Archive for the 'Prescription Drugs' Category

“The Doctor Will You–If You’re Quick”

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Steve

The following is a guest post from Bud Hebeler

The Apr. 23/30, 2012 Newsweek has an article by Shannon Brownlee starting on page 46 about the little amount of time doctors can now spend with their patients. The average doctor has 2,300 patients. The average doctor spends 23 seconds listening to your problem before he/she interrupts and has less than 15 minutes to review test data, see the patient, write a prescription and update the records after the visit. In a test of 300 patient visits, the doctors spend only “1.3 minutes conveying crucial information about the patient’s condition and treatment, and most of the information they provided was far too technical for the average patient to grasp.” If a doctor had 2,000 patients, less than average, he/she “would have to spend more than 17 hours a day providing the recommended care.”

It’s going to get worse. Our population is aging quickly–and it’s the aged that use most of the medical care. The mandated reduction in Medicare payments to doctors is going to exacerbate the declining number of general practice physicians as will the ever diminishing number of medical school graduates in general practice who know they will be unable to pay several hundred thousand dollars of college loans on $150k a year. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s going to happen when the number of patients increases and the number of primary doctors decreases. Costs will grow, ques will get longer, care quality will decline and emergency room use will expand greatly. Already, patients who are on Medicare know how difficult it is to find doctors who will take Medicare patients.

This morning’s newscasts said that the expiration of drug patents has reduced the production of key drugs for anesthesiology, cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. Most prescription drugs are imported and supplies are now so low that doctors must find alternatives–and the alternatives don’t seem as good or are slow in coming.

Welcome to our forthcoming medical care.

Bud

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Over The Counter Danger?

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Erin

“I trust my heart to ________.”  Can you finish that sentence?  A large portion of people can say “Lipitor” with no hesitation.  Lipitor is the world’s most-prescribed drug and is worth more than $11 billion in revenue to it’s company Pfizer.  But that may not be the case for long.  Pfizer’s patent on Lipitor is getting ready to expire in November and Pfizer is scrambling to make sure it does not become a generic drug that will allow for a cheaper version of the drug to be produced.  One solution?  Have it become an over the counter medicine.

Usually when expensive prescription drugs become available over the counter (think ibuprofen, and many allergy medicines), it’s a great thing for consumers.  But this time around, it’s not looking that way.  Lipitor is used to treat high cholesterol and reduces the level of “bad” cholesterol.  The problem is, elevated levels of the bad cholesterol are asymptomatic – there’s no way to know if you have it without taking a blood test.  And currently, these types of blood tests can only be given by physicians.  If people don’t know their cholesterol levels and are giving themselves the wrong dosage, they can easily harm themselves.

Do you think making this drug available over the counter is good for the public?  Or do you think this move could do more harm than good?

Prescription drugs are expensive – make sure you have enough money saved to purchase your medications AND still retire!

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The Cost of Medication

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Erin

Imagine you are diagnosed with cancer and your doctor has prescribed you  a drug that you need to prevent the disease from spreading.  Now imagine standing at the pharmacy and the pharmacist tells you the drug will cost you more money than you make in a month.  This scenario isn’t as unlikely as most would hope – it has been reported that one in six Medicare beneficiaries do not fill their prescriptions.

Why is this?  Why are the drugs that are sometimes the only option for a patient, so expensive that many could never afford them?  Private insurance companies blame the drug makers for making the medicine too expensive.  Drug makers blame the private insurance companies for creating high co payments on their drugs.  In an article posted by the Associated Press, one senior who had to find alternative measures when she could not afford her medications described the situation as this, “After you’ve worked all your life, you get something catastrophic and you run into news like your drugs are going to cost $2,400.”  Have you or anyone you know run into problems with the cost of medication on Medicare? What, if anything, were you able to do to get these drugs?

Read the full article, Seniors Face Medicare Cost Barrier For Cancer Meds,” here.

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Interactions cause seniors to drop antidepressants

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Jason

Yahoo News, December 17th, 2010

More than half of older Americans taking an antidepressant for the
first time were already taking another drug that could interact with it
and cause side effects, researchers reported on Friday.

And a quarter of patients who suffered side effects stopped taking
antidepressants altogether, the study by a team at Thomson Reuters, the
University of Southern California, Sanofi Aventis and elsewhere found.

“We found a concerning degree of potentially harmful drug combinations
being prescribed to seniors,” Dr. Tami Lee Mark of Thomson Reuters,
parent company of Reuters, said in a statement.

Other studies have found that older adults are often taking dangerous combinations of prescription drugs, but doctors are not getting the message, the researchers report in the American Journal for Geriatric Psychiatry.

The research team used a Thomson Reuters database of claims for Medicare, the federal health insurance plan for people over 65.

They found more than 39,000 patients who started antidepressants between
2001 and 2006. “Twelve commonly reported antidepressant side effects
were identified in the month after drug initiation,” Mark’s team writes.

More than 25 percent of the patients were prescribed antidepressants and
another drug that could cause a major interaction. Another 36 percent
had potential moderate interactions.

“The most common side effects were insomnia, somnolence and drowsiness,
which occurred in 1,028 (2.6 percent) patients. The next most common
side effect was dizziness, which was documented in 416 (1.1 percent)
patients,” the researchers report.

The side effects meant patients often dropped the drug they were taking. Only 45 percent of those with documented side effects refilled the prescription for the same antidepressant, and a quarter quit taking antidepressants altogether.

Many adults are at risk of this problem, the researchers point out –
other studies show that 25 percent of older adults with chronic
illnesses such as arthritis or heart disease also have depression, and
they have also been shown to be helped by antidepressants.

Read more of this article.

Alternative to Statins Shows Promise

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Jason

Health Day News, March 10th, 2010

A thyroid-derived
cholesterol-lowering drug that could be an alternative to the widely
used
statin medications has done well in a small, early trial, Swedish and
American researchers report.

In the trial, various doses of the drug, eprotirome, a

laboratory-engineered version of thyroid hormone, were added to statin
treatment for 168 people whose high levels of LDL cholesterol had not
been
lowered by previous use of statins. The combination did lower
cholesterol
levels in the 12-week trial and, most importantly, did not cause the
feared side effects on the heart and other organs that have plagued
similar thyroid-based treatments.

“There was no doubt that eprotirome would lower LDL
cholesterol.
Thyroid hormone is nature’s own statin,” said Dr. Paul W. Ladenson, a
professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine and lead author of a report on the trial,
published in
the March 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. “But
this is a demonstration of lipid-lowering effect without thyroid
toxicity.”

Dr. Bo Angelin, a professor of clinical metabolic research at the

Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm, where the drug was developed, said that
the trial demonstrated that careful targeting of the drug’s effect
within
the body could obtain the benefits of thyroid hormone on blood cholesterol
levels, without causing damaging side effects. The trial was
funded in
part by Karo Bio, a small commercial spinoff of the institute.

“We knew that thyroid hormone could lower lipid
[cholesterol] levels
but would have side effects on the circulation and bones and cause
diarrhea,” Angelin said. “Even if the lipid levels were OK, it would be
overall negative for patients.”

However, he added, “if we can get the thyroid effect
in the liver
[where cholesterol is metabolized] but not in other organs, we would be
OK.”

Read more of this article.

Scientists Find Molecular Trigger That Helps Prevent Aging and Disease

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Jason

Science Daily, November 23rd, 2009

Who would have thought it? The quest for eternal life, or at least
prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of
alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School.

At a conference on aging held here last week, the medical school’s
dean, Jeffrey Flier, was to be seen greeting participants who ranged
from members of the 120 club (they intend to live at least that long)
to devotees of very low calorie diets.

The heavyweight at the conference was Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.
The company is developing drugs that mimic resveratrol, a chemical
found in some red wines. Resveratrol has been found to activate
proteins called sirtuins, from which the company derives its name.
Activation of sirtuins is thought to help the body ride out famines.

Mice
and rats put on a diet with 30 percent fewer calories can live up to 40
percent longer. They seem to do so by avoiding the usual degenerative
diseases of aging and so gain not just longer life but more time in
good health.

Sirtris’s researchers think that drugs that activate
sirtuins mimic this process, strengthening the body’s resistance to the
diseases of aging. The company has developed thousands of small
chemical compounds that are far more potent than resveratrol and so can
be given in smaller doses.

In mice, sirtuin activators are
effective against lung and colon cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, Type 2
diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, said David
Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher and co-founder of
Sirtris. The drugs reduce inflammation, and if they have the same
effects in people, could help combat many diseases that have an
inflammatory component, like irritable bowel syndrome and glaucoma.

Any
sirtuin activator that averted all these diseases in people would be a
rather remarkable drug. So there is considerable interest in how well
Sirtris’s drug trials are going.

Sirtris’s senior director of
corporate development, Brian Gallagher, said at the conference that
four active clinical trials were under way.

Read more of this article.

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Vaccines on horizon for AIDS, Alzheimer’s, herpes

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Jason

Associated Press, November 18th, 2009

Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler’s diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

Many could be on the market in five years or less.

Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of factory contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.

Vaccines
are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry.
Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in
the arm.

The lure of big profits, advances in
technology and growing government support has been drawing in new
companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.

“Even
if a small portion of everything that’s going on now is successful in
the next 10 years, you put that together with the last 10 years (and)
it’s going to be characterized as a golden era,” says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc.‘s head of vaccine research.

Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices under the federal health overhaul.

Unlike
medicines that treat diseases, vaccines help prevent infections by
revving up the body’s natural immune defenses against invaders. They
are made from viruses, bacteria or parts of them that have been killed
or weakened so they generally can’t cause an infection.

Investment
in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has
been on a tear — and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began.
Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to
develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive health care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted their appeal.

Read more of this article.

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For Older Athletes, Drug Question Emerges

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Jason

The New York Times, August 18th, 2009

In his apartment outside Philadelphia, Frank Levine pulled a list of
prescription medications from his refrigerator, his hands shaking
slightly. There was metformin HCl and glipizide for his diabetes; lisinopril for his blood pressure; and Viagra.

“I need it,” he said recently.

Mr. Levine, who is 95 and has
had operations on both knees, in June set the American record in the
400-meter dash for men ages 95 to 99, only to see it broken at the
U.S.A. Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships a few weeks
later. “Nothing counts unless you’re first,” he said.

Mr. Levine
belongs to a generation of track and field athletes who are breaking
records for speed, distance and endurance at ages once considered too
old for competition. In a sport tarnished by doping scandals, the older
athletes raise anew the question of what constitutes a natural body for
people who are at an age when drugs are a part of life.

“Who’s 75
years old and not taking medications?” asked Gary Snyder, national
chairman of U.S.A. Track & Field’s masters committee, which will
oversee more than 100 competitions this year for athletes over age 30.

Most drugs like Mr. Levine’s are not banned for competitors, but some common treatments for asthma, menopause and inflammation contain steroids that can disqualify athletes if they do not get written medical exemptions.

“I’m sure there are folks taking something like Manny,” Mr. Snyder said, referring to Manny Ramirez,
the baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers who this year was
suspended 50 games for violating the sport’s drug policy. “But most are
using drugs for medical reasons.”

Ray Feick, 77, said he
suspected “two or three” peers of using steroids to enhance their
performance, including one shot-putter who suddenly was able to beat
him. “My buddies and I talk about it,” he said. “It’s not fair to the
age bracket and not fair to their body. And one by one, they drop out.”

U.S.A.
Track & Field, the sport’s governing body, has a zero tolerance
policy for doping but does not test for drugs at masters events because
it is too expensive — about $500 per athlete and an additional $10,000
to take a testing organization to the meet, Mr. Snyder said.

But there is testing at the World Masters Championship,
which took place this year in Lahti, Finland, in late July and early
August. In 1999, the American sprinter Kathy Jager, 56, was stripped of
her medals and barred from competition for two years after she tested
positive for anabolic steroids, which she ascribed to her use of a
popular menopause treatment called Estratest HS.

“When we set records, the Europeans look at us like, ‘Oh sure, so-and-so is taking stuff,’ ” Mr. Snyder said.

Read more of this article.

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Survey: 40 Percent of Senior Citizens Not Taking Prescribed Medicines Due to Budget Concerns

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Jason

PR Newswire, July 23rd, 2009

A new survey, released today by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL),
found that senior citizens are being forced to make drastic cuts to
their medical and food budgets due to the recession.

The
survey, conducted over a three-month period earlier this year, had more
than 1,040 respondents aged 65 and over. Findings include:

  • 42
    percent of seniors had either postponed filling their prescription
    medications or were taking a smaller dosage than prescribed by their
    physicians
  • 62 percent had cut back on doctor visits or outpatient services
  • 77 percent had reduced their spending on food items

“Millions
of seniors have been struggling to make ends meet for many years,” said
Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League. “But this
survey makes clear that the recession has made things go from bad to
worse for older Americans.”

In addition, 32
percent of respondents reported that their drug plan increased its
co-pay or co-insurance in 2009; 18 percent said they would have to
postpone their retirement; and six percent reported having to take
Social Security earlier than expected due to job cuts.

Since
2000, seniors have lost 20 percent of their buying power, according to
a TSCL study released in May. That trend will likely continue, as
senior costs continue to exceed the COLA.

Read more of this article.

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Obama Announces Agreement With Drug Companies

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Jason

The Washington Post, June 23rd, 2009

President Obama today announced an offer by drug manufacturers to
contribute $80 billion over the next decade to narrow the controversial
gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage, a deal the president said
moves the nation a step closer to comprehensive health care reform.

“This is a significant breakthrough on the road to health care
reform, one that will make the difference in the lives of many older
Americans,” Obama said as he made the announcement from the White House.

The president was joined at the White House today by Barry Rand,
head of the influential senior citizens’ advocacy group, AARP, which
endorsed the deal.

“This is an early win for reform. It’s a major step forward,” Rand said.

Obama reiterated his vow to restructure the nation’s health care
system to expand care and slow the increase in long-term expenses,
despite mounting concerns about the initial costs and structure of
various plans that have been put forward. “And to those … here in
Washington who’ve grown accustomed to sky-is-falling prognoses and the
certainties that we cannot get this done, I have to repeat and revive
an old saying we had from the campaign: Yes, we can,” Obama said. “We
are going to get this done.”

After weeks of
secret talks, the pharmaceutical industry trade group voted Friday to
dedicate $80 billion to lowering the price of medicines sold to seniors
and the government. The unusual offer by the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is part of its effort to convince
skeptical lawmakers that it backs major health-care legislation.

Read more of this article.

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