TI Blog Update: June 2025

30 Jun 2025 TI Blog Update: June 2025

In this TI Blog post we acknowledge people around the world who contributed towards the various outputs of the Therapeutics Initiative in the first half of 2025. An alphabetical list is included below. If we accidentally left you out, please let us know, so we can correct the posting. Some contributors preferred not to be named, but we appreciated equally their intellectual contributions. This list includes people who wrote the initial drafts of Therapeutics Letters, who reviewed draft Letters, who presented TI Webinars, or who have taught in our Best Evidence Courses this year.

We also highlight Therapeutics Letter 156 released earlier this month, containing an update on the antidepressant withdrawal syndrome. We will post Therapeutics Letter 157, dealing with how to stop antidepressants safely, in July. These two issues of the Therapeutics Letter build on a May 2024 very popular TI Best Evidence Webinar featuring Dr. Mark Horowitz that was viewed over 20,000 times. If you missed it, you can watch the recording in the TI YouTube channel. Like other Letters, they reflect the work of many people within and beyond the Therapeutics Initiative. Because the entire Therapeutics Initiative stands behind our Letters, we do not list individual authors.

A TI Best Evidence Webinar was presented by Dr. Davie Wong on June 4^th, exploring the evidence about oral versus intravenous antibiotics, and attracted an international audience of over 250 people. If you missed it, you can watch the recording on the webinar web page or in the TI YouTube channel. In September 2025, Dr. Wong will present a second webinar to review evidence about the optimal duration of antibiotic treatment of common infections. If you have e-subscribed to the Therapeutics Initiative, you will automatically receive notice once the date is confirmed. If you haven’t, consider doing so now.

If you are a primary care physician or nurse practitioner in BC but don’t know about our Portrait program, maybe you should ask yourself why not. Over 1,000 BC family doctors and nurse practitioners have already signed up for Portrait and are receiving personalized, completely confidential information that can help improve their prescribing practice to serve patients better.

“I found the work of TI incredibly useful during my career, so keep up the good work!”
[P. Aiken, recently retired family physician, Burnaby, BC]

You can learn more about the Portrait project and view samples of completed Portrait topics here: https://www.ti.ubc.ca/portrait/

The Portrait program includes an experimental component (early vs delayed release to subscribed prescribers) to help the TI and others learn effective techniques to improve prescribing that is based on sound medical scientific evidence. In future, pharmacists may be eligible to join. Registration is simple and free: BC family physicians and nurse practitioners can sign up to access confidential prescribing Portraits via our convenient and secure online portal.

Log in to view your Portraits and/or related materials, or sign up if you haven’t already.

Questions? Email the TI Portrait team at portrait@ti.ubc.ca We welcome your feedback.

Over 13,000 people are subscribed to receive email notifications from the TI when new issues of the Therapeutics Letter are posted online, as well as notices of upcoming webinars and other continuing professional development events. Our work is supported by the people of British Columbia through a grant from the BC Ministry of Health.

Yet even in our 31^st year as an independent, unconflicted academic group at UBC, many British Columbia clinicians and students don’t seem to know about us. If you value our contribution to unconflicted information about medications, even if you don’t always agree with our conclusions, please consider letting your colleagues, residents, and students know about us. Our work is relevant to medicine, nursing, pharmacy, other health professions and health researchers, and last year we introduced plain language summaries and abstracts to make our Therapeutics Letters more accessible to lay people and the general public. Therapeutics Letters are now abstracted and referenced by PubMed Bookshelf, and the African Journal of Primary Care and Family Medicine has recently begun to publish Therapeutics Letters relevant to African healthcare.

It’s simple to encourage colleagues, students, and friends anywhere in the world to subscribe to the TI notifications, and it’s free, confidential, and easy to unsubscribe. Just share with them the link to our home page: https://ti.ubc.ca and/or the subscription link.

I hope you can find something of interest among the various things we are offering. And we always welcome your comments and suggestions.

Thomas L. Perry MD, FRCPC
Editor, Therapeutics Letter
Therapeutics Initiative
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

THANK YOU!

Contributors to the work of the TI in the first half of 2025 (in alphabetical order):

• Anna Goodman MD, D.Phil. – King’s College, London
• Andre Mattman MD, FRCPC, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Barbara Mintzes, PhD, Sydney, Australia
• Bob Mash MBChB | DCH | DRCOG | FRCGP | FCFP | PhD – Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Brad Spellberg MD, Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Centre
• Cait O’Sullivan PharmD, Courtenay, BC
• Carolyn Canfield BA (patient advocate), University of British Columbia
• Colleen Fuller (patient advocate), Independent Voices for Safe and Effective Drugs, Vancouver, BC
• David Crockford, MD, FRCPC, University of Calgary, Alberta
• David Gardner MD, MSc, FRCPC, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS
• David M. Patrick, MD, FRCPC, MHSc, University of British
• David M. Thompson MD, FRCPC, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• David Marceniuk MN, MD, Powell River, British Columbia
• David Menkes MD, University of Auckland, New Zealand
• David Urquhart MD, Inuvik, Northwest Territories
• Davie Wong MD, FRCPC, Fraser Health Authority and University of British Columbia
• Davin Shikaze, British Columbia Ministry of Health
• Edith Blondell-Hill MD, FRCPC – BC Centre for Disease Control, University of British Columbia –  Okanagan
• Eliza Henshaw, MSN, NP(F), Vancouver, BC
• Fiona Hutchison BSN, MN, NP(F) – Victoria, BC
• I Fan Kuo, British Columbia Ministry of Health
• Jill Norris MD, CCFP, Victoria, BC
• Johanna Trimble (patient advocate), School of Hard Knocks, Sechelt, BC
• Juan Erviti PhD – Navarre Health Service, Pamplona, Spain
• Juliana Rincon MD, MSc., University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Lucas Castellani MD, FRCPC – Northern Ontario Medical School, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario
• Mark Horowitz MD, PhD, – London, UK
• Marnie Wilson MD, M.P.H., FRCPC – University of British Columbia
• Marshall Dahl MD, PhD, FRCPC, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Martin Chak Wah Yu BSc(Pharm), ACPR, medical student, University of British Columbia
• Michael Law PhD, University of BC, Vancouver
• Michael Pather MBChB, PhD – Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Michael Rekart MD, FRCPC, BC Centre for Disease Control, Vancouver
• Pierre Ernst MD, FRCPC, McGill University, Montreal
• Ran Goldman MD, FRCPC – University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital
• Robin McKenzie MD, ? Johns Hopkins Medical University (retired)
• Roland van Rensburg MBChB | FC Clin Pharm | MMed (Clin Pharm) | MRCP(UK) | FRCP(Edin)
• Sandra Krahl (artist/illustrator), Bensheim, Germany
• Tim Harries MBBS, MPH, King’s College, London UK
• Timothy Jenkins MD, M.Sc. – University of Colorado, USA
• Terryn Nauman, British Columbia Ministry of Health
• Victor Montori MD, MSc, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN
• Wui Ming Chang BSc(Pharm), ACPR, PharmD student, University of British Columbia