the PMP successfully increased engagement with the program. PMP search rates rose by 9 percent, and the effect persisted at least 8 months.

Slight caveat: The letters didn’t affect prescribing, just the use of the PMP.

The awards deadline is almost here!

There are only a few days left for your nominations — the deadline for telling us about extraordinary people is in just a few weeks — Wednesday, February 1!

If you haven’t, you’ve still got time to help choose the best of the best in Georgia pharmacy — with the 2023 awards being presented with both pomp and circumstance at the 2023 Georgia Pharmacy Convention on Amelia Island, Fla.

What awards, you ask? The details are at GPhA.org/awards, but here’s the list:

• The Bowl of Hygeia: You know it or you don’t — it’s among the most prestigious awards in pharmacy and the only one with a Wikipedia page.
• Larry L. Braden Meritorious Service Award: GPhA’s highest honor
• Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award (“Young” meaning in the profession for less than a decade)
• Excellence in Innovation Award for Pharmacy Practice
• Faculty Member of the Year
• Jim Bartling Student Pharmacist of the Year*
• Pharmacy Technician of the Year

Yes, these are GPhA awards, but nominations come from you, the members. That’s what gives them meaning. And it starts now.

Visit our awards page at GPhA.org/awards for more information on award criteria, and to make your nominations. Remember: The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2023.

Stopping antipsychotics

These days antipsychotics treat more than psychosis — they’re all over the place, off-label. Which is fine. The problem is that once someone is taking the drugs, no one talks about getting them off.

The guidance for antipsychotic prescribing […] gives detailed steps on how to start someone on the medication. No guidance is given on how to stop it. The expectation is, when prescribed for a licensed condition, that people would keep taking the medication indefinitely.

In fact, explains a British pharmacist, antipsychotic withdrawal is often explained as a relapse of the condition the drugs are supposed to be treating.

This leaves many people with the only option of attempting to stop their antipsychotics on their own without the support of a healthcare professional who could advise them on tapering the medication slowly.

Vitamin D does it again

This might be considered irony: People who take vitamin D supplements have a lower risk of melanoma — heck, of skin cancer in general. That’s what Finnish dermatologists discovered, and it even applies to people with a higher risk of skin cancer.

How big an effect did the big D have? “Logistic regression analysis showed that the risk for melanoma among regular users was considerably reduced, more than halved, compared to non-users.” And even occasional users reduce their risk.

There are limits, though. Vitamin D, they found, won’t reduce “photoaging, facial photoaging, actinic keratoses, nevus count, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.” And what’s the optimal dose? That’s still up in the air.

Grain of salt for grains of salt

If someone has hypertension, “Reduce your salt intake” is one of the top suggestions. But that may not help at all. Dutch researchers found that a high- or low-salt diet didn’t affect blood pressure … in white people, anyway.

They looked at salt intake, salt outgo (i.e., urinary sodium levels), and blood pressure variability — and found no correlation.

“Therefore, our results do not indicate that salt restriction would be an effective strategy to lower BPV, at least not in a white population-based setting with relatively healthy individuals.”

The latest drug problem

On the heels of fentanyl comes xylazine — the animal tranquilizer with the street name “tranq.”

Fentanyl was already being added to heroin and other street opioids (because it’s cheap and easy to make), and now xylazine is being added to fentanyl. This is a Very Bad Thing.

Xylazine causes wounds that erupt with a scaly dead tissue called eschar; untreated, they can lead to amputation. It induces a blackout stupor for hours, rendering users vulnerable to rape and robbery.

But making it even worse is that xylazine isn’t an opioid, so naloxone doesn’t affect it. There’s no available reversal treatment, and it’s not always clear that someone has OD’d on it.

Adding to the mess: Xylazine hasn’t yet been classified as a controlled substance, although the DEA is looking into that.

Fat mouse, skinny mouse (today’s non-pharma medical stories)

Choices, choices.

If you want to protect your mouse from genital herpes, get her fat. And I say “her” because it only applies to female mice. Korean researchers found that…

… thanks to differences in their vaginal microbiomes compared with lean mice, obese mice fed a high-fat diet had stronger immune responses against HSV-2, which causes genital herpes in humans.

Meanwhile, if you want to spare your mice from age-related macular degeneration (or other inflammatory diseases), don’t let them get fat in the first place.

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Canada has found that obesity in young mice can lead to inflammatory disease later in life even if the mouse is no longer overweight.