Namibian Pharmacists Page

17/10/2016

"......"We take into account other side effects of antidepressants, including weight gain and sexual side effects, but we are less concerned about sleep, especially when we use the SSRIs," Muhammad Tahir, MD, psychiatry resident, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, told Medscape Medical News.

"But the SSRIs increase sleep latency in the elderly and decrease REM [rapid eye movement] sleep duration and are also associated with REM sleep behavioral disorders, including nightmares," he added.

"So our literature review suggests that we should be careful about using SSRIs in the elderly population and not underestimate the effectiveness of psychotherapy and other holistic care approaches for the elderly," Dr Tahir said"........

Antidepressants, especially SSRIs, can significantly disrupt sleep architecture in elderly patients and may contribute to early neurodegeneration that can progress to dementia, new research shows.

14/05/2016

"We are enforcing a distribution restriction for specific products that have been part of, or considered by some states for, their lethal injection protocols," the New York-based drugmaker said on its website. "Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment."

Pfizer Inc has taken steps to ensure that none of its products are used in lethal injections, the largest U.S. drugmaker said on Friday.

04/05/2016

".....Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of ex*****on), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient. Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level........"

Analysis Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US BMJ 2016; 353 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i2139 (Published 03 May 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;353:i2139 Article Related content Metrics Responses Peer review Martin A Makary, professor1 , Michael Daniel, research fellow11Depar...

01/05/2016

"The European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has recommended marketing authorization for Gilead Sciences' fixed-dose HIV combination pill Odefsey containing emtricitabine 200 mg, rilpivirine 25 mg, and tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) 25 mg.

"TAF is a novel targeted prodrug of tenofovir that has demonstrated high antiviral efficacy similar to and at a dose less than one-tenth that of Gilead's Viread (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, TDF)," the company notes in a news release.

"TAF has also demonstrated improvement in surrogate laboratory markers of renal and bone safety as compared to TDF in clinical trials in combination with other antiretroviral agents. Data show that because TAF enters cells, including HIV-infected cells, more efficiently than TDF, it can be given at a much lower dose and there is 90 percent less tenofovir in the bloodstream," they said"

Odefsey is a fixed-dose combination pill containing emtricitabine, rilpivirine, and tenofovir alafenamide that recently cleared the US Food and Drug Administration.

17/04/2016

More evidence has linked the use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) to an increased risk of developing chronic kidney disease, disease progression, and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). And the longer the duration of use, the greater the risk, analysis of a national comprehensive database indicates.

"The results emphasize the importance of limiting PPI use to only when it is medically necessary, and also limiting the duration of use to the shortest duration possible," senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, from the Veterans Administration St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, noted in a news release. "A lot of patients start taking PPIs for a medical condition and they continue much longer than necessary."

First author Yan Xie, MPH, also from the Veterans Administration St. Louis Health Care System, and colleagues published their findings online April 14 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Proton pump inhibitors have been linked again to chronic kidney disease; the longer they are used, the greater the risk for adverse renal outcomes.

16/04/2016

Taking aspirin after a heart attack or a stroke can literally be lifesaving. The benefits of daily low-dose or "baby" aspirin, 81 mg, to prevent a second cardiovascular event are also well established. A more challenging question in primary care is: Who should take aspirin for primary prevention—that is, to prevent a first heart attack or stroke? The issue at stake here is that even if aspirin reduces the relative risk for initial cardiovascular events (which it appears to do), in a patient with low absolute risk for heart attack or stroke, the small preventive benefit can easily be outweighed by the increased risk for gastrointestinal bleeding.

The 2016 USPSTF recommendations for use of aspirin for primary prevention are just out and should make life easier for primary care clinicians.

30/09/2015

"Researchers found that pregnant women who received the drug tenofovir disoproxil fumarate in their third trimester gave birth to babies whose bone mineral content was 12 percent lower than that of infants who were not exposed to the drug in the uterus. Proper mineral content helps strengthen normal bones. The Study appears in Clinical Infectious Diseases."

NIH study finds mothers’ use of tenofovir tied to lower bone mineral content in babies

13/07/2015

http://htl.li/Pz4i4

On July 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Rexulti (brexpiprazole) tablets to treat adults with schizophrenia and as an add-on...

02/07/2015

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a speech on 1 July 2015 that costs to the NHS would be displayed on drug packaging where medicines cost more than £20, along with the statement “funded by the UK taxpayer”.

“This will not just reduce waste by reminding people of the cost of medicine, but also improve patient care by boosting adherence to drug regimes,” said Hunt. “I will start the processes to make this happen in 2015, with an aim to implement it in 2016.

The UK government is to publish the indicative cost of drugs on their packaging, in a move that it hopes will reduce medicines waste and improve adherence.

02/07/2015

D**g Pyou Han, a former Iowa State University researcher charged with falsifying HIV vaccine research, says that his troubles all started as an accident. Quickly, it became a multimillion-dollar research fraud scheme that landed him in prison.

01/07/2015

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World Health Organisation hails ‘one of the greatest public health achievements possible’, five years into regional initiative

18/06/2015

"Some of the types of medicines seized include treatments for: epilepsy, asthma, acne, narcolepsy, breast cancer, cholesterol reduction, analgesics, hair loss, weight loss, painkillers, fertility, breast/prostate cancer, anxiety/insomnia, skin lightening, anti-depressants, and diabetes.

The majority of the products seized in UK originated from India, China, Hong Kong and Singapore."

Potentially harmful Viagra-style pills, slimming tablets and counterfeit condoms are taken off the market in a major operation.