Author: Peter

Join Together Northern Nevada is holding a semiannual “Prescription Drug Round Up” day on October 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The goal of the round up is to collect unused, unwanted and expired prescription - or non-prescription - medications.

Locations:

• Raleys - 18144 Wedge Parkway, Reno
• CVS – 55 Damonte Ranch Parkway, Reno
• SaveMart – 105—N. McCarran Blvd., Reno
• Smith’s – 175 Lemmon Drive, Reno
• Scolari’s – 4788 Caughlin Parkway, Reno
• UNR Student Health Center, 1664 N. Virginia Street, Reno
• CVS - 680 N. McCarran Blvd, Sparks
• CVS – 5151 Sparks Blvd., Sparks

You may also drop off your pet medications and liquid form of medications.

An early lab study supporting a cancer drug bought by British drugmaker AstraZeneca was falsified, the company has admitted...AstraZeneca bought a majority stake in US rival Acerta Pharma at the end of 2015 for $4bn on the strength of its novel drug acalabrutinib under development for treating blood cancers and solid tumours. More than 2,000 patients are taking part in more than 25 acalabrutinib clinical trials...Last month Acerta retracted an abstract, published in medical journal Cancer Research in August 2015 – four months before the AstraZeneca investment – purportedly showing the drug was effective in treating solid tumours in mice...AstraZeneca admitted this evidence had been fabricated. It blamed a “former Acerta employee who acted alone to falsify a pre-clinical data set provided through external collaborations”. It confirmed the incident pre-dated its investment and US medicines regulator the Food and Drug Administration had been notified...AstraZeneca added: “It’s important to note that this isolated issue had no impact on the integrity of acalabrutinib data in any clinical trials, and there was no risk to patient health.”...

Chicago has moved a step closer to placing major restrictions on pharmacist workloads in a bid to improve consumer safety...The City Council Finance Committee on Tuesday approved a measure that would allow Chicago pharmacists to fill prescription orders for no more than 10 patients per hour, as well as guaranteeing meal and washroom breaks. It also would require pharmacies to post a list in plain sight showing which pharmacists and technicians have worked shifts longer than eight hours...The proposal's sponsor, Ald. Edward Burke, the committee's chairman, said he hoped to bring the plan up for a vote in the full City Council...The...alderman has argued that the proposal would reduce the "undue levels of stress" on pharmacists caused by pressure from retailers to fill hundreds of prescriptions a day. Pharmacists working constantly for as long as 12 hours a day have said they worry about losing focus during busy shifts and potentially putting their customers in jeopardy...Along with the 10-patient-per-hour limit, Burke's Chicago proposal would give pharmacists who work at least seven hours in a shift two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute meal break. A pharmacy also would need to schedule at least 10 pharmacy technician hours per 100 prescriptions filled.

CNN investigation exposes inappropriate use of drug in nursing homes...The maker of a little red pill intended to treat a rare condition is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year as it aggressively targets frail and elderly nursing home residents for whom the drug may be unnecessary or even unsafe...Nuedexta (dextromethorphan/quinidine), is approved to treat a disorder marked by sudden and uncontrollable laughing or crying -- known as pseudobulbar affect...This condition afflicts less than 1% of all Americans, based on a calculation using the drugmaker's own figures, and it is most commonly associated with people who have multiple sclerosis or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)...The number of pills (from 2012) rose to roughly 14 million in 2016, a jump of nearly 400% in just four years...Nuedexta's financial success...is being propelled by a sales force focused on expanding the drug's use among elderly patients suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and high-volume prescribing and advocacy efforts by doctors receiving payments from the company...

A Texas judge invalidated Allergan patents on its dry eye medicine Restasis on the grounds that the patents cover obvious ideas...Judge William Bryson issued the ruling in federal court in Marshall, Texas, in a longstanding dispute between Allergan and generic drugmakers led by Mylan NV and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd...The ruling could enable the generic drug companies to sell their own versions of Restasis, which generated around $1.5 billion in sales for Allergan last year and accounted for more than 10 percent of the company's revenue...Allergan's stock price dropped about 5 percent on the news...The patents at issue were the same ones Allergan transferred to a Native American tribe in an effort to protect them from administrative review...

Shortages of drugs and saline produced in Puerto Rico are beginning to materialize after Hurricanes Irma and Maria wreaked havoc on production on the island, which produces about 10% of the U.S. drug supply including products like Lipitor and blood thinner Xarelto...Saline solution was already suffering supply restraints before the storms knocked out power to plants across island, affecting saline production at a facility operated by Baxter International...The company, which has said it lost days of production as a result of the storms, has put customers on allocation of sodium chloride and will try to make up for some of that supply by importing saline and glucose from plants in Australia and Ireland...The FDA has said that there are about 40 drugs manufactured in Puerto Rico, 13 of them exclusively, and that shortages of some of those will be materializing within days. The storms knocked out power, and while manufacturers have backup generators, they could be without commercial power for months. Most of the facilities that have resumed production, maintain only partial operations…

Laura Joszt, assistant managing editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

J&J won the reversal of a verdict in favor of the family of a woman whose death...stemmed from her use of the company's talc-based products...J&J, which won one Missouri trial, says it faces lawsuits by 4,800 plaintiffs nationally asserting similar claims over its talc-based products...It also faces cases in California, where in August a jury awarded a woman $417 million...Johnson & Johnson...won the reversal of a $72 million verdict in favor of the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer they claimed stemmed from her use of the company's talc-based products like Johnson's Baby Powder...The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District said that given a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited where injury lawsuits could be filed, the case over Alabama resident Jacqueline Fox's death should not have been tried in St. Louis.

Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

While restrictions are increasing, a third of plans impose none...Medicare plans place few restrictions on the coverage of prescription opioids, despite federal guidelines recommending such restrictions, a new Yale study finds. The research results highlight an untapped opportunity for Medicare formularies to limit opioid prescribing... little is known about opioid coverage and restrictions under Medicare, which often serves as the standard for other insurers...Prescribing restrictions can have an impact...A prior study of a private insurer reported a 15% decrease in opioid prescribing when the insurer implemented restrictions, including prior authorization, quantity limits, and provider–patient agreements...