Pharmacology

By Benjamin Plackett, Inside Science There is an ongoing competition of bureaucratic one-upmanship between the U.S. government and renegade pharmacists. The government is playing defense. When they ban a variation of a drug, pharmacists then quickly create a newly formulated and therefore legal variation. The drug makers are shrewd chemists. They know if they alter the chemical structure of an illegal drug in a simple way, it technically becomes a new substance and consequently outside any federal regulation until the authorities catch up. It's a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole. These drug…

Insulin has been in use since 1923 so why isn't it generic? It is a corporate conspiracy, say government-funded academics. It is constantly being improved because so many people rely on it, which leads to a new patent, say companies. Researchers in a new article say people who need insulin can't afford it, though it is hard to believe that is still possible in the age of the Affordable Care Act and the Medicare that existed even before that. Poor people have access to medication and always did, but the article argues that some end up hospitalized with life-threatening complications, such as…

In the world of technology, tools can be fast, cheap or easy to use - but you only get to pick two of those three. Everyone knows that, it is common across all product development, yet a surprising number of people think medicine is somehow exempt - they want new, better drugs fast, they want them to be safe, and they want them to cost $4. We want to keep smart people developing, not milking old technology cows, so we have a patent on drugs that eventually expires. Then the drugs can be made by someone else. Since they did no research, and incur no clinical trial expenses, these generic…

High prices for cancer drugs are affecting patient care in the U.S. but there are no magic buttons to push to make that go away. Development takes longer than ever and is under more government rules than ever, while the patent window remains small and lawsuit judgments if things go wrong are unlimited. Writing in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a group of oncologists say they have answers. Unfortunately, their simplistic take on economics would mean pharmaceutical development will become the modern generation's version of the steel industry and leave the country and never come back.  "…

New Hepatitis C drugs are terrific - but like every new drug they cost a lot of money to develop and took a lot of time to navigate the regulatory system and as a result they are not cheap. Most cost-benefit analyses have found that these new treatments save a lot more than treatment without them would cost, but with the Affordable Care Act already straining under gigantic expenses that politicians didn't consider when approving it, it may be more economical to force people to do without the best treatment in the short term and incur more costs later, after the economy has time to inflate…

Adverse Drug Reactions are the biggest safety concern in the health field and they refer to harmful and unintended effects of drugs administered for the prevention and treatment of illness, both at normal dosages and in cases of incorrect usage or errors in medication. They are the fourth highest cause of death for patients in U.S. hospitals and  up to 15 percent of hospital expenses are due to drug-related complications despite the fact that clinical trials are larger, longer and more expensive than ever and pharmacovigilance area is high. The reason there can still be adverse drug…

Healthy young adults who don't consume caffeine regularly experienced greater rise in resting blood pressure after consumption of a commercially available energy drink than those who had a placebo drink, according to a Mayo Clinic study. The researchers alternately gave a can of a commercially available energy drink or a placebo drink to 25 healthy young adults, age 19 to 40, and assessed changes in heart rate and blood pressure.  Blood pressure and heart rate were recorded before and then 30 minutes after energy drink/placebo drink consumption, and were also compared between caffeine-…

Guanabenz is an FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure but a new study also finds that it prevents myelin loss and alleviates clinical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in animal models. The drug appears to enhance an innate cellular mechanism that protects myelin-producing cells against inflammatory stress. Multiple sclerosis is characterized by an abnormal immune response that leads to inflammation in the brain and the destruction of myelin - a fatty sheath that protects and insulates nerve fibers. MS is thought to affect more than 2.3 million people worldwide and has no known cure. "…

Damage to the spinal cord is often permanent because injured nerve cells fail to regenerate due to scar tissue of their long nerve fibers. Nerve cells are wire-like conductors that transmit and receive signals in the form of electrical impulses. This function can be impaired by accidents or disease. Whether or not the affected nerves can recover largely depends on their location: for instance nerve cells in the limbs, torso and nose can regenerate to some degree and regain some or all of their function.  In contrast, the neurons in the brain and spinal cord do not have this ability. If…

In 2015, it doesn't need to be said for anyone over the age of 40, but for young people still newer to Miracle Vegetable and Scare Journalism claims that get pumped out in diet books, mainstream media articles and television medicine on a regular basis, here it goes: don't latch onto supplement fads. It's certain that low levels of vitamin D can be bad - and since you won't get it from food, and the sun is also now bad, that may mean some supplements. But a new study links cardiovascular deaths to high Vitamin D levels also, which would mean that being told to take them constantly is wrong.…