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OBJECTIVES This study explored the relationship between the proportion of coffee shops and gyms and obesity rate in the community, and what aspects of coffee shops and gyms associate to the constantly increasing rate of obesity. METHODS The numbers of coffee shops and gyms were extracted and gathered from an open source run by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The obesity rate was extracted from Statistics Korea. We made a yearly panel data which includes 11 years of data from 2008 to 2018 for a total of 25 districts of Seoul, the capital city of Korea later sorted to 9 regions. Multivariate linear regression analysis was performed on the obesity rate. The analysis was carried out using IBM’s SPSS Statistics 25. RESULTS The analysis to determine the correlation between the proportion of businesses and obesity rate showed that when the ratio of the number of gyms to businesses increased by 0.1%p, the obesity rate decreased by 0.27%p (p<0.05). Also, when the ratio of the number of coffee shops to businesses increased by 0.1%p, the obesity rate decreased by 1.0%p (p<0.10). CONCLUSIONS There is a negative correlation between the obesity rates and the proportion of gyms and coffee shops among businesses.

The Development Safety Update Report(DSUR) is the periodic safety report on drugs under clinical trials( including marketed drugs that are under further study). The main objective of a DSUR is to present a comprehensive, thoughtful annual review and evaluation of pertinent safety information collected during the reporting period. The guidelines of International Council of Harmonization(ICH) play a standard role in pharmaceutical industries among the ICH regions(including U.S., EU and Japan) and in the case of DSUR, ICH guidelines E2F(ICH E2F) works as a standard. Those countries above(U.S., EU and Japan) already establish DSUR systems based on ICH E2F and in South Korea, Ministry of Food and Drug Safety(MFDS) is planned to implement the DSUR and make the submission mandatory gradually from 2021 to 2024. So in this report, with the implementation of the DSUR ahead off, we first reviewed ICH E2F guideline and compared with the DSUR systems of U.S., EU and Japan, then we discuss current situation and implication in South Korea including specific plan, legislation and advantages it would offer.

OBJECTIVE Since 2000, there have been several significant changes of pharmaceutical field that have called for a change in the role of pharmacists. The purpose of this study is to examine the changes in the role of pharmacist according to the social change. It would be helpful to find the direction of the role of pharmacist in the future. METHODS We used the systematic literature review and crawling techniques. Through the systematic review form Jan.01, 2000 to May. 11, 2020, we found 106 Korean articles on the role of pharmacist. For search of news of naver and magazines for specialized for pharmacists, web crawling techniques was used during the same periods. Research results were summarized at 5-year intervals reflecting social change. RESULTS The role of pharmacists was changed from drug-centered and passive roles to patient-centered and active roles. The pharmacist's roles such as medication compliance management and prescription review were found to be high in frequency in both research methods. On the other hand, pharmacist roles such as team medical care and communication were frequently searched in systematic literature review, and they appeared at a relatively low frequency in pharmacy related news. CONCLUSION Social change such as the 4 th industrial revolution era and COVID-19 would require the change to team medical care and communication in the role of pharmacists. Our study would be a useful way for the development of the role of pharmacists in future.

OBJECTIVES This study aims to estimate and compare the smoking cessation rate of pharmacist-delivered support with nicotine replacement therapy (hereafter, pharmacist support + NRT) by conducting a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis (BNMA). METHODS We systematically reviewed the articles, which reported the smoking cessation rate for 1) pharmacist support + NRT, 2) varenicline with non-pharmacist support, 3) NRT with non-pharmacist support to identify the relevant studies. Searched studies from Pubmed and Cochrane library were selected according to the pre-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria. We extracted the smoking cessation rate at 6 months from included studies. This BNMA estimated the posterior average smoking cessation rate at 6 months and the corresponding 95% credible interval (CrI). We conducted the BNMA by using WinBUGS 1.4.3. RESULTS After comprehensive systematic review, we finally selected and included 33 studies in BNMA. Average smoking cessation rate at 6 months was the lowest for placebo (16.6%; 95% CrI=15.4%-17.8%) as followed by NRT + non-pharmacist support (28.5%; 95% CrI=23.0%-34.7%), pharmacist support + NRT (36.1%; 95% CrI=25.1%-48.8%), and varenicline + non-pharmacist support (37.7%; 95% CrI=32.0%- 44.1%]. CONCLUSION In this study, we estimated the smoking cessation rate of pharmacist service with NRT, NRT and varenicline, respectively. We expect that the results of this study will be used as a useful evidence for establishing policies for various types of smoking cessation services.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, multinational pharmaceutical companies have accelerated vaccine development at an unprecedentedly rapid pace. The safety concerns about Covid-19 vaccines may lead to the increasing number of people with vaccine distrust, making it difficult to maintain the vaccination rate for obtaining herd immunity. Therefore, some countries, including the United States (US) and Europe, have selected adverse event of special interests (AESIs) and planned to conduct vaccine safety monitoring. In the US, the vaccine passive surveillance systems such as Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the active surveillance systems, including the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety (BEST) Initiative and Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) have selected AESIs for COVID-19 vaccines. In Europe, the Safety Platform for Emergency vACcines (SPEAC) project and the vACCine Covid-19 monitoring readinESS (ACCESS) project have selected AESIs, respectively. We confirmed the number of VAERS, BEST, VSD, SPEAC, and ACCESS AESIs, respectively 16, 15, 20, 34, and 38. We identified among the 52 AESIs included in the US and Europe that were commonly contained anaphylaxis, Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), myopericarditis/ myocarditis/ pericarditis, multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS) and stroke. This paper identified the backgrounds and characteristics of AESIs for COVID-19 vaccines in the US and Europe.

OBJECTIVE To control growth of pharmaceutical expenditure, it is necessary to establish volume control policy considering aging and increase of multiple chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to examine the overall pharmaceutical use control policies. METHODS Literature search for press release of Ministry of Health and Welfare (MoH), policies report, KMbase, and report of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were conducted. Descriptive review of statistical year book of Prescribing Trend Analysis, Drug Utilization Review (DUR) program, and OECD Health Statistics were carried out. RESULTS To control pharmaceutical use, numerous policies targeting physicians and pharmacists have been implemented. However, the pharmaceutical use for acute diseases are high in Korean patients compared to other countries. Also, considering rapid aging, the policies to promote appropriate drug use targeting pharmacists and patients should be encouraged. CONCLUSION To influence demand side of pharmaceutical use, it is important to draw social consensus and design carefully. This review could help provide directions for the development of pharmaceutical volume control policies as future medicine policy option.