Antibiotic hoarders

There are people who take and hoard antibiotics without a prescription — pills they’ve saved, gotten from someone who didn’t finish a course, or bought overseas. Why? Because of “personal beliefs” (i.e., they wanna) but more specifically it’s “based on past treatment experiences and health care system barriers.”

In other words, they couldn’t get them when they needed them.

Interviewees struggled with getting transportation to appointments, paying for parking and affording the associated costs of doctor visits. Many patients opted to use nonprescription antibiotics because they are more convenient than visiting a clinician and are easier to obtain and afford.

Interestingly, the authors of the paper say what’s needed is education on antibiotic resistance, rather than, I dunno, helping people overcome the barriers to care.

Chain-pharma news

Rite Aid formally declares bankruptcy

Not that it’s a surprise; we’ve been covering the road here for a while. But now it’s official. The company already has $3.45 billion in new financing, and it named a permanent CEO (one Jeffrey Stein).

One of the requirements of the process wins the Euphemism of the Week award: “Accelerate the company’s store footprint optimization plan.”

Walgreens pharmacists plan late-October walkout

The Walgreens walkout that was expected last week has been moved to late October, as pharmacists work to coordinate the effort … and hope they and the company will reach an agreement before that happens.

The Walgreens organizer said they have been in talks with pharmacy staff from other retail chains about participating in the group walkout. The person sees nationwide walkouts across several retail pharmacy chains as the “next step” in the fight against current working conditions.

Scholarship applications are open!

FDA considers CBD

The FDA has decided it might be time to regulate CBD-based products, or at least think about thinking about regulating it. But to ensure the process moves as slowly as possible, it’s turned to Congress for advice and permission.

[Owen] McMaster^* explained FDA has received several citizen petitions requesting that the agency allow CBD products to be regulated as dietary supplements. “Unfortunately, the existing regulatory frameworks that we have for foods and supplements are not appropriate for CBD. It’s not apparent how CBD products can meet the safety standards for dietary supplements or food additives,” he explained.

The problem is that the agency can’t actually regulate CBD products until Congress gives it the authority. So until then, to quote Cole Porter, anything goes!

^* He is “a senior pharmacology/toxicology reviewer with the Division of Pharm/Tox for Infectious Diseases (DPT-ID) in the Office of Infectious Diseases (OID) in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER)” and a man with a very large business card.

FDA can regulate e-cigs: SCOTUS

By declining to hear a case challenging the FDA’s power to ban flavored e-cigarettes, the Supreme Court has effectively given its approval to the agency’s regs.

The FDA has been banning sales of flavored vapes unless the companies can prove that their flavored products ‘were more effective at helping adult smokers quit than tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes.’

Give a hand to methotrexate

Methotrexate is already used for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, and now Aussie researchers found it works for hand osteoarthritis, too.

It’s not a huge, game-changing drug, but it helps: “A 20mg weekly oral dose over six months had a moderate effect in reducing pain and stiffness in patients with symptomatic hand OA.” They noticed it took a few months to really work, but from three to six months the pain levels decreased — and looked like they would continue to decrease.

Prescribers can prescribe it now, of course, but you know the mantra: More research is needed…

… “to establish whether the effect of methotrexate extends beyond six months, for how long we need to treat patients, and whether methotrexate reduces joint damage in patients with hand osteoarthritis and associated inflammation.”

Diabetic kids are getting lots of brain meds

It’s an interesting correlation: From 2006 to 2019, kids with type 1 diabetes have been prescribed a lot more psychotropic meds — stimulants, anxiolytics, SSRIs, and more.

The researchers found that psychotropic medication dispensing increased from 0.85 to 3.84 percent among children and from 2.72 to 13.54 percent among adolescents with T1D, consistently higher than their peers without T1D.

Why? They don’t know. “These findings call for further in-depth investigations.”

Acne is sponge-worthy

A big stumbling block to acne treatments is getting patients to use it every day. To counter that, a group of American researchers have developed a weekly topical treatment made from the powdered form of a freshwater sponge called Spongilla lacustris. (Apparently it’s been used for inflammation since the 1700s.)

Called DMT310 and tested on teenagers for 12 weeks in a phase 2 trial, the “once-weekly topical treatment significantly reduced both inflammatory and noninflammatory lesions” with no notable side effects. Next up: a larger, phase 3 trial.