NewsTrust - Pharmaceuticals - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Mass Psychosis in the US

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Jul. 13 (Special Report) - Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

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Zocor: FDA discourages high doses

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Chris Woolston - Jun. 14 (News Report) - When the FDA announced that the popular cholesterol drug simvastatin, brand name Zocor, would need a new label warning, it simply reinforced something that many doctors already knew: The highest “recommended” dose of 80 milligrams a day is so dangerous that it probably shouldn’t be recommended at all.

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FDA panel against use of Avastin for breast cancer

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Catherine Larkin - Jun. 02 (News Report) - A panel of cancer experts ruled Wednesday that Avastin - the world's best-selling cancer drug, developed by Genentech in South San Francisco - should no longer be used in breast cancer patients because of concerns the medicine didn't work as well in follow-up studies and may cause deadly bleeding. Outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted 6-0 against Avastin's use in breast cancer at a first-of-its-kind hearing in Silver Spring, Md. Their recommendations will be sent to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who will make the final ruling on an unspecified date. Avastin will remain on the market because it's approved for four other types of tumors.

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FDA chemist charged with insider trading

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David S. Hilzenrath - Mar. 30 (News Report) - As a chemist at the Food and Drug Administration, which screens medicines for sale to the public, Cheng Yi Liang had access to the kind of information that can move drug company stocks. According to the government, he has illegally traded on that information in advance of at least 27 FDA announcements since 2006, reaping profits or avoiding losses of more than $3.6 million.

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Pair of Supreme Court rulings deal blows to business

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David G. Savage - Mar. 23 (News Report) - Decisions make it easier to sue drug makers over alleged stock fraud and allow workers to sue their employers if they suffer retaliation after making an oral complaint.

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Prana Biosciences Skyrockets On Parkinson's Drug Success

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Al Zheimer - Mar. 22 (News) - Prana Biotechnology today announced the publication of new data on the ability of PBT2 to repair the damage in an Alzheimer's affected brain thereby facilitating the restoration of cognition in Alzheimer's Disease. The findings help to explain the rapid improvement in cognition previously reported in transgenic Alzheimer's mice and in patients in a Phase IIa clinical trial.

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Supreme Court rules vaccine makers protected from lawsuits

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Robert Barnes - Feb. 23 (News Report) - Federal law protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

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Americans pay too much for health care -- in charts

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Nov. 24 (News Report) - There are a lot of complicated explanations for why American health-care costs so much, but there are also some simple ones. Chief among them is "we pay too much." And I don't mean in general. I mean specifically. Mountains of research show that for every piece of care you might name -- a drug, a doctor visit, a diagnostic -- you'll pay far more in the United States than in other countries.

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Looking for a Superbug Killer

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew Pollack - Nov. 06 (News Report) - Worried about an impending public health crisis, government officials are considering offering financial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry... to spur the development of vitally needed antibiotics... a considerable number of pharmaceutical giants have abandoned this field in search of more lucrative medicines. The number of new antibiotics in development is “distressingly low,”

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Antipsychotic Drugs - Side Effects May Include Lawsuits

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Duff Wilson - Oct. 02 (News) - FOR decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America, generating annual revenue of about $14.6 billion and surpassing sales of even blockbusters like heart-protective statins. While the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in some patients remains a matter of great debate, how these drugs became so ubiquitous and profitable is not. Big Pharma got behind them in the 1990s, .......

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Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The New Orleans Times-Picayune - By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune - Aug. 11 (News Report) - Every day during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, contractors sprayed an average 140,000 pounds of Corexit dispersant onto oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and into the oil being released a mile below.

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Viagra for Children?

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Discovery News - By Benjamin Radford - Aug. 03 (News Analysis) - The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will decide later this week whether or not to approve a version of Viagra for use in treating children afflicted with a rare lung disease. The active ingredient in Viagra, a chemical called sildenafil, works by blocking an enzyme that regulates blood flow which in turn might help children by controlling blood pressure.

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Doctors reconsider old antibiotics despite hazards

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Andrew Zajac - Jul. 18 (News Report) - More than half a century ago, when antibiotics were transforming modern medicine, a now almost forgotten drug was hailed as something close to the miracle of miracles. Doctors rushed to prescribe it for an array of medical problems — that is, until they discovered that the drug, chloramphenicol, sometimes had lethal side effects. Yet today, improbable as it may seem, an effort is underway to revive the use of chloramphenicol and other antibiotics that had largely been banished because of their potential danger.

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FDA weighs alternative to 'morning after' pill

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Rob Stein - Jun. 12 (News Report) - A French drug company is seeking to offer American women something their European counterparts already have: a pill that works long after "the morning after."

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Antidepressant use may be higher among Type 2 diabetics

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jeannine Stein - Apr. 16 (News Report) - Use of antidepressants has gone up over the years, but those with Type 2 diabetes may be taking more than the general public.

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Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline in deal to supply low-cost vaccines

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Mark King - Mar. 25 (News Report) - Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will supply hundreds of millions of doses of their pneumonia vaccines to the world's poorest countries at heavily discounted prices under a novel agreement, reports the New York Times.

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Once Opponents, Insurers Back Effort to Make Health Reform Succeed

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Michael Scherer - Mar. 24 (News Report) - The health-insurance industry, which spent months campaigning against Democratic health reform, has shifted focus in the wake of its passage, pivoting from opposition to making sure the new law succeeds beyond most expectations.

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Tauzin Resigns as Drug Lobbyist in Battle Over Health Care Overhaul

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Kirkpatrick, Duff Wilson - Feb. 12 (News Report) - Billy Tauzin, the industry’s top lobbyist, thought it was a smart move to bet on health care reform early — only to watch it come to a screeching halt.

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Pressure Rises to Stop Antibiotics in Agriculture

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Margie Mason, Martha Mendoza - Dec. 28 (Special Report) - The mystery started the day farmer Russ Kremer got between a jealous boar and a sow in heat. The boar gored Kremer in the knee with a razor-sharp tusk. The burly pig farmer shrugged it off, figuring: "You pour the blood out of your boot and go on."

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Modeling Human Drug Trials — Without the Human

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Jennifer Kahn - Dec. 21 (Special Report) - Eddy hit on the idea of a soup-to-nuts model that would capture everything known by modern medicine, from the evolution of disease in different people — as shaped by factors like race, genetic risk, and number of hours spent doing yoga — to specific physiological details, such as the amount of heart muscle that dies in the hours after a heart attack and the degree to which medications like aspirin can limit that damage. Tests could be run in hours instead of years, and the model could be constantly updated with the latest research. It would spit out data on both health outcomes and finances, calculating the costs and benefits of particular treatments to the penny, taking into account data ranging from emergency room visits and blood tests to the savings generated by therapies that kept a patient’s illness from getting worse.

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Anxious Crowds Meet Ad Hoc Swine Flu Police

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jennifer Steinhauer - Oct. 28 (News Report) - The top public health official in Los Angeles County stood at a swine flu vaccination site in Compton, Calif., on Tuesday and gently told elderly residents that they really ought to go home.

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How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Karen Tumulty, Michael Scherer - Oct. 22 (Special Report) - It's understandable the drugmakers would want a roll-call accounting of who their friends and enemies are, considering the size of the investment they are making on Capitol Hill: in the first six months of this year alone, drug and biotech companies and their trade associations spent more than $110 million — that's about $609,000 a day — to influence lawmakers, according to figures compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. The drug industry's legion of registered lobbyists numbers 1,228, or 2.3 for every member of Congress. And its campaign contributions to current members of Waxman's committee have totaled $2.6 million over the past three years.

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Dem officials set stage for corporate-backed health care campaign

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Ben Smith,Kenneth P. Vogel - Oct. 16 (Special Report) - At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in

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Does the Flu Vaccine Matter?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Shannon Brownlee, Jeanne Lenzer - Oct. 15 (Special Report) - "What if flu vaccines do not protect people from dying—particularly the elderly, who account for 90 percent of deaths from seasonal flu? And what if the expensive antiviral drugs that the government has stockpiled over the past few years also have little, if any, power to reduce the number of people who die or are hospitalized?"

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The Big Business of Swine Flu

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By Dalia Fahmy - Oct. 14 (News) - Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business. Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market.

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