Drug breakdown: Alendronic acid

With the help of Prescribing and Therapeutics Training Ltd and the Journal of Prescribing Practice, you can earn your 1-hour CPD certificate.

Novel use of psychedelics for heart disease and mental health: treatment and ethics

‘Classic psychedelics’ mainly refer to psychoactive substances known to act as agonists primarily at serotonin 2A receptors, which are often categorised into three classes: tryptamines, lysergamides,...

Analgesia prescribing in primary care

This interrupted time series analysis published in the British Journal of General Practice looks at the impact of published guidance on prescribing rates of simple analgesia in primary care settings...

Prescribing considerations in the use of oral medication in Parkinson's disease

People with Parkinson's (PwP) have depleted levels of dopamine in the brain. From the 1970s, levodopa, which is metabolised to dopamine, was utilised to treat the disabling motor symptoms. Initially...

Understanding the pharmacology of heart failure

HF is defined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) as a complex clinical syndrome that occurs from any structural or functional impairment of ventricular filling...

Changing the way type 2 diabetes is managed

The main complications of diabetes are microvascular disease affecting the eyes, nerves and kidneys, and macrovascular disease leading to cardiovascular disease (CVD), cerebrovascular disease and...

Anaemia in primary care: iron deficiency and anaemia of chronic disease

Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is the most common cause of anaemia and is a problem worldwide, with an estimated 500 million people affected, occurring both in low-income countries such as sub-Saharan...

Salt, blood pressure and cardiovascular disease

Overcoming vaccine hesitancy

I'm sure you have all read the more outlandish and outright illogical arguments for not having the COVID-19 vaccine, and these don't really warrant touching upon in a healthcare journal, but there are...

Drug Updates: September

Following new draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), midostaurin (Rydapt, Novartis) has been recommended for the treatment of advanced systemic mastocytosis...

Drug Breakdown: Dexamethasone

Day 1: After large-scale production of cortisone was enabled in the 1950s, more cortisol derivatives were discovered, such as #dexamethasone in 1957. Long acting and more potent, #dexamethasone has...

Multimorbidity, optimising treatment and preventing hospital admissions in older people

Recently published in the British Medical Journal, Blum et al's (2021) cluster randomised controlled trial looked at 110 clusters of inpatient wards within university-based hospitals across four...