Sleep Disorders Drug Closer to Approval
Cephalon Inc. said Friday it moved closer to U.S. approval for marketing a version of its Provigil sleep-disorders drug, the company’s best-selling medicine, to treat attention-deficit disorder in children.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a so-called approvable letter for Sparlon, a new formulation and dose of Provigil, Cephalon said in a statement Friday. Sales of Sparlon probably will begin in early 2006, the company said. An approvable letter spells out steps for getting final approval from the FDA to begin marketing.
Generic Drug Makers May Get a Boost in Market
This has been a lackluster year for the stocks of generic drug makers, but that’s about to change.
In the next five years, drugs representing more than $100 billion in U.S. sales will lose patent protection. A generic drug may be sold once the original manufacturer’s patent expires. The first company to market a generic equivalent typically gets six months’ sales exclusivity.
The drug maker in the best position to benefit from these changes is an Israeli company called Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Founded in Jerusalem 104 years ago to distribute imported drugs, Teva is now the largest seller of generic pharmaceuticals in the United States, with a 13 percent market share.
New treatments suggest that cancer is on the run!
People suffering from cancer will be encouraged by a cluster of recent reports on successful new treatments for several different forms of cancer.
In fact the arrival of so much positive information and progress has raised cautious optimism in some experts that the Big C may be on the run.
No Link Between Diabetes, Aggressive Prostate Cancer
Type 2 diabetes has no effect on the aggressiveness of prostate cancer, but prostate cancer patients with diabetes do have poorer long-term survival rates, U.S. researchers report.
Previous studies had suggested that insulin promoted the growth of prostate cancer cells. In people with type 2 diabetes, the body fails to use insulin properly, which can result in excess insulin in the blood.
Women on breast cancer treatment opt for injections to curb hot flashes
Apparently, given a choice, many breast cancer patients using hormone therapies such as Tamoxifen to cut the risk of recurrence, would opt for pills rather than injections.
However the British study reveals that if injections reduced hot flashes, a side effect of such treatments, more than 60 percent of the women surveyed would choose the shots.
WHO sees good chance of Europe resisting bird flu
Europe stands a good chance of preventing the deadly strain of bird flu from reaching its tame bird population, a World Health Organisation official from Asia, where the disease first emerged, said on Monday.
“There is an excellent chance for Europe to contain the Asian flu,” Shigeru Omi, WHO director of the western Pacific region, told reporters at a conference in Copenhagen.
Stigma, ignorance risks spread of AIDS in Sudan
Almost three-quarters of Sudanese youth are sexually active, but less than a tenth know how to use condoms, posing a serious threat that HIV and AIDS will spread in the country, a U.N. official said on Monday.
Sudan has a relatively low incidence of HIV/AIDS - 1.6 percent of adults are infected with the disease and 1.3 percent of young people - compared with sub-Saharan Africa where the rate of infection in some countries is as high as 10 percent.
China warns HIV cases could exceed 10 million by 2010
China, once accused of being slow to acknowledge the threat of AIDS, could have as many as 10 million HIV carriers in five years if no effective preventive measures are taken, state media said on Monday, echoing a grim UN warning.
China says it has 840,000 HIV-AIDS cases among its 1.3 billion population, but experts say at least a million poor farmers were infected in botched blood-selling schemes in the central province of Henan alone.
Chemotherapy Errors Are Not Stamped Out
Even for critical cancer chemotherapy, even at major cancer institutions, physicians are making mistakes that have the potential for harming patients.
A study of outpatient chemotherapy errors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute here found an overall medication error rate of 3%, with a serious error rate of 2%, reported Tejal K. Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and colleagues.
Dead Parrot at Center of British Avian Flu Mystery
Mystery continues to surround the death of a South American parrot from the H5N1 avian-flu strain in a quarantine facility near London.
A spokesman for the British environment ministry said today it’s still unclear how a parrot imported from Suriname, in South America, died from the H5N1 avian-flu strain. There have been no reports of the H5N1 strain in South America.
Yearly PSA Screening Found to Cut Prostate Cancer Mortality
Annual screening for prostate specific antigen (PSA) reduced the risk of dying from prostate cancer, researchers reported.
In a retrospective study of 1,492 prostate cancer patients, those who had not had yearly screens were three times more likely to die of prostate cancer over the next 10 years than men who got an annual PSA test, Boston researchers reported at a meeting here of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
