E-Cigarettes May Be as Effective as Patch to Help Smokers Quit

E-Cigarettes May Be as Effective as Patch to Help Smokers Quit

Taking a drag from an e-cigarette may be just as safe and effective as slapping on a nicotine patch for smokers struggling to quit, according to the first physician-run trial to compare the two products. About one in 20 people who used either patches or e-cigarettes managed to quit completely six months after the test started, according to research published today in The Lancet. Meanwhile, users of electronic cigarettes — battery-powered devices that deliver vaporized nicotine — were more likely to have cut their use of the real thing in half even if they didn’t quit entirely. Read more of this post

Cancer Vaccine Setback. Failed product is one of therapeutic cancer vaccines. Unlike typical vaccines given to healthy people to prevent disease, therapeutic cancer vaccines are given to patients already diagnosed with cancer

September 5, 2013, 6:34 p.m. ET

Cancer Vaccine Setback

Failed Glaxo Trial Is Unlikely to Dampen Drug Firms’ Interest in Hot R&D Area

JEANNE WHALEN and RON WINSLOW

LONDON—An experimental cancer vaccine failed to help skin-cancer patients in aGlaxoSmithKline GSK.LN -0.81% PLC clinical trial, a setback for a hot area of medicine that seeks to harness the body’s immune system to fight tumors. When compared to a placebo, the vaccine, called MAGE-A3, didn’t increase the amount of time melanoma patients lived without their disease returning, Glaxo said Thursday. The 1,345 patients in the late-stage trial were given either the vaccine or a placebo after their tumors were surgically removed. Read more of this post

New Hampshire Hospital May Have Exposed Patients To An Incurable, Terrifying Brain Disease; This disease-causing protein isn’t killed by standard sterilizing methods. Even sterilized tools can still transit the disease

New Hampshire Hospital May Have Exposed Patients To An Incurable, Terrifying Brain Disease

JENNIFER WELSH SEP. 4, 2013, 7:58 PM 4,951 6

There’s a small chance that thirteen patients in and around New Hampshire were exposed to an extremely rare, terrifying, and deadly degenerative brain disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, according to  a state health official announcement Wednesday. The potential contamination was announced after a patient that “likely had the disease” underwent brain surgery at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, N.H., and later died from the disease.  The surgical instruments were washed using standard washing techniques and reused between May and August on eight other brain surgery patients at the center, and possibly five elsewhere. This disease-causing protein, however, isn’t killed by standard sterilizing methods. Even sterilized tools can still transit the disease. Read more of this post

Hospice Care Overlooked for End-of-Life Cancer Care

Hospice Care Overlooked for End-of-Life Cancer Care

End-of-life cancer care, whether decided by doctor or patient, favors intensive treatment that may be shortchanging a person’s chance of greater comfort in their dying days, Dartmouth College researchers said. Too many advanced-cancer patients receive invasive hospital treatments such as feeding tubes while they are dying instead of being directed to hospice and other palliative care that could ease suffering, the Dartmouth Atlas Project said today in a report. The group looked at data for Medicare, the U.S. health plan for the elderly, that showed an increase in cancer patients in intensive care units in the last month of life. Read more of this post

Doctors worry as heart drug research loses steam

Doctors worry as heart drug research loses steam

4:42am EDT

By Ben Hirschler

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The hunt for new heart drugs is losing momentum as resources are switched to other areas, notably cancer research, where investors get a better bang for their buck. Cardiologists fear the fight against heart disease could stall as a result, following major advances in recent decades marked by the advent of drugs to fight cholesterol, lower blood pressure and prevent dangerous blood clots. Read more of this post

One in four U.S. heart disease deaths could be prevented, CDC says

One in four U.S. heart disease deaths could be prevented, CDC says

7:16pm EDT

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – About one in four U.S. deaths from heart disease could be avoided with better prevention efforts and treatment, according to a first-of-its-kind report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Tuesday. As many as 200,000 Americans might have been spared an early death in 2010 from a heart attack or stroke if they had received screening and treatment for preventable causes of heart disease such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and smoking, the report found. Read more of this post

Scientists find possible new way of fighting high blood pressure

Scientists find possible new way of fighting high blood pressure

11:01am EDT

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists experimenting with rats have found that de-activating certain nerves in the neck can effectively treat high blood pressure – a discovery that could be an advance in tackling one of the world’s biggest silent killers. Researchers at Britain’s Bristol University found that in rats with high blood pressure, when they removed nerve links between the brain and the carotid body – a nodule about the size of a grain of rice on the side of each carotid artery – the animals’ blood pressure fell and remained low. Read more of this post

Chinese researchers identify key protein behind depression

Chinese researchers identify key protein behind depression

English.news.cn   2013-08-30

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) — Chinese researchers said Thursday that they have identified a key protein in the brain responsible for the development of depression, offering a fresh avenue in the search for therapies to treat depression. Previous studies have found that cells in a brain region called lateral habenula (LHB) are hyperactive in depressed individuals, but scientists haven’t known what triggers them. Read more of this post

IVF Fails to Improve Pregnancy Odds After 5 Failed Cycles; U.S. couples spend an average of $12,400 on each cycle of IVF treatment

IVF Fails to Improve Pregnancy Odds After 5 Failed Cycles

IVF is unlikely to be successful for any woman regardless of age after five failed rounds, researchers in Australia found in the first national study of pregnancy rates from in vitro fertilization. The chance of delivering a live baby over the first five cycles reaches 40 percent for women of all ages and about 50 percent for women younger than 35, a study by the University of New South Wales’s National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit found. The probability of a live delivery was negligible beyond five cycles, or rounds of drug-treatment used to achieve an IVF pregnancy. Read more of this post

Scientists discover key to normal memory lapses in seniors

Scientists discover key to normal memory lapses in seniors

Wed, Aug 28 2013

By Sharon Begley

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Scientists have good news for all the older adults who occasionally forget why they walked into a room – and panic that they are getting Alzheimer’s disease.

Not only is age-related memory loss a syndrome in its own right and completely unrelated to that dread disease, but unlike Alzheimer’s it may be reversible or even preventable, researchers led by a Nobel laureate said in a study published on Wednesday. Using human brains that had been donated to science as well as the brains of lab mice, the study for the first time pinpointed the molecular defects that cause cognitive aging. Read more of this post

The hopes and perils of betting on cancer treatments

The hopes and perils of betting on cancer treatments

Aug 31st 2013 | NEW YORK |From the print edition

NEW weapons are emerging in the war on cancer. That is good news not just for patients but also for drug companies. The biggest ones, faced with falling sales as their existing medicines go off-patent, are investing in smaller firms with promising cancer treatments under development, hoping to secure the next blockbuster. On August 25th Amgen, the world’s biggest biotechnology company by sales, said it would pay $10.4 billion for another American firm, Onyx. The target firm’s crown jewel is Kyprolis, a treatment for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. The next day AstraZeneca, a British drugs firm, said it would snap up Amplimmune, an American firm working on ways to trigger the immune system to fight cancer. Read more of this post

Amgen’s Onyx Takeover Is Symptom of Deeper Pharma Sickness

Amgen’s Onyx Takeover Is Symptom of Deeper Pharma Sickness

By Megan McArdle – Aug 26, 2013

Amgen, the world’s biggest biotechnology company, is spending $10.4 billion to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals, it announced on Sunday. Derek Lowe sums up the industry insider take: Amgen isn’t buying Onyx for their research staff, or any of their people at all. As that Bloomberg story linked to above has it, “Amgen to Buy Onyx for $10.4 Billion to Gain Cancer Drug”. Read more of this post

Summer Is the Real Season for Bad Colds, Not Winter; Summer viruses linger longer, and pack more of a punch, than winter ones

August 26, 2013, 7:23 p.m. ET

Summer Is the Real Season for Bad Colds, Not Winter

Summer viruses linger longer, and pack more of a punch, than winter ones

ANGELA CHEN

Having trouble kicking that summer cold? It’s not your imagination. Summer colds are caused by different viruses than winter colds and tend to last longer than the winter variety. Angela Chen reports. Photo: AP.

Something summery may be lingering even as the season fades—the summer cold. Colds in summertime can last for weeks, at times seemingly going away and then suddenly storming back with a vengeance, infectious-disease experts say. A winter cold, by contrast, is typically gone in a few days. The reason for the difference: Summer colds are caused by different viruses from the ones that bring on sniffling and sneezing in the colder months. And some of the things people commonly do in the summer can prolong the illness, like being physically active and going in and out of air-conditioned buildings. Read more of this post

Doctors Face New Scrutiny Over Gifts; New Health Law Calls for Increased Disclosures

August 22, 2013, 7:57 p.m. ET

Doctors Face New Scrutiny Over Gifts

New Health Law Calls for Increased Disclosures

PETER LOFTUS

U.S. doctors are bracing for increased public scrutiny of the payments and gifts they receive from pharmaceutical and medical-device companies as a result of the new health law.

Starting this month, companies must record nearly every transaction with doctors—from sales reps bearing pizza to compensation for expert advice on research—to comply with the so-called Sunshine Act provision of the U.S. health-care overhaul. The companies must report data on individual doctors and how much they received to a federal health agency, which will post it on a searchable, public website beginning September 2014. Read more of this post

China bird flu analysis finds more virus threats lurking

China bird flu analysis finds more virus threats lurking

Wed, Aug 21 2013

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A deadly new bird flu virus in China evolved from migratory birds via waterfowl to poultry and into people, and there are other bird flu viruses circulating that could follow the same path, scientists have found.

The study – an analysis of the evolutionary history of the H7N9 bird flu that has so far killed 44 people – identified several other H7 flu viruses circulating in birds that the researchers said “may pose threats beyond the current outbreak”. Read more of this post

These drugs are the cash cows of big pharma

These drugs are the cash cows of big pharma

By David Yanofsky @YAN0 August 20, 2013

It is not uncommon for single drugs to account for a large share of a drug company’s business. Of the world’s 11 largest pharmaceutical companies in 2012, six had single drugs bring in more than 10% of total sales. Bayer was the only drug maker without a single treatment grossing more than 5% of total sales. Bayer’s business is also the most diverse of the lot. Where other top drug companies stick to pharmaceuticals and personal care, Bayer’s products encompass crop and materials science units. Ely Lilly was in US Federal Court yesterday (Aug. 19) to defend a patent on administering its lung-cancer therapy Alimta with certain vitamins to temper the prescription’s side effects. A victory for Lilly in the lawsuit could put off competition from generic drug makers until 2022, who would need to imitate the vitamin regimen to gain approval from regulators. (The chemistry of Alimta itself is covered by a different Ely Lilly patent which expires in 2017.) Patenting the way a drug is taken is taken is an unusual move, and a sign of how far drug companies will go to prolong their patents, though most analysts doubt it will succeed. Alimta purchases made up 11.5% of Ely Lilly’s net sales last year, making it the most important drug to the company after Cymbalta, an antidepressant, which accounts for 22.1%. Cymbalta’s patent expires in December. Cymbalta has the second largest portion of sales from any of the top 11 companies. The largest is Abbott Laboratories’ Humira, a rheumatoid arthritis treatment, which makes up 23.2% of Abbott’s sales. Humira’s $9.3 billion in sales last year exceeded those of any other drug on the market.