Pharmacology

After clinical trials showed the safety and efficacy of Veklury (remdesivir) in adult and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the antiviral drug for the treatment of severe COVID-19 - requiring hospitalization. Veklury is the first treatment for COVID-19 to receive such FDA approval but it did get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on May 1, 2020. The approval of Veklury was supported by the agency’s analysis of data from three randomized, controlled clinical trials that included patients hospitalized with mild-to-severe COVID-19…

Cannabidiol, a chemical found in marijuana plants, is enjoying a wave of financial success due to strange prescriptions for "medical" marijuana, which ended up overwhelmingly being obtained for recreation. Yet belief in medicinal properties remain despite no evidence it does anything. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does say it might help for rare forms of childhood epilepsy, but that has led to charlatans selling it as part of the "wellness" scam. Supplements are fine for people who are healthy anyway. Yet those who have been duped into being marijuana will help with acne,…

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, the 2019 form of coronavirus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a rush of studies searching for a vaccine to prevent infection and testing existing drugs to see which one can reduce the amount of virus in infected people.  Drug development usually starts on a computer, then moves to cells and then animals. Animals, of course, are not little people, despite what anti-science activists like to claim in their war on food and chemicals, so if a drug works in all the preceding steps it will go to human clinical trials where it must survive the real…

The 'teach to the protocol' environment created by government and insurance companies has removed much of the critical thinking in modern medicine, and a new paper suggests even more regulations are needed. It suggests that absent control, doctors are giving prescriptions for postpartum pain in new mothers containing a few too many pills. And those 7-9 extra pills, they claim, may lead to opioid addiction. They proceed from a basis in fact. For many young women, childbirth will be the first time they are exposed to prescription pain medication. There is an opioid problem in America. Yet no…

Some menopausal women experience night sweats and hot flashes. Hormone replacement therapy is the standard of care for menopausal patients, but not all women are good candidates for it and then some simply don't trust science and medicine; they buy organic food, worry about cellphone radiation, and have read Facebook posts claiming hormone replacement therapy puts them at increased risk for breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. Hops are labeled a natural alternative to medicine because they contain phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are plant-based compounds that mimic the action of female…

A new paper claims that treatment with the antiviral drug remdesivir does not speed recovery from COVID-19 versus placebo in hospitalized patients who are critically ill. But this needs to be interpreted with caution. The Lancet rushed to publish these results but they are from just 237 adults from 10 hospitals in Wuhan, and China has fooled the world before. The study was funded by the government's Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Emergency Project of COVID-19, it was not independent. They also stopped the trial early because, they claimed, they could not find enough cases after March…

Patients with hypertension, heart failure, and chronic kidney disease are at increased risk of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that originated in Wuhan, China. Now the debate is clinical use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) in patients during the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the ways the virus enters the body is through ACE2, the enzyme that converts angiotensin I to angiotensin II in the lungs and other tissues and organs, suggesting to some that the drugs may increase susceptibility to…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Horizon Therapeutics Ireland DAC approval for teprotumumab-trbw as treatment in adults with thyroid eye disease, a rare condition where the muscles and fatty tissues behind the eye become inflamed, causing the eyes to be pushed forward and bulge outwards (proptosis). The compound is approved under the brand name Tepezza and is the first drug approved for the treatment of thyroid eye disease. Thyroid eye disease is associated with the outward bulging of the eye that can cause a variety of symptoms such as eye pain, double vision, light…

Though there is some evidence that a ketogenic diet can help people with epilepsy, the 'food as medicine' industry has instead made huge leaps into a lot of claims based on suspect evidence. While biologists will often note that there are a lot of food myths - turkey will make you sleepy, a child will run around like a maniac if they eat sugar - new ones are promoted just as fast, like that various diets significantly influence mental health and wellbeing. That is the issue; science may find one thing but surveys pretend to be just as valid, using claims of statistical significance that…

With the recent legalization of cannabis edibles in Canada, physicians may be inclined to recommend them in much the same way they do homeopathy or naturopathy. But unlike those placebos, which should not be recommended because it's a government subsidy for fraud, there are health risks for cannabis edibles, and media doesn't give it much attention. "Although edibles are commonly viewed as a safer and more desirable alternative to smoked or vaped cannabis, physicians and the public should be aware of several risks related to the use of cannabis edibles," write Drs. Jasleen Grewal and Lawrence…