Pharmacology

Type II diabetes is booming in the developed world and obviously obesity is the primary driver. A new paper contends sugar is a primary driver of that obesity, rather than consuming too many calories and not exercising, and so sugar addiction should be treated just like cigarettes. While pharmaceutical companies will be delighted by the efforts of scholars in the pay-to-publish journal PLOS ONE to give them a brand new market, claims of sugar addiction, while a popular fad for the last few years, have not really held up. Nonetheless, neuroscience Professor Selena Bartlett from …

A new survey has documented that black Americans are systematically under-treated for pain relative to white Americans, and the authors allege it is due to the over-prescription and over-use of pain medications among white patients and the under-prescription of pain medications for black patients. Statistics show that black patients are under-treated for pain not only relative to white patients, but relative to World Health Organization guidelines.  The paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that disparities in pain management may be attributable in part to…

Valeant Pharmaceuticals is in the British Columbia Supreme Court hoping to avoid lawsuit class-action status for ignoring their own scientists and claiming the popular "cold and flu remedy" Cold-fX actually works for cold and flu. Like many other "natural health" products, they can skirt around consumer deception laws by claiming it is not a drug while suggesting to consumers it is absolutely one. Think bogus supplements and homeopathy. Valeant is on the hook because they bought the manufacturer, Afexa, in 2011. The lawsuit claims the company's own studies showed it doesn't provide "immediate…

Boston, MA - Botswana appears to have achieved very high rates of HIV diagnosis, treatment, and viral suppression--much better than most Western nations, including the United States--according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues in Botswana. The findings suggest that even in countries with limited resources where a large percentage of the population is infected with HIV, strong treatment programs can help make significant headway against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. "By now, we hoped to have an HIV vaccine. That hasn't happened. Ironically, treatment of HIV-…

An investigation on the effect of fish oil supplements for muscle growth reveals the tablets do not give gym-goers an advantage in the weight room. Supplements are a protected class in the United States, easily claiming drug effects without being forced to prove they work the way drugs do. Most are just expensive placebos, more akin to homeopathy and superstition than medicine, though they are heavily promoted by alternative medicine gurus such as Dr. Joe Mercola and Dr. Oz. Weight lifters now know they can spend their money on something else. Despite claims the capsules enhance the…

Many of the drugs we use in hospitals, such as antibiotics, antifungals and anti-cancer drugs, are produced by bacteria that live in the soil beneath our feet. Most of the antibiotics we use were discovered by scientists in the mid-20th century, but as the threat of drug resistant infections increases, the race is on to find new microbes that make new drugs. Scientists have only identified a tiny fraction of the microbes living on Earth and are looking for useful new ones in wildly different locations, known as ‘bioprospecting’. Here we have listed just a few of the places that…

A regimen of beta carotene (precursor to vitamin A), vitamins C and E and magnesium has been linked to slow progression of hereditary deafness in the mice with a connexin 26 gene deletion. Mutations in this gene are a leading cause of genetic hearing loss in many populations. The supplement cocktail had the opposite effect on another mutant mouse modeling AUNA1, a type of hearing loss, according to a paper in Scientific Reports.  Mice in the study received the antioxidant regimen postnatally and in utero in separate experiments. In the connexin 26 mouse model, the enhanced diet was…

Antidepressants, commonly used to treat anxiety, pain and other disorders, may play a role in dental implant failure, according to a new pilot study which found that the use of antidepressants increased the odds of implant failure by four times.  While these drugs are often used to manage mood and emotions, a side effect decreases the regulation of bone metabolism, which is crucial to the healing process. Each year of antidepressant use doubled the odds of failure. From left to right: Latifa Bairam, DDS, MS, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Restorative…

Researchers have identified a gene which can be used to predict how susceptible a young person is to the mind-altering effects of smoking marijuana, an increasing concern as the cultural movement shifts toward legalization.  Around one percent of cannabis users develop psychosis. It is known that smoking cannabis daily doubles an individual's risk of developing a psychotic disorder, but it has been difficult to establish who is most vulnerable.   Previous research has found a link between the AKT1 gene and people who have gone on to develop psychosis. In the new study, Celia Morgan…

U.S. Marshals, acting on a request from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized yet another ridiculous "dietary supplement," and this one's a doozy. About 90,000 bottles of a bunch of garbage with the brand name RelaKzpro, which is sold by Dordoniz Natural Products of South Beloit, Illinois, were confiscated. The substance that got them raided is called kratom, and it is derived from leaves of the Mitragyna Speciosa tree, prized for its natural psychoactive effects. M. speciosa is indigenous to Thailand but it's banned there, so why is this pharmacologically active drug considered to be…