Pharmacology

Ineffective drugs are generally a bad idea - natural medicine, osteopathy and homeopathy are not considered medicine because they can't demonstrate efficacy, and chemotherapy drugs are expensive so the standard is higher. But when it comes to the devastating brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, some patients have benefited from treatment with a class of chemotherapy drugs that two previous large clinical trials indicated was ineffective against the disease. The chemotherapy drugs block the growth of new blood vessels in the tumor and the patients lived an average of about one year…

When the oddly-named Baby Boom generation (the "boom" happened in 1946, after soldiers returned from World War II, it wasn't an entire generation) were young, it was the age of "Reefer Madness", with kids involved in manslaughter, suicide, and a whole bunch else thanks to marijuana. Now the tables have turned. Instead of being a gateway drug to attempted rape and heroin addiction, marijuana has been given a health halo with just as little evidence. But while the former may not have stopped Baby Boomers from inhaling some smoke, the latter has certainly encouraged it, according to the …

Though any potential benefits of marijuana are unknown - claims are anecdotal and no different than the claims about kratom or acupuncture - a group is contending that it can nonetheless help with the other popular buzz term of 2016: Opioid addiction.  But there is a caveat. The determination in Clinical Psychology Review was made by a systematic review. If homeopaths want to show that homeopathy works, they simply do a review of homeopathy papers. That doesn't mean it works and so another review won't do much to assuage fears that marijuana addiction is trading one problem for another…

Though DSM-5 is considered nothing more than a glossary by the National Institute of Mental Health, it continues to be used as a diagnostic tool by clinical practitioners. As a result, Psychiatric disturbances are all too often diagnosed as schizophrenia. ‘Personalized medicine’ may offer the solution. The symptoms that we define as ‘schizophrenia’ are among the most serious that can befall a person. In the international literature schizophrenia is no longer regarded as a single illness, but as a group of separate conditions, some of which have yet to be defined. A public debate has grown up…

Vitamin D levels have been linked to an increased risk of bladder cancer - but the source is a systematic review of just seven studies, so no one outside mainstream media and supplement salespeople promote panic about it. Vitamin D, which is produced by the body through exposure to sunshine, helps the body control calcium and phosphate levels. Vitamin D can also be obtained from food sources such as fatty fish and egg yolks but it can be difficult to obtain enough vitamin D from food alone in countries with little sunlight so food is often fortified. Vitamin D has become a gigantic supplement…

The story of phosphoethanolamine (PHOS) in Brazil, which set off a widely publicized scientific debacle about the dangers of taking unproven compounds as medicines, shows once again that just because some miracle cure is touted in a foreign country doesn't make it real. This fact is in defiance of anti-science groups convinced of an FDA/Big Pharma conspiracy against cures, but America remains the gold standard for legitimacy, and with good reason. While cancer patients and their advocates may find the process of cancer drug discovery to be opaque or frustrating, the authors of the policy…

51 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) urging the federal agency to halt an emergency push to ban the analgesic herb kratom by as early as tomorrow.  Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is made from the leaves of a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia and a relative of the coffee plant. Kratom leaves are sometimes brewed like a tea, or crushed and mixed with water. Kratom has been linked to serious health consequences, 'natural herb' or not, a drug is a drug and should go through the same regulatory process as any…

Researchers have clarified important mechanisms involved in the formation of neural circuits in the brain, and discovered that delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a psychoactive substance also found in cannabis, causes disruption of neural circuits within the cortex.  Neural activity is known to play an important role in the formation of neural circuits. However, we still do not know much about what kind of neural activities are involved in this formation process. This process is especially complex in projections from the thalamus to the cortex, of which so far we only knew that as these…

Women who have high alcohol intake, 14 or more servings of alcohol a week are slightly more likely to have reduced fertility, suggests a study published in The BMJ today. In developed countries, up to 24% of couples experience infertility, defined as time to pregnancy of 12 months or more. Official guidelines in countries like the USA, UK and Denmark recommend that women trying to become pregnant should abstain from alcohol consumption. But the extent to which alcohol intake affects female fertility is unclear. So a group of Danish researchers carried out a large prospective cohort study to…

During the 2016, after 8 years of politicians refusing to work together, it may surprise you to learn that other groups do consult experts outside their own circles. It won't surprise you to learn a group of academics think that's a bad thing, and that cancer care guidelines should never meet with the companies that actually create cancer care. Yet that's what the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center sets out to do, and does; they think that any consulting means scientists and doctors are for sale.  Is that simplistic narrative really true? Perhaps on…