Editors at the journal Nature Medicine recently asked researchers and public health experts from around the world to identify clinical trials that will shape medicine in 2023. They came up with a varied list of candidates, from cervical and prostate cancer screening protocols to gene therapy for muscular dystrophy and new drugs for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The selections are arbitrary and idiosyncratic, but they are interesting, nevertheless.
Drugs & Pharmaceuticals
Have you noticed that the names of new drugs are not merely obnoxious; they are also bizarre? As if drug companies hired consultants with a complete disdain for the English language? Quviviq? Ukoniq? Seriously? The people (mostly women) who broke the Nazi secret code in WWII couldn't handle this. Plus assorted other rants.
There is no longer any doubt that drinking alcohol raises the risk of multiple cancers. Why alcohol? What's it doing to us? And an episode of The Dreaded Chemistry Lesson From Hell. No extra charge!
Shortages of widely prescribed drugs are endemic in the U.S. To address the problem, we need a policy change that would enable overseas manufacturers to sell products in the U.S. that already have received marketing approval from certain foreign governments with standards comparable to ours and vice versa. In other words, there should be reciprocity of drug approvals.
You've probably been reading lately about kids running into trouble from eating marijuana gummies. Dr. Roneet Lev, an emergency department doctor and addiction expert, tells us what is going on in the trenches in this interview.
Nabriva, an antibiotic biotech, recently announced that they were winding down its operations. While this is sad, it may not be so much a market failure problem in this particular case.
In 2016, the American viewing public was exposed to 663,000 television commercials for pharmaceuticals. That is a significant “ad spend” by Pharma, which we pay for through increased drug pricing. A new study looks at the therapeutic value of the more heavily advertised drugs. The key concept here is “market differentiation.”
Yet another potential Covid treatment has fallen by the wayside. This time it's fluvoxamine, an antidepressant, which showed some promise in minimizing serious disease in small trials. But in a large, randomized trial, it flopped completely. The lesson? You need an antiviral drug to treat a viral infection – not a repurposed drug. These have all failed.
Some doctors are alarmed by the blase attitude toward the Covid drug Paxlovid, quite different from when the drug first became available. What's going on? Some of the waning interest in the drug is because of the widespread use of the term "Paxlovid rebound," implying that there is something wrong with it. More likely, the problem is the term, not the drug.
Tired of getting "The Pharmacist Death Stare" every time you pick up a controlled drug? Do you have to beg for a bottle of Klonipin? Pill Puritanism got you down? Well, let's take a tour of "The Amazing Drug Shop!" Quite the place indeed!
People who take oxycodone need to be careful when also taking antifungal drugs or drinking grapefruit juice. Why? Because both the juice and the drug can result in abnormally high, perhaps dangerously so, oxycodone blood levels. The same goes for fentanyl. But people taking morphine or Dilaudid don't have to worry; neither the juice nor the antifungal drug will have a significant effect on the opioid levels. Believe it or not, this all makes sense.
What's the deal with the "discard after one year" label on pill bottles? Is it based on real science? Or, is the FDA just trying to get you to send in "outdated" medicines, especially prescription opioids?