Apologies for my lack of writing lately — I have been extremely busy with work and offline life. After tonight, things should go back to normal.

Anyway, looks like I was right about Gardasil not having an uphill fight:

A government advisory committee is recommending that all 11- and 12-year-old girls get a new vaccine to prevent the sexually transmitted virus that leads to most cases of cervical cancer. Moreover, the vaccine will get federal funding under the Vaccines for Children program.

Additionally, the vaccine can be given to girls as young as 9.

[…]

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP, convened by Centers for Disease Control, also recommended routine use of the vaccine for women between the ages of 13 and 26 regardless of the status of pap-smear tests that measure precursors to cervical cancer.

This is good news for Merck, and for all women. Glad to see the religious retardsright was not able to derail Gardasil recommendation. This part stood out to me, because it notes that the decision was really a non-event:

In a note this morning that preceded the meeting, Timothy Anderson, pharmaceuticals analyst at Prudential Equity Group, had called the decision “a formality.”

Hooray common sense!

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, Gardasil, Merck, politics, religion[/tags]

Here’s another story that you can file under the “I’ll take this more seriously when more research is done” category. Apparently fish oil works as well as Ritalin in calming hyperactive, ADHD children.

Before I started writing here, I was a science journalist — I covered developments in the world of science that interested me. I did it for myself and for an established publication. Anyway, I quickly learned to develop a skeptical attitude, particularly when somewhat extreme claims were made. I consider this to be one of those. Things like this set off my BS radar:

Psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi (CORR) said: ‘It stands to reason that using a natural supplement that has few dangers or side-effects must be preferable to using drugs which have considerable dangers associated with them.

‘This is a non-toxic way of doing something that might make a difference.’

First off, natural supplements can be just as toxic and dangerous as synthetic ones. Second, “natural” substances aren’t usually studied because there simply isn’t a lot of money in them because they can’t be patented. Third, OTC supplements (like herbals and fish oil) aren’t regulated by the FDA, so what you’re actually getting can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer — and from bottle to bottle from the same manufacturer. And yes, I realize this study was conducted Down Under, where the laws might be different.

None of the above are smoking guns when it comes to invalidating this story, they’re just things to keep in mind.

The Australian researchers looked at the effect of eye q (CORR) fish oil capsules on a group seven to 12-year-olds with ADHD.

Some were given the capsules, while others took a placebo or dummy capsule.

Within three months, the behaviour of those on the fish oils had dramatically improved and, by seven months, many of the children were less restless and doing better at school.

If true, this is fantastic news. Until other studies corroborate these findings, I’ll treat this with a healthy dose of skepticism rather than gospel. But it certainly is interesting.

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, fish oil, omega-3, ADD, ADHD, Ritalin, Concerta[/tags]

I was reading on Kevin, MD the other day a post about pharmacists “wanting” to prescribe. The article was about Canada, but we’re rapidly moving in that direction here in the United States as well, with the PharmD degree being the only one that’s offered.

This article is pretty long, so you may wish to get a cup of coffee or something before you read it, but I do think it’s very relevant to healthcare today. The sections:

• The retail misconception
• Healthcare as a collaboration
• A problem of medical records?
• Making a diagnosis vs determining treatment options
• Pharmacists are already prescribing today
• Who’s more qualified?
• Random talking points
• Conclusions

Continue reading Pharmacists as prescribers of medication →

About a year or so ago I got annoyed with all of the little red squiggly underlines that appeared in documents that dealt with medicine. I also got tired of hitting “Add to dictionary” every 3 seconds. So I decided to create my own custom dictionary and make it available as freeware to everyone. The first version had some 40,000 or so words. Not a bad start, but it still wasn’t good enough, so I’ve been working at it slowly and now my dictionary has some 66,239 words.

Since most of my readers work in the medical profession, I thought I would post it here. Anyway, feel free to pass it around to friends, relatives, medical students, pharmacy students, people you hate, you know, whatever.

I hope to include a form for submitting new words in the future.

MeDic for Word (and any other program that uses plain text dictionaries).

Cheers!

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, biology, chemistry, spelling, transcription, stenography, dictionary, grammar, word, microsoft word, hacks, freeware[/tags]

Reading articles like this irritates me more than just a little bit. I have written extensively about the coming Part D doughnut hole already.

Furfaro, a disabled heart-transplant patient, hit the doughnut hole last month when he tried to fill a prescription for two medications. Instead of two $25 co-pays, the pharmacist charged him $661 and $329 for the prescriptions.

“I threw a fit,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t have $661 in my pocket.”

Continue reading Hitting the Medicare doughnut hole early →

An AP report today indicates that there has been significant progress made in creating a vaccine for Alzheimer’s Disease.

The new vaccine is DNA-based, and if testing continues successfully, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience in Japan hopes to have a vaccine for use in humans in 6 or 7 years. Jonathan has coverage of the nuts and bolts of how the vaccine works over at Nobel Intent, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Elan Pharmaceuticals had been working on an Alzheimer’s vaccine several years ago, but they were forced to halt their work due to brain swelling in some of the test subjects. Yoh Matsumoto, the lead researcher on the project says that these problems have been ironed out based on what his researchers learned from the previous failure.

So far we’ve got cervical cancer vaccines, vaccines for otitis media, and a shingles vaccine. That’s a lot of happenings in a field of medical research that has long lay dormant.

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, vaccines, Alzheimer’s, Elan, biotechnology, biotech[/tags]

With the approval of Gardasil, and the pending approval of Cervarix, major progress can be made against cervical cancer, especially in the third world. Enter the Gates Foundation — one of my favorite charities.

As a first step, PATH plans a program of research in India, Peru, Uganda and Vietnam, with a $27.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, studying the best way to use the vaccines.

PATH will help pilot introduction in the four countries, and both drugmakers have agreed to provide their vaccines to demonstration projects.

This is excellent news, and it’s the right way to go about promoting the vaccine. Best practices for dispensing and usage will lead to greater efficacy and more lives saved in the long term. (After all, a major component of a positive therapeutic outcome is patient compliance — that is, consistent usage in the most effective manner possible in given environmental conditions.) Even better is that it looks like the drug companies will be supplying the PATH project for free during preliminary fact-finding. With the Gates-Big Pharma collaboration, it looks like we can start making inroads against the 200,000 yearly deaths that occur as a result of HPV-mediated cervical cancer.

The first world will largely subsidize the third for the time being, but large orders of the drug could turn a profit for GSK and Merck in the long run, which is why it is in their best interest to provide the drug free of charge for programs like PATH in the beginning. And lest the liberals complain about profiteering off the backs of the poor, consider that the third world is one of medicine’s final frontiers: if companies can profit while helping those unable to help themselves — via charitable and governmental financial proxies — then everyone wins. Especially the poor.

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, HPV, gardasil, cervarix, gates foundation, bill gates, GSK, Merck, cancer, oncology, cancer vaccine[/tags]

I mentioned back on May 17 how the FDA was scheduled to make a decision on Merck’s new HPV vaccine, Gardasil, by June 8. The FDA handed down their approval today, a decision which is no surprise to anyone, since it’s 100% effective against one strain of HPV, and 99% effective against two others. The vaccine is a huge boon for the public, and also for the beleaguered Merck:

This cancer kills 3,700 women each year in the United States and hundreds of thousands more worldwide.

[…]

Gardasil, manufactured by Merck & Co. Inc., protects against the two types of HPV responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine also blocks infection by two other strains responsible for 90 percent of genital wart cases. It will be available by the end of June.

It is likely that Merck will market Gardasil as a cancer vaccine rather than an STD vaccine for political reasons. There has been some speculation that the religious right would opposed the vaccine if they thought that it would lead to premarital and/or teenage sex. To combat this, Merck launched their “tell someone” anti-HPV campaign several months ago to soften the social impact of the drug before the approval was granted. I’m sure we’ll see Merck tie a new marketing campaign for Gardasil into this tell someone HPV campaign to allow a smooth transition from one to the other — despite their assertions to the contrary. Even if a direct connection between Gardasil and the tell someone campaign isn’t made, Gardasil is currently the only vaccine approved to prevent HPV, so a woman asking about her doc about HPV prevention is almost akin to her asking for Gardasil — even if she doesn’t know it. (Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.)

In any event, this is great news for everyone in the first world and the third. Hopefully this will mean that HPV-induced cervical cancer will finally go the way of polio. This is some of the biggest cancer news in a week already chock–full of cancer breakthroughs.

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, Gardasil, HPV, genital warts, STDs, cancer, oncology, Merck, vaccine, cancer vaccine[/tags]

The WaPo has a popular Health article today about the increasing practice of women skipping their periods entirely. (Period: Full stop?) I’ve seen the issue come up a few times in the last year or so. While it may seem “unnatural” or even unhealthy, I thought I’d point out something that the WaPo article didn’t mention.

Throughout history, women have traditionally been married at a young age, often having children much younger than they do in this day and age. Life expectancies were shorter, and when women were being married at 15 and 16, and having children right away, and then dying arounf 30, this meant that they wouldn’t be menstruating as much as they are today. Assuming menopause comes at 50 today, and a girl began menstruating at age 13 (not at all unheard of today), and she has two children (as opposed to 8 or 9), she menstruates 463 times during her life:

(50-13) x (52/4) - (2x9) = 463

Contrast this with a typical medieval scenario: a woman begins menstruation at 15, has 8 children (child mortality was around 30%), and death coming at age 30 (the average life expectancy during the this period):

(30-15) x (52/4) - (8x9) = 123

That’s 340 fewer menstrual cycles. It is my opinion that the human body wasn’t meant to bleed that often, so menstruating once every three months doesn’t seem like it would be that detrimental to a woman’s health, save for the hormones one is ingesting. Like the article says, though, time will have to be the judge of that, but women are certainly having far more periods than they have at any other point in history.

[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, menstruation, monthly period, gynecology, oral contraception, birth control, history[/tags]

An AP article that I found thanks to Drugwonks is proclaiming that there is a problem with spending on specialty drugs. These “specialty drugs” are medicines like Humira, Remicade, and others — that is, biologics.

Specialty drugs are typically biotech medications that treat complex, chronic conditions and often need to be injected. Spending on such drugs reached $40 billion last year or 19 percent of the total on all medicines, according to Express Scripts Inc., a Missouri-based pharmacy benefit manager.

[…]

The explosive growth is spending on specialty drugs is especially problematic because there is no pathway for generic competitors to enter the market.

Continue reading Specialty drug spending problem? I think not. →