Millions of people across the world suffer chronic pain—such as nerve, joint or muscle pain that lasts weeks, months or years—and many fail to get adequate relief, partly because doctors have a relatively scant grasp of what causes it.

But new imaging techniques, a recognition that the brain’s responses are central to pain and a growing realisation of pain’s cost to society, mean the scientific community is now pushing for it to be redefined as a disease in its own right.

A team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, combed through more than 200 scientific studies and commentaries that offered positive opinions about Avandia after a May 2007 study suggested the drug significantly increased the risk of heart attacks.

They found that 94 percent of the authors who defended the drug—known generically as rosiglitazone and made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s—had ties to drug companies, and nearly half had financial ties that presented a conflict of interest.

The drug, minocycline, likely will improve on the current treatment regimens of HIV-infected patients if used in combination with a standard drug cocktail known as HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy), according to research published now online and appearing in print April 15 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. “The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins,” says Janice Clements, Ph.D., Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs, vice dean for faculty, and professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Agency scientists said 46 cancer cases and 71 infection cases have been reported in patients aged 16 and younger from 2004 to 2008 with Novartis’ Elidel and Astellas’ Protopic.

Both drugs—also known as pimecrolimus and tacrolimus respectively—already carry strong warnings about cancer and infection, but officials should consider expanding them to include the new post-marketing reports, they wrote.

At a two-day meeting to review blood glucose meters, Food and Drug Administration officials and staff pointed to a number of issues that can prevent people from getting proper treatment and sought input from medical experts and industry on ways to improve test results with the widely used devices.

The FDA gets about 12,000 reports of errors with such meters each year and is currently weighing new industry guidelines, said Jeffrey Shuren, director of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

Burglars broke into the Lilly warehouse either late Saturday or early Sunday in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, as violent rain and winds lashed the Eastern seaboard, Enfield Lt. Steven Kaselouskas said.

“You certainly don’t see a $50 million to $75 million burglary many times in your career,” he said. “This was a well-planned event.”

Experts at the University of Liverpool debated the drugs handled the biological consequences of obesity since most developers focused primarily on weight loss as their end goal.

Dr Jason Halford, Reader in Appetite and Obesity at the University of Liverpool, and his co-authors argued the important psychological causes that lead to overconsumption and weight gain were left ignored.

In addition, patients who got Tekturna on top of current therapy, which includes other types of blood pressure drugs, were more likely to have potentially dangerous levels of potassium in the blood, more kidney dysfunction, and hypotension, or blood pressure that is too low.

Tekturna, known chemically as aliskiren, works by directly blocking the hormone renin. Other hypertension drugs also affect the renin-angiotensin system, which regulates blood pressure in the body.

Rhythm has been quietly incubating at the Boston offices of MPM Capital. Then on Friday, the startup made some news when it revealed an exclusive licensing deal with the rising French biotech power Ipsen, which is supplying Rhythm with molecules based on two hormones that play roles in regulating metabolic functions. Paris-based Ipsen is a fast-growing biotech that pulled in about $1.4 billion in revenue last year.

Rhythm president and co-founder Bart Henderson, who was previously an entrepreneur-in-residence at MPM, tells Xconomy that the Ipsen molecules, or peptides, compose the entirety of his young startup’s pipeline. The first-round financing, led by MPM and the venture firm New Enterprise Associates, will fund the firm’s first two clinical trials slated to begin this year and in 2011. Ipsen owns a 17-percent stake in Rhythm, and has a seat on the startup’s board of directors.

The 9,306-patient study tested Starlix, known chemically as nateglinide, and the big-selling Novartis blood pressure medicine Diovan.

Diovan, known chemically as valsartan, reduced progression to diabetes by 14 percent compared to a placebo but failed to reduce the risk of serious heart problems, such as heart attack and stroke, according to researchers who presented the data at the American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in Atlanta.

Among about 18,700 Quebec residents aged 65 and older with cataracts and 187,000 age-matched Quebec residents without cataracts, study chief Dr. Mahyar Etminan, of Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and University of British Columbia, and colleagues found that people taking SSRIs were 15 percent more likely to be diagnosed with cataracts than those not taking these drugs.

While the study does not allow for calculating a person’s actual risk of developing cataracts with SSRI use, Etminan noted that the average lifetime risk of developing cataracts for someone in North America above the age of 50 is approximately 20 percent. 

Last Updated: 2010-03-15 13:01:12 -0400 (Reuters Health)

The findings, based on data for nearly 475,000 VA patients, found that African Americans had lower rates of prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering statins, as well as ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers used to treat high blood pressure and certain heart problems. They were, however, more likely than white patients to be on aspirin.

The Food and Drug Administration said it was adding a new boxed warning to Plavix, an $8-billion-a-year drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Sanofi-Aventis SA.

The new language will “warn about reduced effectiveness in patients who are poor metabolizers of Plavix,” the FDA said in a notice on its website.

The warning by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) highlights one of the most sensitive issues in trade - the extent to which companies’ intellectual property rights can be waived to help poor countries and whether that stifles research and innovation.

The European Union said it was not asking that India stop producing cheap generic medicines.

The special U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family’s quest for reimbursement.

“The Meads believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines caused William’s regressive autism. As explained below, the undersigned finds that the Meads have not presented a scientifically sound theory,” Special Master George Hastings, a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice, wrote in his ruling.