A Survey of Near-Miss Dispensing Errors in Hospital Pharmacies in Japan: DEPP-J Study-Multi-Center Prospective Observational Study-

The aim of this study was to determine the proportion of near-miss dispensing errors in hospital pharmacies in Japan. A prospective multi-center observational study was conducted between December 2018 and March 2019. The primary objective was to determine the proportion of near-miss dispensing errors in hospital pharmacy departments. The secondary objective was to determine the predictive factors for near-miss dispensing errors using multiple logistic regression analysis. The study was approved by the ethical committee at The Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Tokyo, Japan. A multi-center prospective observational study was conducted in 20 hospitals comprising 8862 beds. Across the 20 hospitals, we assessed data from 553 pharmacists and 53039 prescriptions. A near-miss dispensing error proportion of 0.87% (n = 461) was observed in the study. We found predictive factors for dispensing errors in day-time shifts: a higher number of drugs in a prescription, higher number of quantified drugs, such as liquid or powder formula, in a prescription, and higher number of topical agents in a prescription; but we did not observe for career experience level for clinical pharmacists. For night-time and weekend shifts, we observed a negative correlation of near-miss dispensing errors with clinical pharmacist experience level. We found an overall incidence of near-miss dispensing errors of 0.87%. Predictive factors for errors in night-time and weekend shifts was inexperienced pharmacists. We recommended that pharmacy managers should consider education or improved work flow to avoid near-miss dispensing errors by younger pharmacists, especially those working night or weekend shifts.

Induction of pulmonary fibrosis by methotrexate treatment in mice lung in vivo and in vitro.

Methotrexate (MTX) has been used as the first-line disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) in patients with early progressive rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Several severe side effects such as myelosuppression, hepato-, nephro-, and pulmonary toxicities have been reported. However, the pathogenic mechanism of MTX-induced pulmonary fibrosis is still unknown. Here, we evaluated the morphological and biological changes of the pulmonary fibrosis in mice treated with MTX. Three, four and five weeks after consecutive administration of MTX (3 mg/kg/day), hydroxyproline content in the lung tissues increased significantly to about 2 times higher that of the control level. This result closely reflected to the results of hematoxylin and eosin (HE) and Azan stains. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that MTX treatment resulted in a decrease of alveolar epithelial cells and an increase of fibroblast cells in the mouse lung tissues. When we examined the effects of MTX on primary mouse alveolar epithelial cell (MAEC) and mouse lung fibroblast (MLF) survival in vitro, the efficiency of MTX-induced cytotoxicity and apoptosis in MAEC was more sensitive than MLF cells. Thus, our results indicate that the administration of MTX by an oral route could induce a fibrotic response with cell dysfunction of the alveolar epithelium by which MTX-induced apoptosis. Our results thus suggest that MTX could induce alveolar epithelial cell injury and resulted in the loss of integrity of the alveolar-capillary barrier basement membranes followed by the recruitment and proliferation of myofibroblasts with the deposition of collagens.