Tag Archive: pharmaceuticals


Anti-depressants instantly effective?

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
December 15, 2009

UK researchers claim that antidepressants get to work immediately to lift mood, contrary to current belief.
The researchers state that although patients may not notice the effects until months into the therapy, they work subconsciously. According to Oxford University Researchers the action is rapid, occuring within hours of taking the drugs.

Dr Michael Thase, a psychiatrist from the University of Pennsylvania, said the findings challenged conventional wisdoms and were potentially “paradigm-changing”. “The highest research priority is to confirm that the rapid effects observed in this study are predictive of eventual clinical benefit.”

He said it was possible that switching off the negative thoughts was a crucial part of the therapy.

Alternatively, it might merely be a sign that the drug was beginning to work at the cell level in the brain.

Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said: “This research may contribute to our understanding of how our bodies respond to antidepressants, but the changes recorded can’t always be felt by patients and it can be some weeks before they begin to feel the symptoms of depression easing.

“We must also remember that the side-effects of medication can often be felt straight away long before the benefits really kick in, and this will always affect people’s experiences in the initial stages of treatment.”

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Fast Track Drug Fears

Filed Under: Healthcare News, Uncategorized by Kirsty — Leave a comment
July 26, 2009

According to analyst Roy Lilley unregulated pharmaceuticals may be permitted to increase the NHS drugs bill with little benefit to patients. He claims that the drugs will become more and more expensive; but we will by them regardless he says that we are essentially writing the pharmaceutical companies a blank cheque which is rather worrying, considering that at present, drug companies are reluctant to launch new drugs in the UK at prices below “global market value” because much of that market is influenced by UK prices.

The aim is to fast track new medicines that could be blocked by NICE on the basis of cost and effectiveness. A former drug company boss, Lord Drayson, has been given the task of promoting life sciences as potential big earners for Britain with the backing of Lord Mandelson, who sees pharmaceuticals as key to the revival of the UK economy.Reports suggest that Lord Drayson favours a system where NICE would appraise the drug after 3 years in the hope that the company would have made substantial profits and so may be willing to drop the price.

Based on the evidence, if Lord Drayson is successful we could see pharmaceutical companies rushing drug after drug in quick succession without them being thoroughly tested. Another big concern is that the prices of these drugs will have very little regulation, these costs are likely to be passed on to patients by taxes being raised which would make them experience even more financial hardship. So the theory that they could be the revival of the UK economy is flawed. Granted they may make more money but that doesn’t really help the general public.

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Painkiller Ban reduces suicide

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
June 19, 2009

The painkiller co-proxamol has been gradually phased out after its licence was removed in 2007, since then there have been 350 fewer suicides and accidental deaths. The reason the drug was banned was due to the fact that studies such as that done by Professor Keith Hawton of Oxford University showed that co-proxamol was responsible for one fifth of drug related suicides.

Co-proxamol is a mixture of paracetamol and an opiod drug called dextropropoxyphene. It was used to manage the pain in conditions such as arthritis. Co-proxamol is extremely dangerous as even a slight overdose can be fatal as it takes effect very quickly so death occurs before medical attention can be sought.

Since the licence was removed there is a system in place where doctors could prescribe the drug on a named patient basis. This is for patients who are unable to manage their pain using alternatives, although they do so at there own risk because it is an unlicensed drug.

It seems that with any drug there is the risk of an overdose just so happens that the media found out about this one and created alot of hype otherwise known as a moral panic which then caused the regulators to remove it. If that’s the case then why not move drugs such as aspirin, that are readily available because if somebody decides that they want to commit suicide then they will do so using any means at their disposal, so are the regulators going to slowly ban every drug and put it on a named patient only system. This will not only cause problems for people who wish to gain access to analgesia or other fairly routine medication such as hayfever remedies, also it will cause the pharmaceutical companies to lose billions as the number of their product sold will decrease.

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Obesity Drug – Good or Bad?

Filed Under: Healthcare News, The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
March 30, 2009

We’ve all heard about the growing rates of obesity in Britain and the USA. With the increasing number of bizarre diets and diet pills it was only a matter of time before somebody invented a pill that could apparently cure obesity. The company that invented the drug called Lorcaserin saw a 20% decline in shares after it announced that the 2 year trial period on 3,000 patients at over 100 sites throughout the US had fallen short of the benchmark sought by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The results of the trial were:

  • 47.5% of Lorcaserin patients lost 5% or more of their body weight, compared to 20.3% in the placebo group in 12 month.
  • In the first 12 months the Lorcaserin group lost on average 5.8% of body weight (12.7 pounds), compared to 2.2% (4.7 pounds) in the placebo group.
  • In total 22.6% of Lorcaserin patients lost 10% or more of their body weight compared to 7.7 % in the placebo group.

It seems that there are also reports the results are more than good enough to meet the FDA requirement for approval, the Arena claims that the drug has met all its primary endpoints, and shows significantly greater weight loss compared to placebo.

It is already accepted that obesity is a widespread disease, so having an effective therapy that can be used by the majority of patients who need to reduce their weight that could also be beneficial for conditions, such as diabetes, lipid disorders, and cardiovascular disease, Lorcaserin is the first in a new class of selective serotonin 2C receptor agonists; the serotonin 2C receptor is in the hypothalamus and other parts of the brain and helps to control of appetite and metabolism. This could potentially save the NHS millions of pounds as instead of paying for patients to have procedures such as stomach stapling and liposuction, a simple course of tablets can be just as effective.

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