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Over the past week, The Pharmaceutical Journal has introduced the director of pharmacy for the new Royal College of Pharmacy, shared everything you need to know about meningitis B, and reported on a new brain cancer drug — one of the first medications to be approved following NICE cost-effectiveness threshold changes.
We’ve also considered the future of pharmacist prescribing, as some pathfinder sites have been capped or closed as national funding comes to an end, and shared reflections on opportunities, progress and challenges for genomics implementation in practice.
Read on for more health news you might have missed this week.
Helping people with dementia at hospital discharge
This week, results from a retrospective cohort study published in the British Journal of General Practice have suggested that post-discharge medication errors — such as not actioning changes requested by hospital teams — disproportionately affect patients with dementia or a recorded carer.
Meanwhile a new tool — ‘SAFER-Dem‘ — helps people with dementia transition more safely and smoothly from mental health hospitals back to their communities, an evaluation published in BMJ Open has indicated. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Research, which funded the project, further evaluation and testing will help determine how SAFER-Dem can be scaled across mental health services.
Further reading
Genetic variants and GLP-1s
A large-scale genome-wide association study using 23andMe data and self-reported patient experiences has identified genetic variants linked to efficacy and side effects of GLP-1 medications.
A missense variant in the GLP1R gene was found to be associated with a modest increase in weight loss, although non-genetic factors — such as sex, drug type, dose and duration — appear to explain a substantially larger proportion of variability, according to Marie Spreckley, research programme manager at the University of Cambridge.
The study, published in Nature, also found variation in both GLP1R and GIPR genes linked to GLP-1 medication-related nausea or vomiting, with the GIPR association restricted to people using tirzepatide.
Further reading
‘Breakthrough’ in understanding psychedelic drugs
Results from an international “mega-analysis” — the largest ever study of psychedelics — have revealed that several psychedelic drugs — including psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, DMT and ayahuasca — produce a common pattern of brain activity despite their distinct chemistries. The findings, published in Nature Medicine, could help guide the design of future treatments for mental health disorders.
Lead author Danilo Bzdok, biomedical engineering associate professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, said: “This is a breakthrough in how we think about psychedelic drugs.”
