BY: PIERRE KORY Omicron emerging in the United States and news of the first reported death in the United Kingdom remind us how little we understand the novel coronavirus, and with vaccines less effective against the new variant, how much we are in need of additional ways to fight it. To broaden our knowledge of COVID-19 and...
By Alfred Engelberg Sept. 10, 2021 Reprints ADOBE Public outcry about the shockingly high cost of brand-name drugs and a demand for new laws to rein in the cost of these medicines has persisted for years. But more than 90% of all prescriptions — almost 4 billion a year — are filled with generic drugs. Little attention...
by Collins Maina, University of British Columbia Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Contaminants in generic medications used to treat conditions like diabetes, heart disease, stomachaches, and heartburn may cause damage to DNA, affect basic cell functions, and even increase a person’s risk of cancer, according to a new UBC study. “When we take these drugs, we do...
CACTUS COMMUNICATIONS IMAGE: STUDY SHOWS THAT GENERIC HYPERTENSION DRUGS COULD BE AS GOOD AS THEIR BRAND-NAME COUNTERPARTS IN LOWERING BLOOD PRESSURE OVER THE LONG TERM. CREDIT: CHINESE MEDICAL JOURNAL Hypertension is a common medical condition and a primary cause of cardiovascular diseases and stroke worldwide. Unfortunately, as Professor Wei-Li Zhang of the Chinese National Center...
RAND CORPORATION Prescription drug prices in the United States are significantly higher than in other nations, with prices in the U.S. averaging 2.56 times those seen in 32 other nations, according to a new RAND Corporation report. The gap between prices in the U.S. and other countries is even larger for brand-named drugs, with U.S....
Paratek Pharmaceuticals successfully brought a new antibiotic to the market. So why is the company’s long-term survival in question? A patient in South Africa battles a strain of tuberculosis that is resistant to multiple antibiotics. Drug resistance is a growing problem with many diseases. Credit: Joao Silva/NYT/Redux/eyevine PDF version As the COVID-19 pandemic caught hold...
Some patients may pay more out of pocket for high-priced specialty generic drugs than their brand-name counterparts, researchers say. For a new study, researchers examined differences in brand-name and generic or biosimilar drug prices, formulary coverage, and expected out-of-pocket spending across all of the Medicare Part D plans available in the United States in the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandates that they perform the same way and are as safe and effective as brand–name drugs. However, makers of generics don’t have to repeat the clinical trials done on the originals. To be approved by the FDA, a generic must show “bioequivalence”—there can’t be a significant difference from the brand in the rate and amount of absorption of the drug when...
ll good things must come to an end” is a proverb that brand-name drug makers have trouble taking to heart. Just look at the strategies used to prevent competitors from bringing less-expensive generics to market. Pharmaceutical research has led to tremendous advances in medicine. Because of the extraordinarily high cost of bringing new drugs to...
