Feature Channels: Pharmaceuticals

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Study shows patients who give their doctors high marks in communication more likely to fill prescriptions.

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Researchers have discovered that adding lovastatin, a widely used cholesterol-lowering drug, to traditional antimalarial treatment decreases neuroinflammation and protects against cognitive impairment in a mouse model of cerebral malaria.

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FDA approves ponatinib, third drug in four months; all clinical trials led by MD Anderson.

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Researchers from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the University of California at San Diego and CureFAKtor Pharmaceuticals have published the first evidence that inhibiting focal adhesion kinase with CFAK-Y15 can control the growth of glioblastoma tumors.

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The Methodist Hospital in Houston and Dallas-based Remeditex Ventures LLC have entered into an exclusive agreement to develop an investigational drug for glioblastomas, the most malignant of all primary brain cancers. Current treatments only prolong survival for an average of five months.

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InterveXion Therapeutics LLC and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) have successfully completed dosing in the first human safety study of a medication to help methamphetamine users fight their addictions.

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Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske is set to release new information about teen drug use on Wednesday. There are steps every parent can take to keep potentially dangerous medications out of the wrong hands.

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An international study of ibrutinib in people with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) continues to show unprecedented and durable results with few side effects.

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A new study by NYU School of Medicine researchers suggests that an existing HIV drug called maraviroc could be a potential therapy for Staphylococcus aureus, a notorious and deadly pathogen linked to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations each year. Their study is published online this week in Nature.

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As the prescribed use of buprenorphine has dramatically increased in recent years, accidental exposure of children to the drug has risen sharply, placing them at risk for serious injury, and in extremely rare cases even death.

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Drugs are currently being tested that show promise in treating patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an inherited disease that affects about one in 3,600 boys and results in muscle degeneration and, eventually, death.

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Pharmaceutical chemists had suggested that the objective of a drug hitting multiple targets simultaneously is impossible and unlikely to succeed. This study shows how to efficiently and effectively make designer drugs that can do that.

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A two-prong approach combining ibrutinib and rituximab (Rituxin®) to treat aggressive chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) produced profound responses with minor side effects in a Phase 2 clinical trial at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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A new class of drugs reduced the risk of patients contracting a serious and often deadly side effect of lifesaving bone marrow transplant treatments, according to a study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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Angiocidin, a novel tumor-inhibiting protein, has shown in vitro and in vivo effectiveness against acute myeloid leukemia cells in pre-clinical experiments.

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A groundbreaking clinical trial involving the breast cancer drug tamoxifen should prompt certain breast cancer patients to reconsider their treatment options.

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A new drug demonstrated dramatic and rapid effects on prostate cancer that had spread to the bone, according to a study reported by University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers.

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Phase I trial shows third-generation drug helps patients after other treatments fail.

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A new drug may bring help for people with insomnia, according to a study published in the November 28, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found in an initial clinical trial that a drug typically prescribed for erectile dysfunction or pulmonary hypertension restores blood flow to oxygen-starved muscles in patients with a type of muscular dystrophy that affects males, typically starting in childhood or adolescence.

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In older adults, antipsychotic drugs are commonly prescribed off-label for a number of disorders outside of their Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved indications – schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The largest number of antipsychotic prescriptions in older adults is for behavioral disturbances associated with dementia, some of which carry FDA warnings on prescription information for these drugs.

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Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed a new strategy for finding novel antibiotic compounds, using a diagnostic panel of bacterial strains for screening chemical extracts from natural sources.

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A new targeted drug demonstrated its ability to control metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor, an uncommon and life-threatening form of sarcoma, after the disease had become resistant to all existing therapies, report investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who led the worldwide clinical trial.

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Rituximab, a drug used to treat cancer and arthritis, may help patients with antiphospholipid antibodies (aPLs) who suffer from aPL-related clinical problems that do not respond to anticoagulation, according to a new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery.

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If you’re more of an angry, hostile type, a placebo won’t do much for you, according to a collaborative study co-authored by School of Dentistry Dean Christian Stohler.

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Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and Duke University Medical Center have conducted a phase I trial of dasatinib, an oral SRC-family tyrosine kinase inhibitor, to determine the maximum tolerated dose when combined with paclitaxel and carboplatin to treat patients with advanced or recurrent ovarian cancer.

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Researchers have developed a transgenic mouse that carries a human gene known to increase risk of Alzheimer's 15-fold. The new mouse, which mimics the genetics of the human disease more closely than any existing model, provides new evidence for the earliest cause of Alzheimer's and may prove more useful in the development of drugs to prevent or treat the disease.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found that an experimental compound may help stem the debilitating effects of muscular dystrophy by restoring normal blood flow to muscles affected by the genetic disorder.

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A Vanderbilt study examining the impact of the two most commonly prescribed oral diabetes medications on the risk for heart attack, stroke and death has found the drug metformin has benefits over sulfonylurea drugs.

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Daily injections of liraglutide were slightly more effective than weekly injections of exenatide in lowering blood sugar and promoting weight loss. However, patients had fewer negative side effects on exenatide once weekly.

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A drug therapy shows promise for treating an inherited form of kidney disease called autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), Mayo Clinic researchers say.

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Elevated risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, neonatal health complications and possible longer term neurobehavioral abnormalities, including autism, suggest that a class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) should only be prescribed with great caution and with full counseling for women experiencing depression and attempting to get pregnant, say researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center and MetroWest Medical Center.

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An oral rinse of the antidepressant doxepin significantly eased pain associated with oral mucositis in patients receiving radiation therapy for cancers of the head and neck, a study led by Mayo Clinic found. The findings were presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting in Boston.

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Powerful antibiotics that scientists and physicians thought stop the growth of harmful bacteria by completely blocking their ability to make proteins actually allow the germs to continue producing certain proteins -- which may help do them in.

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An interdisciplinary team of researchers has dissected a case of synergy in drug-resistant chronic myeloid leukemia to understand the mechanism by which two drugs, danusertib and bosutinib, work together to overcome resistance in the BCR-ABL gatekeeper mutation-specific disease. The team includes a researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Austria and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal is to address an unmet medical need because this BCR-ABL mutation confers resistance to all currently approved kinase inhibitors for chronic myeloid leukemia.

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Ustekinumab, an antibody proven to treat the skin condition psoriasis, has now shown positive results in decreasing the debilitating effects of Crohn’s Disease, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine.

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Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have identified an experimental drug that may go beyond symptom relief to counter the inflammation and nerve cell death that underlie Parkinson’s disease, according to their presentation at the Neuroscience 2012 meeting in New Orleans.

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A comprehensive new review on how to treat high cholesterol and other blood lipid problems suggests that intensive treatment with high doses of statin drugs is usually the best approach. But some statins work much better for this than others, the review concluded, and additional lipid-lowering medications added to a statin have far less value.

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New University of Maryland study of Medicare patients after heart attacks revealed an overall low exposure to the four medication classes.

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There are now more than 100 confirmed cases and eight deaths from a national outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to steroid injections, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The steroid manufacturer, the New England Compounding Center, has issued a recall while health officials determine how many people may have received the injections for back pain. Nine states have reported cases and 23 received the recalled product.

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Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a new therapy for patients with neuromyelitis optica that appears to stop inflammation of the eye nerves and spinal cord. NMO is a debilitating central nervous system disorder that is often misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis (MS). In the study, patients with severe symptoms of the disease, also known as NMO, were given eculizumab, a drug typically used to treat blood disorders.

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Preliminary research finds that for patients with nondystrophic myotonias (NDMs), rare diseases that affect the skeletal muscle and cause functionally limiting stiffness and pain, use of the anti-arrhythmic medication mexiletine resulted in improvement in patient-reported stiffness.

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A medication usually used to help treat depression and anxiety disorders has the potential to help prevent heart failure, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.

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A virtual monopoly held by some drug manufacturers in part because of the way treatment protocols work is among the reasons cancer drugs cost so much in the United States, according to a commentary by two Mayo Clinic physicians in the October issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Value-based pricing is one potential solution, they write.

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The way the body metabolizes a commonly prescribed anti-retroviral drug that is used long term by patients infected with HIV may contribute to cognitive impairment by damaging nerve cells, a new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

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he D.C. Department of Health (DOH) has released a study by George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services (SPHHS) indicating the high levels of marketing by antipsychotic drug manufacturers to Medicaid psychiatrists in the District of Columbia.

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Researchers at Moores Cancer Center at University of California, San Diego Health System are evaluating the safety and tolerability of a synthetic cannabinoid called dexanabinol. Delivered as a weekly intravenous infusion, the drug is being tested in patients with all forms of brain cancer, both primary and metastatic.

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• Denosumab decreased tumor presence in the entire cohort. • Some patients experienced bone regrowth. • Drug could be first medical alternative to radical surgery.