- Medical errors are up at VA hospitals, but they’re actually doing less to figure out why (washingtonpost.com)
Hospitals across the country are under growing pressure to reduce preventable medical mistakes, the errors that can cause real harm and even death to patients…Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs a massive system of hospitals and clinics that cared for 5.8 million veterans last year, is doing less, not more, to identify what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
- Amgen cannot stop imminent sale of Neupogen copycat: U.S. appeals court (reuters.com)
U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for Novartis AG to launch the first biosimilar drug in the United States as it declined on Wednesday to stop the sale of the company's copycat version of Amgen Inc's blockbuster cancer drug Neupogen (filgrastim)…. Novartis (Sandoz) could begin to market its biosimilar drug, to be sold under the name Zarxio…. a version of Neupogen, have been available in Europe since 2006...
- Kim Kardashian Posts Drug Side Effects After FDA Warning (bloomberg.com)Kim Kardashian's FDA run-in shows the challenge of policing drug ads in the Instagram age (vox.com)
Kardashian's #CorrectiveAd came during MTV's Video Music Awards...Kim Kardashian West took to social media…to belatedly acknowledge the side effects of a controversial morning-sickness drug she endorses (Diclegis)… Aug. 7 warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to drugmaker Duchesnay saying that Kardashian's original paid endorsement omitted important safety information.
- Precision medicine, linked to DNA, still too often misses (bostonglobe.com)
precision medicine is more complicated than portrayed by politicians and even some top health officials. Contrary to its name, precision medicine is often inexact, which means that for some patients, it will offer false hope rather than a cure…
- DEA Announces Major Steroid Operation – Operation Cyber Juice: U.S., global takedown includes home labs, gyms, local distributors (dea.gov)
DEA officials today announced a nationwide series of enforcement actions targeting every level of the global underground trade of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs,…manufactured and trafficked from underground labs in China…Operation Cyber Juice …resulted in the arrest of over 90 individuals, the seizure of 16 underground steroid labs, approximately 134,000 steroid dosage units, 636 kilograms of raw steroid powder, 8,200 liters of raw steroid injectable liquid, and over $2 million in U.S. currency and assets.
- Premier hospitals take on infections (healthcareitnews.com)
Data-driven fight begins with goal to cut overuse of antibiotics…Fifty hospital and health system members of Premier…are testing, defining and scaling new strategies in a nationwide effort to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria…goal is to reduce antibiotic overuse by 20 percent and implement the Centers for Disease Control's core elements of its antibiotic stewardship program by July 2016.
- Settlement will make Narcan more affordable, Mass. AG says (bostonglobe.com)
Attorney General Maura Healey announced Monday that a manufacturer of a drug that can help reverse opioid overdoses will pay the state $325,000, resolving her concerns about a sharp price increase…. settlement with Amphastar Pharmaceuticals Inc. will help make the drug, naloxone (nasal administration),..more widely available for less money to cities and towns across the state…The $325,000 will go into the Municipal Naloxone Bulk Purchase Trust Fund, created in this year’s state budget. That fund is aimed at helping communities gain cheaper access to the drug.
- The Numbers Behind Biotech’s Horrible, No Good, Awful August (thestreet.com)
August was a horrible month for biotech stocks. The breadth of the selling during the month was impressive. Among all U.S.-listed biotech stocks regardless of market cap, only 68 companies managed to end August with higher stock prices, while 267 biotech stocks lost ground,… If you want to be an optimist, note the IBB ETF is still outperforming the broader market for the year.
- Europe bans drugs tested by GVK; FDA monitors but keeps allowing sales (in-pharmatechnologist.com)
US FDA has found no systemic issues affecting the safety or efficacy of generics clinically tested at GVK BioSciences, but says it supports Europe’s ban of around 700 products…Last week, a European ban took effect on…medicines that were approved based …on what regulators called flawed clinical studies… US Food and Drug Administration isn’t taking any action on products sold here that included data from GVK’s studies in their applications,…
- Examining drug issues in depth (bostonglobe.com)
Open your medicine chest and you’ll find bottles and vials that contain so much more than a needed remedy…Each container actually holds a fascinating tale about the drawn-out process it took to develop the drug, the delicate dance required to win regulatory approval, the sometimes controversial steps taken to persuade doctors to prescribe the medicine, or the complicated calculus that was used to set pricing
- You can have sex or you can drink, but you can’t do both.
- Drug makers have free speech rights, too. Seriously, they do.
- My medicine costs how much?
- Is the sky the limit . . . or is the sky falling?
- No, Virginia, we don’t yet have a cure for cancer, but . . .
- You’re dying, but getting access to experimental medicine may be nearly impossible.