Pharmacology
The introduction of abuse-deterrent OxyContin, coupled with the removal of propoxyphene from the US prescription marketplace, are getting the credit for decreasing opioid prescribing and overdoses in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Those two changes led to a 19 percent drop in prescription opioid supply that was mirrored by a 20 percent drop in prescription opioid overdose between August 2010 and December 2012. The drop in prescription opioid overdose was partially offset by an increase in overdose due to heroin, an illicit opioid.
The number of overdose deaths from prescription opioid abuse…
A Phase IIa placebo-controlled clinical trial of TOPOFEN, a topical anti-migraine therapy for moderate and severe migraine sufferers, showed that the application of a well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) over the trigeminal nerve branches can be a safe and effective alternative treatment for patients suffering from acute migraine.
NSAIDs are a widely used class of drugs that relieve pain, reduce fever and stem inflammation. They include aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen and others. Topical NSAIDs represent an alternative to the oral form of the drugs, which have known safety…
The first malaria vaccine candidate (RTS,S/AS01) to reach phase 3 clinical testing is partially effective against clinical disease in young African children up to 4 years after vaccination, according to final trial data published in The Lancet.
Testing reveals that vaccine efficacy against clinical and severe malaria was better in children than in young infants, but waned over time in both groups. Protection was prolonged by a booster dose, increasing the average number of cases prevented in both children and young infants. The RTS,S/AS01 vaccine was developed for use in sub-Saharan…
Increasingly, the public distrusts science and medicine. Much of the reason has been due to lawsuits, some of it has been due to strange beliefs among wealthy elites in well-defined parts of the United States. Due to popularized concerns about the safety of medicine, the approval cycle and the cost is longer than ever - billions of dollars and a dozen or more years unless a disease like Ebola gets into corporate media headlines.
The result is a lack of new development for anything that is not a "home run" product, and antibiotics are too expensive in the current regulatory climate, especially…
Rapid treatment with a new anti-inflammatory called
C5aR
could have a major impact on recovery from spinal cord injury.
University of Queensland School of Biomedical Sciences researchers Dr. Marc Ruitenberg and Ph.D. student Faith Brennan said they made the discovery during laboratory trials with an experimental drug. Brennan said that excessive inflammation caused additional damage in spinal cord injuries and hindered recovery.
"We found that a molecule called C5aR exacerbates inflammation and tissue damage after spinal cord injury," said Brennan. "Our study shows that drugs…
Daily consumption of capsaicin, the active compound of chilli peppers, was found to have beneficial effects on liver damage. The study found capsaicin reduced the activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) in mice models. HSCs are the major cell type involved in liver fibrosis, which is the formation of scar tissue in response to liver damage.
The mice were split into two groups and received capsaicin in their food:
After three days of bile duct ligation (BDL) in which the common bile duct is obstructed, leading to bile accumulation and liver fibrosis
Before and during chronic carbon…
Today the New York Times published an op-ed by Newt Gingrich where he calls for doubling the budget for the National Institutes of Health here in the US.
Who can argue with that?
Mr. Gingrich correctly points out that the NIH budget has been flat for years and that this has eroded the nation’s ability to carry out needed fundamental research. Of course, this situation is nothing new for antibiotic researchers.
Having lived through decades of essentially no funding, there was relief starting in 2006 with at least some funding. I can’t put my hands on exact numbers, but I know that…
A number of studies have shown that coffee helps to protect against breast cancer and new work led by Lund University has found that it also inhibits the growth of tumors and reduces risk of recurrence in women who have been treated with the drug tamoxifen.
In the cell study, the researchers looked more closely at two substances that usually occur in the coffee drunk in Sweden – caffeine and caffeic acid - and is a follow-up of the results the researchers obtained two years ago.
“Now, unlike in the previous study, we have combined information about the patients’ lifestyle and…
Heroin addicts who do not give it up should be able to access the drug through the Canadian taxpayer-funded health system, according to a recent paper in BMJ. Standard treatments for heroin drug addiction include detoxification, abstinence programs and methadone maintenance.
Obviously some people never give it up and the paper argues that is a medical failure, that if doctors cannot provide effective treatments for these patients they will remain "outside the healthcare system" and there is "overwhelming" evidence that they will relapse into using heroin and suffer immeasurably while costing…
A drug commonly taken to prevent seizures in epilepsy may surprisingly protect the eyesight of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015.
For the study, the researchers randomly selected 86 people with acute optic neuritis within two weeks of having symptoms to receive either the epilepsy drug phenytoin or a placebo for three months. The researchers then used medical imaging to measure the thickness of the retina, the light sensitive nerve…