Advanced Practice Pharmacists: a retrospective evaluation of the efficacy and cost of ClinicaL Pharmacist PractitionErs managing ambulatory Medicare patients in North Carolina (APPLE-NC).

Background: Clinical Pharmacist Practitioners are advanced practicing pharmacists in North Carolina that provide disease-specific management. The purpose of this retrospective cohort study was to compare the efficacy and charges from referrals to a Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner by the primary care provider, to those managed by a primary care provider alone.

Methods: Patients were separated into cohorts depending if they had at least two appointments with a Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner from November 2008 to November 2011.

Surfactant protein-A suppresses eosinophil-mediated killing of Mycoplasma pneumoniae in allergic lungs.

Surfactant protein-A (SP-A) has well-established functions in reducing bacterial and viral infections but its role in chronic lung diseases such as asthma is unclear. Mycoplasma pneumoniae (Mp) frequently colonizes the airways of chronic asthmatics and is thought to contribute to exacerbations of asthma. Our lab has previously reported that during Mp infection of non-allergic airways, SP-A aides in maintaining airway homeostasis by inhibiting an overzealous TNF-alpha mediated response and, in allergic mice, SP-A regulates eosinophilic infiltration and inflammation of the airway.

Surfactant protein-A inhibits mycoplasma-induced dendritic cell maturation through regulation of HMGB-1 cytokine activity.

During pulmonary infections, a careful balance between activation of protective host defense mechanisms and potentially injurious inflammatory processes must be maintained. Surfactant protein A (SP-A) is an immune modulator that increases pathogen uptake and clearance by phagocytes while minimizing lung inflammation by limiting dendritic cell (DC) and T cell activation. Recent publications have shown that SP-A binds to and is bacteriostatic for Mycoplasma pneumoniae in vitro.

An improved Western blot assay to assess the clearance of prion protein from plasma-derived therapeutic proteins.

Specific detection of the pathogenic prion protein, PrP(Sc), is essential for determining the prion clearance capacity of purification processes for therapeutic proteins. Use of a previously described indirect (two-antibody) Western blot assay sometimes resulted in the appearance of non-specific protein bands that interfered with the detection of small amounts of PrP(Sc)-specific signal, limiting the amount of clearance that could be determined for steps so affected. It is shown that these non-specific signals are due to the interaction between immunoglobulin fragments in the sample and the secondary antibody used in the assay.