A service learning program in providing nutrition education to children.

Objective: To implement a service learning program in nutrition and assess its impact on pharmacy students' communication skills and professionalism and elementary school children's knowledge of nutrition concepts.

Design: First-year pharmacy students completed 4 nutrition education sessions led by a registered dietitian and then presented the material to pre-selected classes of at-risk elementary school children in kindergarten through third grade.

Assessment: Ninety-six pharmacy students completed the pre- and post-experience survey and more than 90% rated achievement of course objectives as strongly agree or agree.

Postgraduate year one pharmacy residency program equivalency.

In 2006, the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) charged the Task Force on Residency Equivalency to define the professional experience expected of a clinically mature practitioner that would meet or exceed the knowledge and skills of an accredited postgraduate year one residency-trained pharmacist. In this commentary, the Task Force discusses both the qualitative and quantitative components of documentation by means of a residency equivalency portfolio. The potential roles of academia, pharmacy professional organizations, and employers and the possible barriers to an equivalency process are addressed.

Utility of lyophilized PMA and ionomycin to stimulate lymphocytes in whole blood for immunological assays.

Background: The need to implement robust biomarkers in clinical trials has never been greater, and such efforts can be easily compromised by reagent instability or simple human error during assay set-up. Many biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are introducing efforts to conduct biomarker studies under more rigorous settings, and the use of plates or tubes pre-loaded with stimulation or staining reagents could be of value for studies that involve flow cytometry.

Methods: Five reagents lyophilized from ethanol or CHAPS buffer stock solution of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) and ionomycin were benchmarked against standard DMSO liquid formulation for their stimulation equivalency.

Impact of safety warnings on drug utilization: marketplace life span of cisapride and troglitazone.

Study Objective: To evaluate the impact of safety alerts on the volume of cisapride and troglitazone usage.

Design: Retrospective database analysis.

Setting: University research center.