NBC – A rise in prescription drug abuse involving Xanax and similar anti-anxiety pills in recent years has prompted some doctors in the U.S. to rethink the frequency with which they dole out the prescription. Between 2004 and 2009, New York City emergency room visits involving Xanax and other anti-anxiety prescription drugs known as benzodiazepines increased more than 50 percent. That’s up from 38 out of 100,000 New Yorkers in 2004 to 59 out of 100,000 New Yorkers. Read article
Related article: Americans consume EIGHTY percent of the world’s pain pills as prescription drug abuse epidemic explodes
Daily Mail – Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s supply of painkillers — more than 110 tons of pure, addictive opiates every year — as the country’s prescription drug abuse epidemic explodes. That’s enough drugs to give every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin. And pain pill prescriptions continue to surge, up 600 percent in ten year… Read article
Daily Mail – Britain has become a nation of sleeping pill addicts since the start of the economic downturn, figures revealed yesterday. Stress-related insomnia has been blamed for a sharp increase in the number of people prescribed powerful drugs to help them sleep. The annual cost to the NHS of handing out the pills has risen by a sixth in the past three years to nearly £50million. Read article
Reuters – Experimental drugs that show a big effect early in development for treating serious or life-threatening diseases would get a faster and cheaper path to U.S. approval, under a proposal likely to become law this year. U.S. drug regulators would be able to label such treatments “breakthrough” therapies, and work with companies to speed up clinical trials, for example by testing the drugs for a shorter time or enrolling fewer patients. Read article
Bloomberg – Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Merck & Co. (MRK) are being pulled into an expanding congressional investigation about the agreement drugmakers reached with the Obama administration to support the Democrats’ overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, according to three people familiar with the talks. The probe began last year, with Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking documents from an industry trade group, said the people, who aren’t authorized to speak publicly. Read article
Reuters – U.S. drug reviewers on Monday questioned whether the benefits of Pfizer Inc’s experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis outweighed its risks of cancerous cells and infections. The Food and Drug Administration staff said the drug, called tofacitinib, appeared to reduce swollen and tender joints during clinical trials. But the staff questioned the method of analyzing X-rays to prove the drug worked. Read article
Reuters – U.S. drug reviewers on Tuesday said Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc’s obesity pill appeared to help people lose weight and was unlikely to cause tumors in humans, but questioned if the company had provided enough data to rule out heart problems. Lorcaserin is one of three new potential obesity treatments vying to gain U.S. approval and be the first new weight-loss treatment on the market in over a decade, after initial rejections over safety issues. Read article
The Guardian – Prescriptions of Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have quadrupled in a decade, prompting fears it is being pushed on children at the expense of alternative treatments and without appreciation of long-term effects. Figures released by the NHS business services authority to the Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt reveal the number of prescriptions of methylphenidate hydrochloride, the generic name for Ritalin, rose in England from 158,000 in 1999 to 661,463 in 2010. Read article
Adelaide Now – TWO months ago, Jessica Lock was a typical 13-year-old – outgoing, healthy and happy. Yet now she is a stranger in her own home, racked by an array of mysterious ailments. A week after being administered in February with the anti-cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil at her school, the teenager began fainting and experiencing strong head pains – and her parents say she has lapsed into a semi-permanent, child-like state. Mother Shelley Lock believes her daughter suffered a severe and extremely rare reaction to Gardasil but said public hospital staff had been unwilling to examine a link, with one doctor inferring Jessica’s condition was psychosomatic. Read Article
Two years ago in a massive public health push, the Australian government decided that the flu season needed to be aggressively managed by ‘encouraging’ people to take up the flu vaccine. Two years later with a litany of child fatalities and adverse reaction, and the same vaccine, Fluvax, is still being spruiked by Australia’s doctors. Our reporter, Marla Singer, investigates. CLICK HERE TO READ
Daily Mail – Common anti-depressants could be doing patients more harm than good, according to researchers examined the impact of the medications on the whole body.
A team from McMaster University examined previous patient studies into the effects of anti-depressants and determined that the benefits of most anti-depressants compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly patients. Read article
Toronto Star – Pediatricians in Canada are starting to discharge children whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated. More and more, doctors are taking a stand when their medical advice is being ignored, said Dr. Hirotaka Yamashiro, chair of the pediatrics section for the Ontario Medical Association and president of the Pediatricians Alliance of Ontario. “There have been some pediatricians who are very concerned about that, and may not take on the patient in the beginning,” Yamashiro said. “If you are going to fundamentally disagree with one of the things I think is good for your child, what else are we going to have a problem with?” Dr. Fatima Kamalia, a Thornhill-based pediatrician, says she discharges patients whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated. Read Article
Reuters – Hormone therapy originally taken to ward off chronic diseases may be linked to an increased risk of breast cancer in older Chinese women, but it does not seem to raise their risk of heart attacks or heart-related deaths, a new study suggests. The findings expand upon the landmark Women’s Health Initiative study of 2002, which found that a common estrogen-plus-progestin treatment increased a woman’s risk for heart attacks, breast cancer and strokes. Read article
The Independent – Independent experts have condemned the Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis for trying to force the NHS to buy an expensive drug to treat patients suffering from a degenerative eye disease, rather than using a cheaper, unlicensed alternative. Novartis is taking four NHS areas in the south of England to a judicial review because they have allowed doctors to prescribe the anti-cancer drug Avastin to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration. Read article
Reuters – Swiss drugmaker Novartis is challenging the use of a cheap alternative to its eye drug Lucentis in parts of Britain, sparking a row over cost versus safety in treating a common cause of blindness. Lucentis, with annualized sales for Novartis of some $2 billion, is licensed for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and is also recommended by Britain’s health cost watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Read article
Daily Mail – Fertility drugs can more than double the chances of children born to mothers who struggle to get pregnant developing leukaemia, a study has shown.
Children were 2.6 times more likely to become ill with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood leukaemia, if their mothers had been treated with ovary-stimulating drugs. Read article
ABC – Police in China have reportedly confiscated 77 million drug capsules on suspicion they are made from industrial waste. Read article
The Australian Doctor – The influenza vaccine at the centre of the recent febrile convulsion scare in children has now been linked to an increased risk of adverse events among adolescents and adults. In a safety review of seasonal flu vaccines, a Federal Government working group found the risk of adverse events following Fluvax was “modestly higher” than that of rival brands Vaxigrip and Influvac. Read article
Reuters – A Boston federal judge on Thursday sentenced Merck & Co to pay a $321 million criminal fine for improperly marketing its Vioxx painkiller a decade ago. The U.S. drugmaker pleaded guilty in recent months to having illegally promoted Vioxx for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis before it was approved for that use in 2002. The pill, approved in 1999 as a painkiller, was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after it was linked to risk of heart attack and stroke. Read article
Reuters – Human Genome Sciences has rejected an unsolicited bid worth around $2.6 billion from long-time partner GlaxoSmithKline, marking a new takeover battle in a drugs sector recently swept by M&A activity. The U.S. pioneer of gene-based drug discovery, which sells a new drug for lupus with GSK, said on Thursday the offer of $13 per share, made in a letter on April 11, did not reflect the value inherent in the company. Read Article
UPI – Scientists say a prostate cancer treatment developed by a Danish company uses viruses with human DNA to stimulate the immune system to target cancer cells. Bavarian-Nordic Immunotherapeutics of Kvistgaard said the treatment leaves healthy cells unaffected. Read article
NY Times – Farmers and ranchers will for the first time need a prescription from a veterinarian before using antibiotics in farm animals, in hopes that more judicious use of the drugs will reduce the tens of thousands of human deaths that result each year from the drugs’ overuse. The Food and Drug Administration announced the new rule Wednesday after trying for more than 35 years to stop farmers and ranchers from feeding antibiotics to cattle, pigs, chickens and other animals simply to help the animals grow larger. Using small amounts of antibiotics over long periods of time leads to the growth of bacteria that are resistant to the drugs’ effects, endangering humans who become infected but cannot be treated with routine antibiotic therapy. Read article
BBC – Drugs giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been ordered by a US judge to pay $1.1bn (£690m) for downplaying the risks involved in taking its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal. The state of Arkansas sued J&J and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals over its marketing of the drug in 2007. A number of US states have already found the firms guilty of similar charges and fined them accordingly. Read Article
Reuters – U.S. health regulators are adding information to the labels on a popular class of birth control pills that includes Bayer AG’s Yaz and Yasmin, to show they may raise the risk of blood clots. All common birth control pills increase a woman’s chances of getting potentially fatal blood clots. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that some studies showed the danger may be even higher for more recent pills that contain the compound drospirenone, a synthetic hormone. Read article
