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Drugs
@vibhavarshney Merck faked to promote drug
Issue Date: Jun 30, 2009
Used phony journals to push Vioxx
pharma giant Merck has been accused of using unscrupulous methods, including publication of fake journals, to promote its anti-arthritis drug Vioxx.
Add telaprevir
Issue Date: Jun 30, 2009
To the 2-drug team to combat the virus deadlier than HIV
THE Hepatitis C virus has infected over 170 million people worldwide which is four times the number of hiv
infected people. India, alone, has three million cases. The existing treatment is a combination of two drugs: interferon and ribavirin, which
together prevent the virus from replicating. But the success rate of the prevailing two-drug combination is less than 50 per cent because it does
Troubled exchange
Issue Date: Jun 30, 2009
Rich nations want to own vaccines
developed and developing countries failed to reach an agreement on the exchange of virus samples and vaccines of pandemic flu at a recent World Health Organization (who) meeting .
Human factor in swine flu
Issue Date: May 31, 2009
People infected with the virus show symptoms similar to common cold such as runny nose, cough and fever, but there is no vaccine for it. No serious effort has been made to search for one till now as there have been very few cases so far. Only 50 cases of human swine flu have been reported since 1958, said Christopher Olsen, a virologist with University of Wisconsin, the US, in his 2007 study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Alert in India
Seeking shikimic
Issue Date: May 15, 2009
A major component of the bird flu drug, it is in short supply
one way to prepare for the bird flu epidemic is to store large quantities of the drug Tamiflu. The drug blocks the
enzyme responsible for helping the virus break the host cell membrane to get out, and so 'traps' it, preventing its spread to healthy cells.
In the making
Issue Date: Apr 30, 2009
A universal drug to work against all strains of flu virus
influenza vaccine makers are often flummoxed by the changing nature of the virus. The makers need to keep producing new vaccines because the virus keeps mutating into new strains. World Health Organisation estimates that about 250,000 people die from influenza every year. A team of researchers tried to rework the basics of the influenza vaccine.
According to report
Issue Date: Apr 30, 2009
Birds no more: Eight bird species have vanished from the 25 sq km Salim Ali sanctuary in Ernakulam district, Kerala, said a study by
Nirmala College in Ernakulam. Changes in their environment, teak plantations for example, may have caused this. The study also recorded the
number of bird species increased from 132 in the 1930s to 238 in the sanctuary. This included wetland species that increased from 10 to 32,
possibly because of a new reservoir there.
Double standards
Issue Date: Apr 30, 2009
It's not uncommon for scientists to publish medical studies acclaiming the benefits of a drug without disclosing their financial ties with the drug's manufacturer. The Journal of American Medical Association (jama) is a critic of the practice. In 2008, the journal's Catherine De Angelis was even awarded the Catcher in the Rye humanitarian prize because of "her leadership on discussions of conflict of interests in medicine".
