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This week, The Pharmaceutical Journal has reported on slow progress on medicines shortages, new guidance on chronic pain and a newly approved head and neck cancer treatment that will improve the standard of care for the first time in 20 years.
Meanwhile, according to an analysis of a respiratory syncytial virus vaccination pilot, pharmacy delivery was “feasible” but might be difficult to scale, with more understanding needed of the impact of this on health inequalities.
Read on for more health news you might have missed this week, from The Pharmaceutical Journal and elsewhere.
Job planning for rheumatology pharmacists
In collaboration with pharmacists in adult and paediatric rheumatology, the British Society for Rheumatology has developed new job-planning guidance that is aimed to better define advanced and consultant pharmacist roles and promote consistent job planning across multidisciplinary teams.
Laura Wilson, director for Scotland at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), said that the guidance is aligned with the Society’s Core Advanced and Consultant Pharmacist Curricula, which will help “support a more consistent approach to advanced practice”.
“Structured, regularly reviewed job planning is essential to support pharmacist wellbeing, maximise their contribution within multidisciplinary teams and ensure high-quality patient care,” she added.
Further reading
Inhaled mebufotenin for symptom-resistant depression
Inhaling psychedelic mebufotenin shows high treatment efficacy for treatment-resistant depression, with no serious side effects, according to the results of a phase II study published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Further reading
Older adults on antidepressants need ‘vigilant monitoring’ during initiation and withdrawal
Older adults who have recently been started on antidepressants may be at greater risk of emergency hospital admission, the findings of a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has suggested.
The results revealed that other risk factors include a short treatment gap or early discontinuation after short-term use. The author also found that patients using antidepressants generally had a higher risk of serotonin-related symptoms, falls and trauma, and cardiovascular events.
Study authors said the findings highlight “the need for vigilant monitoring of antidepressant initiation and withdrawal in older-adult polypharmacy patients”.
Further reading
Severe infections could raise dementia risk
Severe infections, including cystitis and bacterial disease, are linked to higher dementia risk independently of other coexisting conditions, results of a Finnish registry study published in PLoS Medicine have suggested.
“Ideally, intervention trials should examine whether better infection prevention helps reduce dementia occurrence or delay the onset of this disease,” the study authors said.
Further reading
Autoantibodies may drive long COVID
Many people with long COVID carry elevated levels of auto-antibodies that target a wide range of the body’s own proteins, including those involved in immune regulation, nerve signalling and metabolism, the results of a study published in Cell Reports Medicine has revealed.
The results also showed that immunoglobin samples from people with long COVID were found to produce persistent pain-like hypersensitivity in mice.
Further reading
Prescribing for psychosis in women
A review in the Lancet Oncology has explored the role of ovarian hormones in psychosis and its findings have suggested that hormonal status should be thoroughly assessed and sex-specific prescribing — including the judicious use of oestrogen-based interventions such as hormonal contraception, hormone therapy and oestrogen receptor modulators — should be considered.
Further reading
Overcoming side effects of drugs used to combat hair loss
A novel peptide designed using computational modelling could promote hair growth without the side effects of existing drugs, such as minoxidil and finasteride, and could be used in both men and women, findings published in Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy suggest.
Further reading
Weedkiller glyphosate associated with antimicrobial resistance
Weedkillers “may have the unintended side-effect of selecting for AMR [antimicrobial resistance] among bacterial communities within the soil,” Daniela Centrón, a researcher at the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology in Buenos Aires commented on the results of her study, published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Untreated wastewater can transmit bacteria carrying antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) between agricultural and hospital settings, contributing to the evolution of AMR, co-author Jochen A Müller, a group leader at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, said.
According to the results of a separate study, published in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes, cyanobacteria can help regulate ARG in estuaries, but cyanobacterial blooms could accelerate ARG dissemination, underscoring emerging ecological and public health risks requiring careful management.
