No good deed goes unpunished … by PBMs

The Biden administration enacted a policy to limit PBM “performance fees” to the time of filling — no more clawbacks. Pharmacist groups applauded. Angels got their wings.

Then the PBMs hit back.

Pharmacist groups […] didn’t anticipate the PBMs’ response, which has been to demand they accept new contracts with draconian cuts to their payments for dispensing medicines.

[…]

If pharmacies refuse the contracts, they risk losing Medicare customers — likely to the same giant PBM conglomerates, which have absorbed a growing share of the pharmacy business in recent years.

(Technically this would be considered a Long Read, but the PBM blowback is at the beginning of the story — the rest is an explanation of how clawbacks work and how they’re affecting independent pharmacies.)

We added a tech-immunization session!

We got caught off-guard by the flood of interest in our immunization program for pharmacy techs (a good problem to have, if we’re honest).

The live session — half of the six-hour program — filled up fast. So we’re holding a second live session that same day to accommodate the interest.

Technicians: If you couldn’t register for the live session of Immunization Delivery Training, there’s room in the afternoon now, in the 2:00 – 5:00 pm session. (At least there is as we write this.)

Get more info and sign up at GPhA.org/techimmunization.

And if you weren’t interested, take note: A lot of techs are about to have an immunization certificate — are you sure you want to be left behind?

Melatonin concerns

Melatonin has replaced Benadryl as the go-to med that parents give their kids to get them out of their hair help them fall asleep. But there isn’t a ton of data on what giving kids a hormone regularly will actually do. After all, supplements like melatonin aren’t FDA-regulated.

Before you say, “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad” note a few things:

1. Calls to poison-control centers for melatonin have skyrocketed over the last decade.
2. In other countries melatonin is prescription-only, for what that tells you.
3. Tests show that the dosage on the bottle doesn’t always reflect the dosage of the gummy.
4. There’s no standard dosage, so parents just wing it.

Paxlovid giveth, and Paxlovid taketh away

Sure Paxlovid can help make sure serious Covid doesn’t become deadly Covid, but it might be a “two steps forward, one step back” situation. It seems — according to researchers at a group of big-name Boston institutions — that Paxlovid increases your chance of “Covid rebound,” i.e., having symptoms recur after getting better.

[T]here is no question that Paxlovid is a useful drug that can help keep patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus from being hospitalized. But some also wondered if the results might be an indicator that the current dosing duration of Paxlovid — daily, for five days — is not long enough.

More BP news from the American Heart Association

No, it isn’t paying us (sadly). AHA’s annual conference is just chock full of pharma news.

Good for the brain

Lowering blood pressure isn’t just good for the heart (found a four-year study from rural China), it also reduced risk of dementia. Keeping a target BP of 130/80 cut all-cause dementia by 15% — and we suspect a lot of that is from reducing the vascular kind.

One and done (for a while)

A new drug called zilebesiran reduced blood pressure (in adults with mild-to-moderate hypertension) with just a single injection — and it lasted six months.

It’s currently in a phase 2 study, so it’s well out of the lab. And if you’re curious, “Zilebesiran is an investigational RNA interference agent targeting angiotensinogen (AGT), a hormone produced predominantly in the liver that contributes to blood pressure regulation.”

Research news that gets you to raise an eyebrow

“Men experience less pain when a woman is in charge” —Lund University

(Trying to find an illustration has skewed Google’s opinion of me.)