Category:

...the new crop of pharmacy students nationwide will need much more than an introduction to rudimentary science courses, thanks to the notable progress that the pharmacy industry has made in advancing the clinical role of pharmacists. The pandemic also has elevated pharmacists’ roles and allowed them to assume expanded responsibilities...Many pharmacy schools are stepping up to the plate with new courses and electives, as well as honing some of their existing courses, to ensure that their students are well prepared to meet the myriad challenges that they will face as newly minted pharmacists...READ MORE

Abbott announced the formation of the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition, a first-of-its-kind global scientific and public health partnership dedicated to the early detection of, and rapid response to, future pandemic threats. By connecting global centers of excellence in laboratory testing, genetic sequencing and public health research, the program will identify new pathogens, analyze potential risk level, rapidly develop and deploy new diagnostic testing and assess public health impact in real time...READ MORE

The FDA warns against changing the dosing levels and schedules of COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech...Amid concerns over limited COVID-19 vaccine supplies, some have proposed tweaking the shots’ dosing to immunize more people. One suggestion came from none other than U.S. vaccine czar Moncef Slaoui, Ph.D...Any changes to currently authorized vaccine dosing regimens pose a “significant risk of placing public health at risk” and undermine “the historic vaccination efforts to protect the population from COVID-19,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, M.D., and Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., head of the agency’s biologics department, said in a statement...READ MORE

Industry has welcomed the launch of the Global AMR Action Fund, which aims to bring two to four new antibiotics to patients by 2030 to tackle antimicrobial resistance...More than 20 biopharmaceutical companies are involved in the fund and have raised US$1 billion so far in new funding to support the clinical research of innovative new antibiotics to address the most resistant bacteria and life-threatening infections. The fund is an initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations...“Unlike COVID-19, AMR is a predictable and preventable crisis. We must act together to rebuild the pipeline and ensure that the most promising and innovative antibiotics make it from the lab to patients,” said Thomas Cueni, director general of IFPMA...READ MORE

Use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin could reduce COVID-19-related deaths, data from a peer-reviewed study shows...The study, published last week in the American Journal of Therapeutics, analyzed data from multiple clinical studies assessing ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Ivermectin, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis...The latest assessment of those multiple studies seems to confirm the potential of ivermectin against COVID-19. However, the FDA currently maintains a web page warning against the unauthorized use of ivermectin to treat the virus...The FDA notes that clinical studies are underway assessing ivermectin against COVID-19, but until those are reviewed and confirmed, it will warn against taking unauthorized medication...READ MORE

Preventing medication errors is an essential component of caring for patients and must be a core mission of every pharmacy. For medication error–prevention efforts to be effective, they must be a priority...The information in the tables of this review summarizes many of the significant error-prevention strategies recommended in the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! Acute Care newsletter from January through December 2020...READ MORE

Table 1. Safety Issues Related to Labeling, Packaging, and Nomenclature
Auxiliary label obscures critical reconstitution information on label of REVATIO (sildenafil; Pfizer) oral suspension carton

Table 2. Safety Issues Associated With Order Communication and Documentation
Confusion between LYUMJEV and HUMALOG (both insulin lispro by Lilly), which have different onsets of action

Table 3. Problems Involving Drug Information, Patient Information, Patient Education, and Staff Education
Administer adenosine rapidly for cardioversion

Table 4. Safety Issues Related to Medical Devices and Equipment
Bypassing soft low-dose alerts for subtherapeutic heparin infusions

Table 5. Other Discussion Items
Differences between human error, at-risk behavior, and reckless behavior

Table 6. ISMP’s Targeted Medication Safety Best Practices for Hospitals
FDA removes syringe administration from vinCRIStine labeling

...FDA issued an emergency use authorization to Eli Lilly for the investigational monoclonal antibody therapy bamlanivimab to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 in adult and pediatric patients...Bamlanivimab is authorized for patients ages 12 years and older who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus, weigh at least 40 kg, and are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. It is also authorized for adults ages 65 years or older or those who have certain chronic medical conditions...READ MORE

Saliva and oral bacteria from 30 UNLV dental clinic patients will blast off...in a rocket bound for the International Space Station...UNLV researchers from the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering and School of Dental Medicine are partnering with NASA and Colgate-Palmolive to study the growth of oral bacteria in space and to see if Colgate’s oral care products are effective in a microgravity environment...Two of the UNLV researchers involved with the project Jeffrey Ebersole, associate dean for research at the School of Dental Medicine, and mechanical engineering research scientist Shengjie Zhai will be on site...for the rocket launch...READ MORE

A new national consortium of virologists has been set up to systematically assess how mutations in SARS-CoV-2 affect key outcomes such as effectiveness of vaccines and therapies, transmissibility of the virus and the severity of COVID-19 infections...Now is the critical time to do this, as the level of both natural and vaccine-conferred immunity that might drive natural selection is increasing, said Wendy Barclay, head of the department of infectious disease at Imperial College London, who is leading the G2P-UK (Genotype to Phenotype-UK) project...“The virus has circulated in humans for more than a year; we’re in a phase where the virus is constantly throwing up new variants and we need to gear up to assess the risk they pose, and to understand the mechanisms by which they act,” Barclay said...READ MORE

Despite multiple published guidelines and antimicrobial stewardship programs, inappropriate antibiotic prescribing persists. Can simple behavioral “nudges”—including low-hanging fruit such as tip sheets and posters, as well as default-choice restriction of microbiology lab reports to a list of selected antimicrobials—steer providers in the appropriate direction, thus reducing both the inappropriate use of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance?...READ MORE