" " The New England Compounding Center is shown here on Oct. 5, 2012. Until the Framingham, Mass., pharmacy landed in the news for the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak, a lot of folks hadn't heard of these specialized pharmacies. Jared Wickerham/ Getty Images Compounding pharmacies don't usually get a lot of media coverage for good news. It's the mistakes -- the deadly outbreaks of meningitis from contaminated vials or the eye infections caused by unsterile medications -- that tend to make the evening news. Turns out, though, that regulatory practices for compounding pharmacies, at least in the United States, tend to follow the same pattern. Until something goes wrong, safeguards aren't generally in place. First off, let's briefly outline what one of these places is. In the U.S., most drugs and medications are manufactured by large pharmaceutical companies. That means most prescriptions come in bulk: only certain potencies, forms or methods. A compounding pharmacy … [Read more...] about Are compounding pharmacies regulated?