Staying #Up2Date 🚨

1: Beyond Weight Loss: Tirzepatide’s Heart-Shielding Powers

A large study in The BMJ looked at over 52,000 adults with type 2 diabetes and existing heart disease to see how tirzepatide holds up against older diabetes meds like sitagliptin. The results were impressive: starting tirzepatide was linked to a 32% lower risk of major heart events like heart attacks and strokes, with benefits starting to show up in as little as 3 months. Even better, all-cause mortality dropped by 45%. Dual GIP/GLP-1 meds aren’t just great for A1c and weight loss, they’re proving to be serious powerhouses for long-term heart protection.

2: The Statin Gate Opens Wider: Millions More Now Qualify

A JAMA study evaluated updated 2026 US cholesterol guidelines that shift to using newer, race-free risk calculators to look at 30-year heart health trajectories instead of just short-term risk. The verdict? About 21.5 million more US adults now qualify for primary prevention statin therapy, mostly individuals in their 40s and 50s who previously seemed “low risk.” The shift reflects a growing focus on managing lifetime exposure to LDL cholesterol early on, rather than waiting until short-term risk climbs later in life.

3: CGM: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

A review of randomized trials and clinical guidelines evaluating continuous glucose monitor (CGM) use beyond type 1 diabetes found that CGM use was associated with a modest yet consistent reduction in HbA1c (roughly 0.3%) when compared to finger-stick monitoring in adults with type 2 diabetes. These findings show that CGM should be deployed in response to a specific patient problem rather than default intervention in those with type 2 diabetes. 

Shelf Watch 🏥

Drug Shortages ⚠️

Dilaudid 

• Company: Purdue Pharma

• Drug class: Opioid analgesics

• DIN: 00705438 (1 mg), 00125083 (2 mg)

• Strength affected: 1 mg, 2 mg (Tablets)

• Shortage status: Actual shortage (2 mg), Anticipated shortage (1 mg)

• Reason for shortage: Demand increase for the drug

• Start date: 2026-08-10

• Estimated end date: 2026-08-21 (1 mg), 2026-10-19 (2 mg)

pms-Lithium Carbonate 

• Company: Pharmascience Inc.

• Drug class: Antipsychotics / Mood stabilizers

• DIN: 02216140

• Strength affected: 300 mg (Capsules)

• Shortage status: Actual shortage

• Reason for shortage: Disruption of the manufacture of the drug

• Start date: 2023-10-23

• Updated date: 2026-08-12

• Estimated end date: Unknown

💰 Your Two Cents is Worth $25

Have 10 minutes? Power of VAX wants to hear from Canadian pharmacists, with a $25 honorarium for the first 1,000 pharmacists who complete the survey.

Power of VAX is a pharmacist-focused program designed to strengthen vaccination practices and improve patient outcomes. Your answers about day-to-day practice will help shape this year’s program around what pharmacists actually need.

And it has some solid results behind it. Last year, participating pharmacists saw a 3x improvement in vaccination effectiveness, and the program earned the FIP Seal, a mark of quality and professionalism in pharmacy education from the International Pharmaceutical Federation.

The survey closes August 21 and the honorariums are limited. So if you want in, sooner is better.

Out of the Cold: A Fridge-Free Tetanus Shot?

Science just made it one step closer to making vaccine fridges obsolete…

What happened: A Phase 1 trial published in eClinicalMedicine shows that an experimental, room-temperature-stable tetanus-diphtheria (Td) vaccine is safe and generates an immune response comparable to standard refrigerated boosters.

The new formulation, SPVX02 (developed by UK biotech Stablepharma), takes an existing WHO-prequalified Td vaccine (Tetadif) and reformulates it into a dried powder using sugar-based stabilization (trehalose). It gets reconstituted with sterile water right before injection. In 60 healthy adults, 100% achieved protective antitoxin levels against both tetanus and diphtheria by Day 28, matching licensed vaccines. As reported by BBC News and EMJ Reviews, this successful human trial marks a major milestone for thermostable immunization.

Why it matters: Standard Td vaccines use aluminum adjuvants that permanently aggregate and lose potency if they freeze (0°C) or overheat (>8°C). SPVX02 fixes both extremes:

• 24-Month Room-Temp Storage: Retains full potency at 30°C for at least 24 months.

• Freeze and Heat Proof: Retained full potency through three extreme temperature cycles ranging from -20°C to +40°C.

According to the World Health Organization, cold-chain failures and transport breaches contribute to roughly half of all vaccines wasted globally each year.

The Pharmacy Impact: For Canadian pharmacy teams, vaccine cold-chain management is a daily operational pain point. Between purpose-built medical fridges, continuous glycol probe logging, and filling out paperwork whenever a summer storm trips a breaker, maintaining that strict +2°C to +8°C window takes real time and money. As noted in The BMJ and detailed in EIN Presswire, if larger trials confirm these Phase 1 results, thermostable formulations could transform pharmacy inventory by:

• Zero Excursion Loss: Power outages or door-ajar incidents wouldn’t mean quarantining or destroying thousands in stock.

• Easier Off-Site Clinics: Travel health, workplace boosters, and mobile outreach in rural or northern communities wouldn’t require conditioned ice packs or transport loggers.

• Emergency Kit Ready: Booster doses could sit on a standard shelf, in an emergency kit, or in an ambulance bay without needing a power plug.

But: SPVX02 still has Phase 2 and 3 trials ahead before commercial approval, with development targeted through 2027. A Phase 1 trial in 60 adults shows promising safety and antibody responses, but broader testing is still needed to establish long-term real-world effectiveness and regulatory approval.

Bottom Line: While we’re still a few years away from tossing out the pharmacy fridge, proving that an aluminum-adjuvanted vaccine can survive room temperature sets a huge precedent. For pharmacists, it’s an exciting glimpse into a future where power outages no longer mean quarantining thousands of dollars in stock.

Hot Off The Press 🗞️

1: 💊 A vaccine just did what a century of shigella research couldn’t: WRSs2, a live-attenuated oral vaccine, posted 89% efficacy against shigellosis in a phase 2 human challenge trial, with only 3 of 34 vaccinated participants developing shigellosis versus 21 of 26 on placebo after deliberate S. sonnei exposure. The trial wasn’t entirely clean, with 6 participants experiencing grade 3 adverse events, and next up is testing in the kids who actually bear the brunt of the disease, since these results came from healthy US adults rather than the low-income settings where shigella does its worst damage,

2: 🦠 Don’t panic — you haven’t time-travelled to 2020. And yet COVID is back in the news to reveal some truth about its origins: we’ll probably never know it. A Senate panel voted to hold former US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he pled the 5th more than 100 times during questioning about the pandemic response. Meanwhile, former US COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha freely offered his take: “Here’s the truth: no one in America knows for sure,” and, “I think lab leak is much more likely.” But every theory remains unproven, and no first case has been identified. Don’t expect any satisfying answers to come out of this. Maybe just some nightmarish flashbacks of home-baked bread.

3: 🧪 An Ontario trial, PROMPT-LTC, found that rapid on-site testing at long-term care homes could prevent 8,000 ER visits across Canada every year. 10 Ontario-area homes got on-site PCR testing for COVID, flu, and RSV with 35-minute results, versus 3 to 7 days at standard off-site labs, resulting in an 11% drop in ER transfers overall and a 28% drop in transfers or deaths per 100 beds during peak RSV season. Outbreak sizes didn’t budge, but that’s likely because rapid-testing homes tested more than twice as often, catching milder cases the standard-testing homes were missing entirely.

4: 🥵 💦 Researchers may finally have something more satisfying than “overactive sweat glands” for some hyperhidrosis patients. New data links a subset of inherited cases to rare variants in SCN10A, a gene involved in the nerve signalling that controls sweating. They reproduced excessive sweating by putting one of the mutations into mice, then reducing it with sodium-channel inhibitors. It’s still early, but this knowledge could lead to a targeted treatment, rather than suppressing the symptoms with antiperspirants, Botox, and a duffel bag full of dry undershirts.

RxBriefly Picks 💊

🦞 Visit: Oscar, Dalhousie’s 1-in-50-million, half-blue, half-orange lobster, now on display at the Beaty Centre for Marine Biodiversity in Halifax. His two-toned colouring is genetic, so it grows back with every new shell. When was the last time you saw a genetic chimera up close?

🧪 Track: Ottawa’s announcement awarding a $10.2M design contract for a brand-new $267M Medical Countermeasures Laboratory in Winnipeg. Co-located with the National Microbiology Lab, it will focus on preclinical research into experimental vaccines and therapeutics for future pandemics.

🧬 Note: Health Canada’s milestone decision to drop all remaining sexual behaviour screening questions for sperm donors. The decision eliminates the final systemic barriers that previously restricted gay and bisexual men from donating.

🛞 Save: on your pre-winter routine. Canadian Tire has Michelin X-Ice Snow winter tires on clearance. Getting ahead of snow season means shorter waits at the garage and extra cash left in your pocket

🎬 Watch: how your brain turns moments into permanent physical structures. The video breaks down the cellular mechanics of memory formation with gorgeous visuals that make neurobiology surprisingly soothing.

Relax 🧩

First clue: Winter blues, for short

Give it a go ➤

Need a rematch? We’ve got you covered. Check out our Crossword Archive to find every puzzle we’ve ever made, all in one place.

Think you crushed it? Challenge your pharmacist friends to beat your time.

Meme Of The Week 😂

Advertise with RXBriefly 📣

Want to reach thousands of Canadian pharmacists every week? Email [email protected] to learn more.

Help Us Get Better 🙏