Articles Tagged ‘United States’
Drugs & Clinical Trials | By January 10, 2009 | By Jennifer Gibson, PharmD | 0 Comments
Safety Concerns with Prescription Drug Samples
Drug manufacturers widely use prescription drug samples as a marketing tool. In 2004, drug samples accounted for approximately half of the pharmaceutical industry’s marketing budget, or $16 billion. An advantage, touted by pharmaceutical companies and some physicians, is that these samples are made available to low-income and uninsured patients, providing them with otherwise unaffordable medications. There is new evidence, however, that, not only do the samples not reduce drug costs and not go to the most disadvantaged patients, but there are also significant safety concerns with some drug samples. Read more →
- The Need for Post-Marketing Surveillance of Drugs
- Alcohol 101 – the Best Class on Campus
- New Drug Approval – Lacosamide for Epilepsy
- Health Care and Politics II – The Democrats
- Health Care and Politics I – The Republicans
- The Silent Epidemic of Health Illiteracy
When a new drug is approved and enters the marketplace, often the only safety and efficacy information available is based on a few thousand people who took the drug during strictly controlled clinical trials. Not surprisingly, these trials are designed to focus on the drugs’ benefits, and may not include a large enough sample size to elicit serious adverse effects. Once the drug is available for widespread use, we are able to better evaluate the real safety profile of the drug. Read more →
Alcohol use by underage college students has increasingly grown as a large issue across the United States. Excessive, or binge drinking among college students is associated with a variety of negative consequences, such as a decrease in academic productivity, unwanted sexual encounters and an increase in violent behavior.
Many colleges have made an attempt to examine the root cause of such extreme drinking by students, and have developed programs to deter students from consuming alcohol. Read more →
In October, the Federal Drug Administration approved lacosamide as add-on therapy for adults with partial seizures. The approval is based on data from multiple phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials involving approximately 1300 people.
The study participants were aged 16 years or older, and experienced between 10 and 17 seizures per month. Patients continued to take 1 to 3 previously prescribed antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) while taking lacosamide in the study. Nearly half of the study participants had tried 7 or more AEDs, and still experienced a lack of seizure control. Read more →
Most Americans are willing to pay higher taxes to make health care reform possible, but, like politicians, they disagree about what reforms should take place.
Should the government mandate a health care plan or should insurance carriers do a better job of providing coverage?
The Democrats, led by Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, plan to rely on a “play or pay” system that would improve access to insurance and move the United States toward universal coverage. Read more →
No matter which side of the political fence you sit on, most Americans agree that our health care system is broken. Health care costs in the United States are approximately 16% of our gross domestic product (GDP), and they are expected to reach 20% of the GDP by 2017. That amounts to a staggering $4.3 trillion! Costs are clearly out of control, yet 47 million Americans remain uninsured.
Health care reform is an important issue of the 2008 Presidential election, and both Republicans and Democrats are proposing radical changes that will change the face of health care delivery in this country. Read more →
Nobody questions the fact that healthcare is a confusing profession. Doctors and nurses seem to speak in foreign tongues; medicines have names and ingredients that are not even pronounceable; more and more news comes out every day about diseases and conditions that seem to contradict each other. If doctors must devote 12 years of higher education just to get a basic understanding of how the body works, how does a patient hope to know what’s wrong with them? Read more →
Friday, March 19, 2010
- Religion - A "Natural" Phenomenon?
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 1 - The Five Myths
- How Culture Shapes Our Mind and Brain
- Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis
- The Secret to Good Health – Listen to the Data
- If Herbal Medicine is Medicine, Shouldn't it be Treated as Such?
- Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Neuroscience Conferences for 2010
- Too Much Information?
- "I Feel Your Pain" - The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Income Inequality and Health Outcomes
- The Evolution of Depression
- Journal Retracts Autism Research
- Speaking in Tongues - A Neural Snapshot
- Post-Partum Psychosis - Rare but Real
- Is Your Doctor Happy or Burnt-Out?
- Ginkgo Biloba Ineffective... Again
- Worried Well on the Web
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 - The Solutions
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- Postoperative Cognitive Dysfunction
- Let the Matches Begin!
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 4 – Their Life Today
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 3 – Try to Work Out their Troubles
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 2 – Revealed to be Complicated
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 1 – Introduction
- Deep Brain Stimulation – A New Frontier in Psychiatry
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 3 – Equip Teachers with Prescription Pads?
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- Brain Blogger Finalist for Two 2010 Research Blogging Awards in Neuroscience and Psychology
- Tall Tales of Diabetic Amputations
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 – The Solutions
- Brain Blogging, Forty-Ninth Edition
- How Your Brain Groups Words
- The Child Brain and the Playing Teacher
- You Have a Right to Choose if we Agree
- Measuring Quality in Primary Care
- Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match – The NRMP Main Residency Match
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 1 – The Five Myths
- When It Comes to Aging, Size Matters
- “I Feel Your Pain” – The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Very touching story. My heart goes out to your family. Seizures are tough. And ...
- Thank you for sharing your nephew's story. So hard on those who love him, but I...
- Congratulations to all who've matched! Although the results of NRMP Main Residen...
- It's been almost 25 years since my son suffered a TBI in an accident. He was onl...
- I tend to agree with the teachers.But a teacher can only keep a record about the...
- Very interesting article, the 5th paragraph gets a little biased...but I still e...
- Dear Dan,There is certainly much clinical interest in this field. ClinicalTr...
- I recently commented on a sciencedaily.com article reporting success with TRD an...
- I have family members who are teachers. After sharing this article with them, th...
- It is great that people are challenging the use of this medication. As, a societ...
- I agree with the stand of the teachers and their children's that more than half ...
- I think that there’s also a social aspect to it. If you grow up in an area where...
- I have had epilepsy since I was 9 and am now 42. I have tried about every med. o...
- In this text is a serious error. Brain areas are found that contain religious ex...
- It's amazing how the brain works....
- Organ transplant for unavoidable patients have been around for quite some time a...
- Diet plays a major role in having diabetes. In today's world, people are finding...
- Interesting... I think that there's also a social aspect to it. If you grow up i...
- I think the article is actually describing a normal human being. Leadership tra...
- I think that applies to leaders within certain fields of knowledge or creativity...

