Bridging the gap between academia and practice:novel organogram at the Pharmacy Council of India

Harm with inappropriate and irrational use of medications is a global challenge. The need for and patient access to medicines optimisation services is apparent globally and amplified in India due to multiple reasons. Clinical pharmacists are ideally placed to promote patient safety with medicines use optimisation and other pharmaceutical care services through appropriate legislative, policy, and compensation mechanisms to achieve optimal patient outcomes. The need is for a move at a global level, an enabling organisational structure at Pharmacy Councils and in practice regulations, particularly in countries where clinical roles are still in infancy. This narrative describes the current status and future needs for development of medicines optimisation services across sectors through regulatory and organisational reforms at the Pharmacy Council of India with additional registration, continuing professional development, renewal and licensing requirements for clinical pharmacists to respond to patient and societal needs in India

Triple marker study in midtrimester of pregnancy and risk of chromosomal abnormality

Abstract Objectives : Every year about 18,000 babies are born in India with trisomy 21. With the availability of well established, documented and widely used maternal serum triplemarker screening during midtrimester of pregnancy, every pregnancy can be monitored for the most common aneuploidy like trisomy 21, trisomy 13, and trisomy 18 in addition to open neural tube defects. Methods : MoM values were derived from 1738 normal pregnant women between 14-20 weeks of gestation who later had full term normal delivery. Two thousand one hundred and eleven women were investigated by triple marker screening between 14-20 weeks of gestation. Results : Two hundred twenty four women were considered as screen positive for trisomy 21, of which, 105 were further investigated for karyotyping and eight of these had trisomy 21, one each had mosaic trisomy 21, der (14:15) and del (X) (p11). Twentythree women with low hCG MoM were considered as screen negative for trisomy 21 and trisomy 18 but positive for other chromosomal abnormalities like iso (X) (q10) and der (13:14) one each, and two with polyploidy. Conclusion : The results suggest that triple marker screening is an effective screening program for noninvasive diagnosis of pregnancies with suspected Down syndrome fetus and also detects other chromosomal anomalies