Combining one of two newly approved oral agents with traditional medications offers hepatitis C patients better outcomes with shorter therapy.

During the peak months of the flu season, physicians have an added responsibility to administer influenza vaccines, which may be challenging due to scheduling conflicts and high vaccine demands. Learn how immunizer pharmacists can help address this healthcare need during the flu season.

The days of “Take two of these and call me in the morning” are long gone. Today’s medications are much more complex – and much more effective. But they only work when patients take them as directed.

In 1999, the ABC news program 20/20 aired a story claiming that HepB caused sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The story included a picture of a 1-month-old girl who died of SIDS only 16 hours after receiving the second dose of HepB.

In 1999, Edward Hooper published a book entitled The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS. The central hypothesis was that the origin of AIDS could be traced to oral poliovirus vaccines that were administered in the Belgian Congo between 1957 and 1960.

By July of 2000 approximately 175,000 cows in the United Kingdom had developed bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more commonly referred to as MCD, a progressive deterioration of the nervous system. The FDA convened a meeting to discuss the possibility that some vaccines were made using serum or gelatin derived from cows in countries that had MCD, including England.

The hypothesis that vaccines might cause MS was fueled by anecdotal reports of MS following HepB administration and two case-control studies showing an increase in the incidence of MS in vaccinated persons that was not statistically significant.

In 1974, an uncontrolled case series was published describing children who allegedly developed mental retardation and epilepsy following receipt of the whole-cell pertussis vaccine.

The polio vaccine used in the late 1950s and early 1960s was contaminated with a monkey virus called simian virus 40 (SV40), present in the monkey kidney cells used to grow the vaccine. SV40 DNA was present in the cancers of people who had received the polio vaccine that was contaminated with SV40, but it was also present in those who had not.

KD is an acute, inflammatory, small-to-medium sized vessel vasculitis manifest by prolonged high fever and some combination of rash, conjunctival suffusion, changes in the oral mucosa or peripheral extremities, and cervical lymphadenopathy; desquamation occurs in the convalescent phase, and ectasia or aneurysms can develop in the coronary arteries.