Blind duplicates: what happens when a laboratory does not know it is being watched
Two years ago we ran an anonymised version of this comparison and promised a named one. This is it, with every method printed in full.
March 2024
Everything filed in March 2024, the month of Volume 1, Number 3. The issue itself — cover, editor’s letter and table of contents — is here.
India caps dulaglutide prescribing to 16 specialist centres
Efficacy was never the question in this appraisal. Duration of treatment was.
The slide that was not in the abstract
Reported from the sessions, and from the two hours afterwards.
A shortage listing ends. 17 pharmacies now have a business model and no legal basis for it.
The document is four pages. Three of them are about dates.
Twenty-eight days is a number from somebody else’s product
We set out what is known, what is inferred and what is simply assumed about the fortnight after a vial is opened.
Vitamin D, adiposity, and a volume-of-distribution problem
Reduced intake is a plausible mechanism for deficiency. Reduced absorption is not, and the two are conflated in most of the advice.
South Africa declines to reimburse liraglutide outside a specialist service
Efficacy was never the question in this appraisal. Duration of treatment was.
The online reseller trading as Adamant Research Supply closes after 9 years
A proper account of an operation that existed, and of what closing it cost.
What the new South Korea guidance says about stopping
The evidence base is thin and the document says so, which is to its credit.
What changed at QYB in March, and what the company will not say about it
Documentation practice is the only part of vendor quality a buyer can assess before purchase.
Custody, condition and the temperature nobody logged
The condition on arrival is recorded by some services and not others, and it is one of the more informative lines in a report.
Micronutrient monitoring: which panel, how often, and on whose evidence
Micronutrient guidance for this drug class is borrowed almost entirely from post-bariatric surveillance, where the anatomy is different and the deficiency mechanisms are not…
Why summer is a documented quality problem in this trade
The route did not close because of a rule about peptides.
The slide that was not in the abstract
Reported from the sessions, and from the two hours afterwards.
A supplier suspends shipping to France after 23 consecutive customs detentions
The route did not close because of a rule about peptides.
LEADER misses on a secondary endpoint the coverage has not mentioned
A design note rather than a result: what the comparator was, and what that permits you to conclude.
Holidays, surgery, sickness: interruption in practice
The convention — resume lower, re-escalate — is not caution. It follows directly from the elimination half-life.
Reproducibility, measured rather than assumed
Two years ago we ran an anonymised version of this comparison and promised a named one. This is it, with every method printed in full.
MKM declines, for the 16th time, to name its synthesis house
Documentation practice is the only part of vendor quality a buyer can assess before purchase.
Brazil declines to reimburse tirzepatide outside a specialist service
Efficacy was never the question in this appraisal. Duration of treatment was.
From the floor in Suzhou: 9 posters, one theme
Reported from the sessions, and from the two hours afterwards.
What a month without the drug does to tolerability
The convention — resume lower, re-escalate — is not caution. It follows directly from the elimination half-life.
Gauge, pain and flow rate
Skin thickness at the standard injection sites is approximately two millimetres in adults and varies remarkably little with body mass. That single finding is why short…
The impurity hiding underneath the parent peak
The most useful single addition to any purity determination is a second separation under a different pH or on a different stationary phase, and the second-most useful is a…
What a 12% rise in coupling-reagent prices does to a 20 mg vial
Follow the resin, not the catalogue.
Brazil caps dulaglutide prescribing to 11 specialist centres
Efficacy was never the question in this appraisal. Duration of treatment was.
The quiet end of the online reseller trading as Adamant Research Supply
A proper account of an operation that existed, and of what closing it cost.
A shortage listing ends. 18 pharmacies now have a business model and no legal basis for it.
The document is four pages. Three of them are about dates.
What SURMOUNT-1 tells us about maintenance, and what it does not
A survey of the maintenance evidence, which is shorter than the survey of the withdrawal evidence.
South Korea health authority warns on falsified tirzepatide pens
Reported from the analysis, not from a warning notice.
STEP 5 misses on a secondary endpoint the coverage has not mentioned
A design note rather than a result: what the comparator was, and what that permits you to conclude.
Inspectors cite Halvard & Pike Apothecary of Portland, Maine over sterility assurance
The observation that closes a facility is rarely the dramatic one.
What the new Germany guidance says about stopping
The evidence base is thin and the document says so, which is to its credit.
Soft ionisation: the twenty-year-old trick that made peptide identity routine
A brief and unromantic tour of the interface between a liquid sample and a vacuum.
What the trials adjudicated, and how
The features that should prompt urgent assessment, stated once and plainly.
STEP 5 extension data: what happens after the trial stops
A design note rather than a result: what the comparator was, and what that permits you to conclude.
The 28-day notice: how a compounding wind-down works in Canada
The document is four pages. Three of them are about dates.
From the floor in Shenzhen: 10 posters, one theme
Reported from the sessions, and from the two hours afterwards.
Why two wavelengths on one run would settle several arguments
Non-chromophoric components — counter-ions, salts, some excipients — contribute mass to the vial and nothing at all to the chromatogram.
The three-times-upper-limit convention, and where it came from
Asymptomatic pancreatic enzyme elevation is common on treatment and is not pancreatitis. The distinction is clinical, not biochemical.