Professional development webinars for pharmacists.

Objectives: To evaluate pharmacists' satisfaction with and reasons for enrolling in a series of continuing education webinars.

Design: Webinars intended to provide timely and practical information for practicing pharmacists on a specific therapeutic area were created and presented monthly throughout 2011.

Assessment: Survey responses of volunteers who completed at least 1 webinar were positive regarding the quality of the programming and the method of delivery.

Pharmacists' perceptions of a live continuing education program comparing distance learning versus local learning.

Background: Constraints in geography and time require cost efficiencies in professional development for pharmacists. Distance learning, with its growing availability and lower intrinsic costs, will likely become more prevalent.

Objective: The objective of this nonexperimental, postintervention study was to examine the perceptions of pharmacists attending a continuing education program.

Adderall induced inverted-Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

Introduction: Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy (TTC), also known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy, was initially described in Japan in 1990. Both illicit and prescription drugs have added to the growing list of insulting stressors. We describe an interesting case of atypical TTC triggered by adderall overdose.

Will imaging assist in the selection of patients with heart failure for an ICD?

Sudden cardiac death remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. A left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF)<30% to 35% identifies a population of patients at increased risk for sudden cardiac death.

Targeted disruption of the voltage-dependent calcium channel alpha2/delta-1-subunit.

Cardiac L-type voltage-dependent Ca(2+) channels are heteromultimeric polypeptide complexes of alpha(1)-, alpha(2)/delta-, and beta-subunits. The alpha(2)/delta-1-subunit possesses a stereoselective, high-affinity binding site for gabapentin, widely used to treat epilepsy and postherpetic neuralgic pain as well as sleep disorders. Mutations in alpha(2)/delta-subunits of voltage-dependent Ca(2+) channels have been associated with different diseases, including epilepsy.

Overview of biostatistics used in clinical research.

Purpose: A brief overview is given of the types of statistical tests that are available to analyze pharmacy research data.

Summary: The most important aspect of selecting the correct statistical test is defining the types of variables being analyzed. Variables that are controlled or determined by the researcher are referred to as independent variables.

Preparing for the first meeting with a statistician.

Purpose: Practical statistical issues that should be considered when performing data collection and analysis are reviewed.

Summary: The meeting with a statistician should take place early in the research development before any study data are collected. The process of statistical analysis involves establishing the research question, formulating a hypothesis, selecting an appropriate test, sampling correctly, collecting data, performing tests, and making decisions.

Validation of a formula for assigning continuing education credit to printed home study courses.

Objectives: To reevaluate and validate the use of a formula for calculating the amount of continuing education credit to be awarded for printed home study courses.

Methods: Ten home study courses were selected for inclusion in a study to validate the formula, which is based on the number of words, number of final examination questions, and estimated difficulty level of the course. The amount of estimated credit calculated using the a priori formula was compared to the average amount of time required to complete each article based on pharmacists' self-reporting.

A comparison of the acceptability and effectiveness of two methods of distance education: CD-ROM and audio teleconferencing.

Objectives: To fulfill a need for convenient and effective continuing education for pharmacists throughout Wisconsin by developing a pharmacy continuing education program using 2 different methods for distance education: audio teleconferencing and CD-ROM.

Methods: Eighty pharmacists were recruited from a 2003 University of Wisconsin distance education program, 47 of whom participated in the course using the traditional audio teleconference method, and 33 of whom participated using a home study CD-ROM containing the same material presented in the teleconference. Volunteers were required to complete a pretest, a first posttest immediately following completion of the continuing education course, a second posttest 1 month following the conclusion of the course, and an evaluation.

Assessing parallelism prior to determining relative potency.

In the course of preparing a revision to Chapter (111) of the U.S. Pharmacopeia, the revision committee came to a unanimous agreement that the method for assessing parallelism that is currently presented in (111) and in the European Pharmacopeia's Chapter 5.

Electrical remodeling in hearts from a calcium-dependent mouse model of hypertrophy and failure: complex nature of K+ current changes and action potential duration.

Objectives: This study was designed to identify possible electrical remodeling (ER) in transgenic (Tg) mice with over-expressed L-type Ca(2+) channels. Transient outward K(+) current (I(to)) and action potential duration (APD) were studied in 2-, 4-, 8-, and 9- to 12-month-old mice to determine linkage to ventricular remodeling (VR), ER, and heart failure (HF).

Background: Prolongation of APD and reduction in current density of I(to) are thought to be hallmarks of VR and HF.

Mice with cardiac-specific sequestration of the beta-subunit of the L-type calcium channel.

The beta subunit of the L-type voltage-dependent calcium channel modifies the properties of the channel complex by both allosteric modulation of the alpha1 subunit function and by chaperoning the translocation of the alpha1 subunit to the plasma membrane. The goal of this study was to investigate the functional effect of changing the in vivo stoichiometry between the alpha1 and beta subunits by creating a dominant negative expression system in a transgenic mouse model. The high affinity beta subunit-binding domain of the alpha1 subunit was overexpressed in a cardiac-specific manner to act as a beta subunit trap.

Ca(2+) signaling in cardiac myocytes overexpressing the alpha(1) subunit of L-type Ca(2+) channel.

Voltage-gated L-type Ca(2+) channels (LCCs) provide Ca(2+) ingress into cardiac myocytes and play a key role in intracellular Ca(2+) homeostasis and excitation-contraction coupling. We investigated the effects of a constitutive increase of LCC density on Ca(2+) signaling in ventricular myocytes from 4-month-old transgenic (Tg) mice overexpressing the alpha(1) subunit of LCC in the heart. At this age, cells were somewhat hypertrophic as reflected by a 20% increase in cell capacitance relative to those from nontransgenic (Ntg) littermates.