Pharmacology

Only recently has conversation about access to new drugs been moving to acknowledging the need for a community debate about affordability as well. pixxiestails, CC BY-NC By Sally Wortley, University of Sydney and Deme Karikios, University of Sydney Decisions about public subsidies for high-cost drugs are naturally quite complex. And while patients have increasingly been given a voice in the process, the views of the wider community have generally not been sought. But given the rising cost of new drugs, perhaps it’s time to widen the discussion and start a debate about equity and the…

Human papillomavirus is a virus that is responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine can prevent 70 percent of those. A new study by University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers indicates that only about half of the girls ages 11-12, the age recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, receive the vaccine. Why the lack of acceptance? HPV is a common virus, most people will get HPV at some time in their lives, though most will never even know it. About 1% of sexually active adults in the U.S. have visible genital warts at any point in time and…

Over 10 percent of patients using aspirin therapy for primary cardiovascular disease prevention shouldn't be doing so, according to a recent paper.  They were likely either inappropriately prescribed it or do it over the counter, according to a new study that examined practice variations in aspirin therapy by accessing data from the National Cardiovascular Disease Registry Practice Innovation and Clinical Excellence (PINNACLE) Registry. The authors examined a nationwide sample of 68,808 patients receiving aspirin for primary cardiovascular disease prevention and evaluating aspirin…

Autism spectrum disorders affect 1 percent of children in the United States and hundreds of genetic and environmental factors have been implicated in increasing the risk.  Scientists have previously reported that suramin, a drug used for almost a century to treat trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) reversed environmental autism-like symptoms in mice and now a new study in Molecular Autism suggests that a genetic form of autism-like symptoms in mice are also corrected with the drug, even when treatment was started in young adult mice.  The underlying mechanism, according to Robert K…

A new white paper finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain, despite the explosive recent growth in the use of such drugs.  The paper, which constitutes the final report of a seven-member panel convened by the National Institutes of Health  last September, finds that many of the studies used to justify the prescription of these drugs were either poorly conducted or of an insufficient duration. That makes prolific use of these drugs surprising, says Dr. David Steffens, chair of the psychiatry department at the…

By Josh Bloom and Henry Miller The development of new drugs is among the riskiest of business ventures. It now takes 10-15 years for a pharmaceutical company to get a new drug approved, and on average the cost exceeds $2.5 billion. To establish its safety and effectiveness, a candidate drug or vaccine undergoes a lengthy process of laboratory, animal and clinical studies, and then regulatory review is conducted by the highly risk-averse FDA. The odds of success are not good. Only about 1/1000th of the candidate drugs screened even get into clinical trials, and of those that do, only about 20…

It is well-known that “huffing” - inhaling organic solvents or propellants to achieve a “high” - is extremely dangerous, but less well known is that newer replacement products primarily used by homosexual men, called “poppers”, actually contain harmful solvents and propellants and pose the same health risks as huffing.  The original poppers, based on alkyl nitrites and related to the medication amyl nitrite, got the name from their glass vials that “popped”, and they have been popular among gay men due to mild psychoactive effects and relaxing of smooth muscle, used to enhance sexual…

Sometimes in life you simply don't have any great choices. Ask any New York baseball fan. Or football. Or basketball. Good thing we don't have shuffleboard.  Perhaps, an even more painful choice this year (or not, depending on your value system) is what to do about the flu. This is because we have two lousy choices. Although, I would be absolutely astounded if Dr. Oz and some of the other beauties out there didn't have something to "support" your immune system. In which case, you now have three lousy choices. The problem is the flu is really pissed off this year, and wants to take it…

A small pilot study has shown that most of the children in a new oral immunotherapy treatment program were able to eat 100 grams of wheat bread without side effects, a promising way to mitigate the risk of accidental ingestion by people with this allergy.  Wheat is one of the most frequent childhood food allergies - up to 35% of Spain by the age of 12, according to the authors. The most common treatment is avoiding eating wheat products, which can mean a nutritional imbalance for children. And then some products may have wheat despite the label. Though most allergens are not as serious…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently warned that statins could affect the memory, attention span and other cognitive abilities of people who it drug to control high cholesterol. Despite cultural claims in the US that the FDA is too liberal in approval, a new review found that they were instead being far too conservative. It was the precautionary principle becoming a vice, according to a systematic review of 25 clinical trials incorporating nearly 47,000 people, led by Brian R. Ott, M.D., professor at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Since 2012, the FDA regulates that…