Clinical pharmacy specializations at a school of pharmacy: Development and implementation.

Background And Purpose: Specializations within doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) programs allow student pharmacists to advance their knowledge and expertise in a specific area of pharmacy. The purpose of this manuscript is to expand the knowledge of pharmacy specializations within a PharmD program by describing two patient care specializations at a school of pharmacy and their assessment strategies.

Educational Activity And Setting: A pediatric pharmacotherapy and acute care pharmacotherapy specialization are described.

The Daily Dose: Utilizing WhatsApp to engage pharmacy students in clinical discussion.

Background And Purpose: There are many challenges associated with longitudinally applying therapeutic knowledge in the pharmacy curriculum. This study investigated student participation using the messaging platform, WhatsApp (Meta Platforms, Inc.), as a discussion-based platform for pharmacy students.

Creation of a State Drug Shortage Dashboard in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Drug shortages are anticipated to worsen with time as the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues. The aim of this study is to track drug shortages within Illinois and identify causes and trends to this time-sensitive problem. In order to communicate between health systems within the state, the Illinois Council of Health-System Pharmacists (ICHP) developed a medication shortage dashboard, which collects information from health systems in the state on current drug shortages.

Uptake of osteoporosis treatment recommended by an orthogeriatrics service after hip fracture: Retrospective cohort study of prevalence and potential barriers and enablers at a tertiary referral hospital in Sydney.

Objective: The primary aim was to determine the 12-month period prevalence of and time to osteoporosis treatment following minimal trauma hip fractures in patients who were recommended treatment by an orthogeriatrics service. The secondary aim was to determine the factors associated with receiving treatment including the impact of osteoporosis clinic follow-up.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study of patients with minimal trauma hip fractures admitted at a tertiary hospital in Sydney between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2019 was performed.

Acute Pain Management for Patients with Substance Use Disorder Receiving Buprenorphine or Methadone Compared to Patients without Opioid-Dependence Disorder.

This single-center retrospective study assessed pain management between patients being treated for SUD and compared them to those without SUD who underwent orthopedic surgery. Patients with SUD could be admitted for any reason, while the control arm consisted of patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty or hip arthroplasty surgery. Primary endpoints were average pains scores and morphine milligram equivalents (MME) over the first 48h.

Dipolar-stabilized first and second-order antiskyrmions in ferrimagnetic multilayers.

Skyrmions and antiskyrmions are topologically protected spin structures with opposite vorticities. Particularly in coexisting phases, these two types of magnetic quasi-particles may show fascinating physics and potential for spintronic devices. While skyrmions are observed in a wide range of materials, until now antiskyrmions were exclusive to materials with D symmetry.

Enhanced Efficacy and Increased Long-Term Toxicity of CNS-Directed, AAV-Based Combination Therapy for Krabbe Disease.

Infantile globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD, Krabbe disease) is a demyelinating disease caused by the deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme galactosylceramidase (GALC) and the progressive accumulation of the toxic metabolite psychosine. We showed previously that central nervous system (CNS)-directed, adeno-associated virus (AAV)2/5-mediated gene therapy synergized with bone marrow transplantation and substrate reduction therapy (SRT) to greatly increase therapeutic efficacy in the murine model of Krabbe disease (Twitcher). However, motor deficits remained largely refractory to treatment.

A simplified approach for the metal-free polymerization of propylene oxide.

Triethyl borane (EtB), in combination with phosphazene-type superbases, has recently emerged as a powerful co-catalyst for the anionic polymerization of epoxides. Here, it is demonstrated that the monomer-activating property of EtB can also compensate for the application of much gentler organobases. This not only results in simpler setups, but also significantly reduces nucleophilicity/basicity-derived side reactions.

Microscopic Origin of Magnetization Reversal in Nanoscale Exchange-Coupled Ferri/Ferromagnetic Bilayers: Implications for High Energy Density Permanent Magnets and Spintronic Devices.

Giant exchange bias shifts of several Tesla have been reported in ferrimagnetic/ferromagnetic bilayer systems, which could be highly beneficial for contemporary high energy density permanent magnets and spintronic devices. However, the lack of microscopic studies of the reversal owing to the difficulty of measuring few nanometer-wide magnetic structures in high fields precludes the assessment of the lateral size of the inhomogeneity in relation to the intended application. In this study, the magnetic reversal process of nanoscale exchange-coupled bilayer systems, consisting of a ferrimagnetic TbFeCo alloy layer and a ferromagnetic [Co/Ni/Pt] multilayer, was investigated.

Traditional and Digital Biomarkers: Two Worlds Apart?

The identification and application of biomarkers in the clinical and medical fields has an enormous impact on society. The increase of digital devices and the rise in popularity of health-related mobile apps has produced a new trove of biomarkers in large, diverse, and complex data. However, the unclear definition of digital biomarkers, population groups, and their intersection with traditional biomarkers hinders their discovery and validation.

Exercise to Reduce Mobility Disability and Prevent Falls After Fall-Related Leg or Pelvic Fracture: RESTORE Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Disability and falls are common following fall-related lower limb and pelvic fractures.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of an exercise self-management intervention on mobility-related disability and falls after lower limb or pelvic fracture.

Design: Randomized controlled trial.

Predictors of 30-day hospital readmission: The direct comparison of number of discharge medications to the HOSPITAL score and LACE index.

Effective hospital readmission risk prediction tools exist, but do not identify actionable items that could be modified to reduce the risk of readmission. Polypharmacy has attracted attention as a potentially modifiable risk factor for readmission, showing promise in a retrospective study. Polypharmacy is a very complex issue, reflecting comorbidities and healthcare resource utilisation patterns.

The New Science of Practical Wisdom.

Wisdom has been discussed for centuries in religious and philosophical texts. It is often viewed as a fuzzy psychological construct analogous to consciousness, stress, and resilience. This essay provides an understanding of wisdom as a scientific construct, based on empirical research starting in the 1970s.

Nivolumab-Associated Acute Demyelinating Encephalitis: A Case Report and Literature Review.

Nivolumab is a checkpoint inhibiting immunotherapeutic agent prescribed for the treatment of resistant cancers. Many immune-related adverse effects including neurological effects have been described, but central nervous system (CNS) toxicities are rarely reported. We present a 59-year-old Caucasian woman with a history of treatment-resistant, progressive, laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

Influence of maternal obesity and metabolic and vascular mediators in twin-twin transfusion syndrome.

Obesity is a risk factor for complications in singleton and twin pregnancies; however, there are limited data regarding maternal body mass index (BMI) in the setting of twin-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). We hypothesized that increased BMI in TTTS is associated with adverse perinatal outcomes and vascular pathology. A retrospective study of twin reversed arterial perfusion (n = 4), selective intrauterine growth restriction (n = 10) and TTTS (n = 33) was conducted.

Spin Torque Efficiency and Analytic Error Rate Estimates of Skyrmion Racetrack Memory.

In this paper, the thermal stability of skyrmion bubbles and the critical currents to move them over pinning sites were investigated. For the used pinning geometries and the used parameters, the unexpected behavior is reported that the energy barrier to overcome the pinning site is larger than the energy barrier of the annihilation of a skyrmion. The annihilation takes place at boundaries by current driven motion, as well as due to the excitation over energy barriers, in the absence of currents, without forming Bloch points.

Integrated genetic, epigenetic, and gene set enrichment analyses identify NOTCH as a potential mediator for PTSD risk after trauma: Results from two independent African cohorts.

The risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increases with the number of traumatic event types experienced (trauma load) in interaction with other psychobiological risk factors. The NOTCH (neurogenic locus notch homolog proteins) signaling pathway, consisting of four different trans-membrane receptor proteins (NOTCH1-4), constitutes an evolutionarily well-conserved intercellular communication pathway (involved, e.g.

Impact of oral anticoagulants on 30-day readmission: a study from a single academic centre.

Researchers are extensively searching for modifiable risk factors including high-risk medications such as anticoagulation to avoid rehospitalisation. The influence of oral anticoagulant therapy on hospital readmission is not known. We investigated the impact of warfarin and direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) on all cause 30-day hospital readmission retrospectively in an academic centre.

Genetic estimators of DNA methylation provide insights into the molecular basis of polygenic traits.

The large biological distance between genetic risk loci and their mechanistic consequences in the tissue of interest limits the ability to establish functionality of susceptibility variants for genetically complex traits. Such a biological gap may be reduced through the systematic study of molecular mediators of genomic action, such as epigenetic modification. Here, we report the identification of robust genetic estimators of whole-blood CpG methylation, which can serve as intermediate molecular traits amenable to association testing with other genetically complex traits.

Exhaustive search for epistatic effects on the human methylome.

Studies assessing the existence and magnitude of epistatic effects on complex human traits provide inconclusive results. The study of such effects is complicated by considerable increase in computational burden, model complexity, and model uncertainty, which in concert decrease model stability. An additional source introducing significant uncertainty with regard to the detection of robust epistasis is the biological distance between the genetic variation and the trait under study.

3D Printing of Polymer-Bonded Rare-Earth Magnets With a Variable Magnetic Compound Fraction for a Predefined Stray Field.

Additive manufacturing of polymer-bonded magnets is a recently developed technique, for single-unit production, and for structures that have been impossible to manufacture previously. Also, new possibilities to create a specific stray field around the magnet are triggered. The current work presents a method to 3D print polymer-bonded magnets with a variable magnetic compound fraction distribution.

Assessing outcomes of educational videos in group visits for patients with chronic pain at an academic primary care clinic.

Objectives: This study evaluates the impact of pain education group visits on patients with chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP). The primary outcome of the study was to evaluate patients' functional status and secondary outcomes included knowledge, behavior, and satisfaction, before and after participation in the pain education group visits.

Methods: Locally produced patient educational videos on chronic non-cancer pain were delivered during patient group visits led by a healthcare provider.