Author: Peter

UNLV’s nascent medical school has a place to call home after clearing one final bureaucratic hurdle to claim a spot inside the Las Vegas Medical District...Clark County Commission...unanimously approved a plan giving the university a 9-acre site at 625 Shadow Lane, where it plans to build its new medical school. The panel also voted to let the school lease space from nearby University Medical Center while it raises money for its own building...Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said the project has been a "long time coming" and called the school’s development "a historical moment."...School officials expect to break ground for the new building in about three to four years..."This is going to have such an impact on generations to come," Commissioner Lawrence Weekly said. "Students (are) going to be able to not have to dream about being a doctor or nurse and go to school out of state — they’ll be able to stay at home."

A budding Southern Nevada medical school was dealt a blow Thursday as it learned a committee declined to grant the school’s request for preliminary accreditation, likely delaying the college’s opening...The medical school is part of the private, nonprofit Roseman University of Health Sciences...Roseman spokesman Jason Roth said it’s unclear how much of a delay the news could cause in the development of the medical college. The school is awaiting a letter from the accreditation committee outlining the reasons for the rejection...Institutions denied preliminary accreditation can choose to appeal, according to the LCME website (Liaison Committee on Medical Education). Rejected schools must wait a year before reapplying for accreditation...Roth called the news a temporary setback...

Can you spot the prescription drug names among Elf names from J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium? Test your Elven race IQ.

India plans to urgently immunize around 300,000 children against the crippling polio virus after a strain of the highly contagious disease was detected in sewage in the southern city of Hyderabad...India was declared polio free by the World Health Organization in March 2014 after an almost two-decade long, multi-million dollar effort -- lauded as one of the country's biggest public health achievements in recent times...as a "precautionary measure" a special immunization drive would be held from June 20 in the high-risk districts of Hyderabad and Rangareddy, targeting around 300,000 children between the ages of six weeks and three years...Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries left in the world where the virus remains endemic...The polio virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. It often spreads in areas with poor sanitation, and children under five are the most vulnerable.

Doctors who received even one free meal from a pharmaceutical salesperson were more likely than others to prescribe the drug being promoted, even when a generic equivalent was available, according to a new study...Each year in the U.S., $73 billion is spent on brand name drugs for which there is an equivalent generic available, and patients pay for $24 billion of that amount themselves...The brand name drugs and the generics are "so similar that there’s no benefit," from using the brand name versions...doctors who received even one sponsored meal from one of the pharmaceutical companies were more likely to prescribe the target drug over a generic alternative, compared to doctors who did not receive sponsored meals. As the number of meals and meal value increased, relative prescribing rates also increased...It’s not clear from this study whether receiving meals caused doctors to change their prescribing patterns, but "humans are very responsive to gifts...

The arrests of two former pharmaceutical salesmen for allegedly paying doctors to prescribe fentanyl... drew a strong reaction from law enforcement and other doctors, who note that pharmaceutical companies have aggressively marketed risky and addictive painkillers in recent years and have paid more than $1 billion to settle charges of illegal marketing...The two salesmen...worked for...Insys Therapeutics, whose only approved product, Subsys, is a fast-acting form of fentanyl sprayed under the tongue...While fentanyl patches provide a slow, continuous dose of painkiller, spraying Subsys under the tongue provides relief in as little as five minutes...The salesmen paid two New York-area physicians a total of $259,000 in kickbacks in 2014... doctors wrote a total of more than $6 million in Subsys prescriptions in 2014...An Insys manager allegedly knew of the scheme and instructed sales staff to demand that the doctors prescribe "large quantities of fentanyl" in exchange for the money...The alleged kickback scheme is "one of the reasons we’re experiencing an epidemic of overdoses and deaths in this country," said Diego Rodriguez, an FBI assistant director...

Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Parata Systems and Pharmacy Times  2016 Next-Generation Pharmacist® Awards Gala, which honor pharmacists, technicians, student pharmacists and industry advocates who are defining the future of the industry, will be on August 6, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Dr. Zachery Halford, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy...for Roseman University’s College of Pharmacy, was named one of the finalists in the Specialty Pharmacist category...

Manufacturing problems at a factory in Italy have disrupted production of some GlaxoSmithKline medicines, leading to shortages of a commonly used opioid anaesthetic in Denmark...The..drugmaker said...it had temporarily suspended manufacturing at its Parma site, which makes sterile products, to investigate environmental monitoring...The factory has now recommenced manufacturing. However, a spokeswoman said a small number of countries had experienced shortages of certain products since April...Denmark, doctors said they were running out of the anaesthetic Ultiva (remifentanil)...

The latest skirmishes over drug take-back programs yielded a mixed outcome this week for the pharmaceutical industry, which has been battling local governments that want drug makers to pick up the tab...officials in Snohomish County, Wash., voted unanimously to require drug companies to run a program that would allow consumers to dispose of unwanted and unused medicines. At the same, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors delayed passing a similar ordinance until November...The actions...underscore the growing challenge that the pharmaceutical industry faces as more local governments consider such programs...Local officials are pursuing these laws in the face of rising disposal costs, growing concerns about contaminants in water supplies, and a desire to reduce the threat of drug abuse stemming from medicines lingering in cabinets...the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America...objected to the effort, saying that maintaining the program would be unwieldy and require the added burden of adhering to US Drug Enforcement Administration regulations because controlled substances would likely be turned in by consumers..."Siding with corporate interests over public health and safety can be a dangerous political position, and the people will have the final say," said Heidi Sanborn, the executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council. "This is not over,"....