Biotin Beauty Claims: What Does the Evidence Show?
Patients ask about biotin for hair, skin, and nail health, but few realize it can also interfere with common lab tests. Our NatMed article reviews the evidence and a key safety issue. Biotin only modestly helps brittle nails, and any hair-growth benefit requires combination therapy – there’s no evidence of benefit for skin health. More importantly, biotin can distort thyroid, cardiac troponin, and hormone lab results. Advise patients taking 5 mg or more to stop at least 8 hours before testing, or about 72 hours before if taking 100 mg or more, to avoid misdiagnosis.
Biotin Beauty Claims: What Does the Evidence Show?
Patients ask about biotin for hair, skin, and nail health, but few realize it can also interfere with common lab tests. Our NatMed article reviews the evidence and a key safety issue. Biotin only modestly helps brittle nails, and any hair-growth benefit requires combination therapy – there’s no evidence of benefit for skin health. More importantly, biotin can distort thyroid, cardiac troponin, and hormone lab results. Advise patients taking 5 mg or more to stop at least 8 hours before testing, or about 72 hours before if taking 100 mg or more, to avoid misdiagnosis.
New Podcast!
Natural Medicines: Evidence in Practice
In our latest episode, Methylene Blue: Trendy, Clinical, and Not So Simple, NatMed editors Jeff Langford, Andrea Stafford, and Kelly Daniels break down what methylene blue is, what the evidence shows, and why safety may be a bigger concern than many patients realize.
New on NatMed Pro: Content Updates
We're excited to share that we've launched a new Content Updates page on NatMed Pro that provides a real-time log of monographs recently reviewed and updated by our editorial team. Covering the past three months of updates, the page shows exactly which sections have changed—including Effectiveness, Safety, Adverse Effects, Drug Interactions, Dosing, and more—so you can quickly see what's new without digging through individual monographs.
Pharmacy and Prescriber Podcasts
Medication Talk
Listen to this month’s podcast episode, Estimating Kidney Function in Chronic Kidney Disease, as our expert panel untangles the latest recommendations for using equations to estimate kidney function. You’ll hear their insights on when and how to use creatinine, cystatin C, or both to help safely adjust medication doses in kidney disease.
All Medication Talk episodes offer CE credit to Pharmacist’s Letter and Prescriber Insights subscribers for 2 years after the episode release date. Go to the CE/CME & Training Organizer and search “podcast” to find available courses.
Upcoming Live CE Webinars for Your Clinicians
Managing Poisonings: Antidotes, Evidence, and Updates
Dates: August 18 & 20
In this month's live webinar, Managing Poisonings: Antidotes, Evidence, and Updates, you’ll hear our panelists discuss best practices for addressing poisonings. They’ll review evidence and updates behind treatments for common and emerging poisonings, including medetomidine. And they’ll discuss practical strategies to prevent poisonings to help you keep patients safe.
Available for APRNs, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, PAs, physicians, and RNs accreditation and CE/CME:
- ACCME: 1.00 hour
- ACPE: 1.00 hour – pharmacists and technicians
- ANCC: 1.00 hour
Pharmacy Essential Updates
Upcoming 2026 Live Webinars
Check out our upcoming Pharmacy Essential live CE webinars.
Dates: August 11, 13, 15, 19, 27
Topics for August include:
- Managing acute pain in opioid use disorder (OUD)
- Guidance about vaccines in pregnancy and lactation
- New medication for HIV (doravirine/islatravir)
*Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians can earn 1 Hour of CE for each attended webinar.
New! NatMed + Letters Search Integration
Supplement questions, answered in the moment.
Every day, your pharmacists and pharmacy technicians search Letters and hit a dead end on supplement and natural medicine topics. With NatMed content now embedded directly in search results, that gap closes at the exact moment of need.
Here's what it means for your organization:
- Unmet need made visible — when your users search a supplement topic, they see what NatMed covers. For organizations without a NatMed subscription, it's a clear picture of what their teams are missing in daily workflow.
- Seamless for current subscribers — NatMed accounts are deep-linked directly to the full record, no extra steps.
- A signal worth acting on — when your users engage with NatMed previews, that's active demand. Your CS team will have the data.
Webinar Spotlight
Your Workforce Readiness in One View: A First Look at Partner Hub
Pharmacy organizations investing in training rarely have a single place to see whether that investment is working. In this recorded demo webinar, we provided a guided walkthrough of Partner Hub, now available with Pharmacy Technician University (PTU) data.
We showed how to:
- Get a clear picture of your PTU-enrolled technicians’ training health at a glance, with a five-tier status view: Compliant, On Track, At Risk, Overdue, and Not Started.
- Know if your investment is working by tracking completion rates, upcoming due dates, and enrollment utilization across every group and location, updated daily.
- Spot where attention is needed with technician engagement visibility and compliance trend charts that reveal which status segments are growing before they become operational problems.
- See what’s ahead, with individual learner drill-down and CE compliance tracking joining shortly after launch for the full workforce lifecycle.
Please note: This webinar is intended for educational and informational purposes only and does NOT offer CE/CME credit.
Meet us in Boston
Heading to Boston this weekend for NACDS Total Store Expo? Stop by our TRC Healthcare booth #416 to see some of our new innovations and discover how our Pharmacy Workforce Solutions help pharmacies accelerate day-one readiness, standardize performance across every site, and keep compliance and patient safety front and center.
Meet the team and grab some swag or book a dedicated meeting through the NACDS portal.
We hope to see you in Boston!
About TRC Healthcare
TRC Healthcare provides unbiased education, training, and support to every healthcare professional to reduce knowledge gaps, encourage evidence-based practice, lower costs, and deliver better patient outcomes.
