One in three adults use daily medicines that don’t require prescriptions. Most of these over the counter (OTC) medications are our first treatment for common problems such as pains, aches, sprains, colds and rashes. Non-prescribed use of pain killers comes in fourth in the list of most frequently used drugs: behind alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, […]
Category: Pharmaceuticals
Patients know how to take holidays from their illnesses. In one study of patients on blood pressure medications, half of them stopped treatment within a year of starting and the other half had at least one drug holiday every year. Drug holidays can also extend life It seems you can miss a few doses and […]
New evidence suggests that taking a combined cocktail of preventive medications can help us live longer. In these times of soaring health expenditure this should be good news to public health. But governments seem reticent to invest in combined preparations even when they can potentially extend life, minimize morbidity and deliver cheap pharmaceuticals. The problem […]
The battle against obesity is as relentless as the fight against sugar. The difference is that the fight against sugar is one of global economics rather than public health. And that’s a problem based in the history of research. Obesity first emerged as the blockade against bad fats in our diet and quickly became confused […]
More than 30% of all medicines in many African and Asian countries are falsified, rising to 50% for antibiotics making the fake drug market more lucrative than fake handbags and fake watches. Here in the Western world Interpol and other agencies are struggling to keep online drug sales below 1%. But they’re growing, even Tory […]
A recent study found that the following terms – used by media to attract our attention especially on quiet news days – are no more than pollutants: “breakthrough”, “game changer”, “miracle”, “cure”, “home run”, “revolutionary”, “transformative”, “life saver”, “groundbreaking” and “marvel”. Researchers identified 36 drugs associated with these terms in press releases where the hyperbole […]
When venture capitalist Martin Shrekli recently bought a pharmaceutical company and repackaged and repriced, by 5000%, an old drug that HIV patients use to treat fungal infection, he set the world of pharmaceutical pricing on fire. That kind of maverick decision by Shkreil made me, for one, realize how much our wellbeing is at the […]
