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Using verbal, written, and visual communication strategies, pharmacists can empower patients with limited health literacy to manage complex medication regimens.

FDA approves a powder delivery system combining a corticosteroid and a LABA.

Extra points if you can use the word "bone-headed" in your answer.

Since pharmacists dispense potentially harmful medications, it is critical that we also impart information about poison control.

Pharmacies often overlook their licensing requirements or fail to discover the extent to which a license is required for a particular activity. Not good.

Letters, e-mails, comments, and posts from Drug Topics readers

As many as 138 pharmacists in Tampa, Fla. may lose their jobs as part of announced job cuts by Express Scripts, according to a published report.

Pharmacists who work at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California recently picketed outside the company’s offices to protest a lack of progress in contract negotiations. And the union that represents the pharmacists is threatening a strike.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) Foundation has provided $1.8 million to researchers to study the impact of pharmacist-collaboration in medication management for patients who have been discharged from the hospital.

B. Douglas Hoey, RPh, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) said the organization supports new legislation introduced May 6 that would give patients greater access to Medicare Part D plan networks.

Hours after we posted Kim Ankenbruck's “A dose of pharmacy truth: Report from the front lines,” the responses started showing up. Here's a collection of the early returns.

The National Lipid Association just released a report addressing six safety issues related to statin therapy, including the effects of statins on cognition, diabetes risk, liver function, muscle symptoms, interactions with other drugs, and statin intolerance. The report, published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology, is an update to a consensus report published by the organization in 2006.

An FDA advisory panel recommended against Merck’s attempt to sell its prescription drug, montelukast sodium (Singulair), as an over-the-counter product for allergy relief in adults only.

Higher dietary fiber intake among myocardial infarction (MI) survivors lowers the risk of subsequent all cause and cardiovascular mortality, according to a prospective study published April 29 in BMJ.

Ranbaxy Laboratories began recalling 29,790 blister packs of an over-the-counter allergy-relief medicine in February after the FDA identified unacceptable packaging defects and the recall is ongoing, according to the FDA.

A Louisiana pharmacy owner recently pled guilty to charges she bribed nursing home workers to return unused drugs, then repackaged and resold them as new.

Due to the number of vaccine errors reported to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) National Vaccine Errors Reporting System, the organization has developed recommendations for practitioners to reduce such errors.

Cost is the primary non-efficacy factor that drives decisions on which pain medications to include in formularies, according to a survey that included hospital pharmacy directors.

Kim Ankenbruck's first blog post, "Who will stand up for pharmacy?," got her an avalanche of e-mail. We asked her for an update, and she sent in a real doozy.

A West Virginia pharmacist has tossed his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination for Congress in the state’s 2nd District.

The University of Texas at Tyler recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new pharmacy school scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.

FDA approved umeclidinium (Incruse Ellipta, GlaxoSmithKline) once-daily anticholinergic for long-term maintenance treatment of airflow obstruction in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema.

FDA approved ceritinib (Zykadia, Novartis) for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Patients who use statins are consuming more calories and fats than a decade earlier, increasing the risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, according to a study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Who sez older pharmacists should be put out to pasture? Not these guys - they're too busy working to consider the possibility.

Pfizer announced its interest publicly in acquiring AstraZeneca and reincorporating in Britain, the New York Times reported.

The biggest challenge in tackling opioid abuse is lack of awareness and understanding of addictive diseases, as well as misinformation and negative perceptions of medication-assisted therapies (MATs), according to a recent opinion article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, defended the agency’s approval of the powerful opioid Zohydro ER (hydrocodone bitartrate) extended-release capsules, explaining that its highest dose is no more potent than the highest strengths of the opioid OxyContin ER (oxycodone) extended-release and extended-release morphine, in an FDA blog posted April 29.

FDA approved ramucirumab (Cyramza, Eli Lilly) to treat patients with advanced stomach cancer or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.

Gov. Scott Walker recently signed a bill into law authorizing physician-pharmacist collaboration in any patient setting throughout Wisconsin.