Dose-related adverse effects of medications are a major problem in modern medical practice. The "correct" dose, based on drug company guidelines in package inserts, may not be correct for many patients. Tablet splitting or dividing has been an accepted practice for many years as a means of obtaining the prescribed dose of medication. As model tablets for this investigation, two batches of lisin...

BACKGROUND Commercial sources of information are known to have greater influence than scientific sources on general practitioners' (GPs) prescribing behavior in under developed and developing countries. The study aimed to determine the self-reported impact of pharmaceutical promotion on the decision-making process of prescription of GPs in Eastern Turkey. METHODS A cross-sectional, explorator...

High drug prices are a major barrier to patients' access to drugs and compliance with treatment. Yet low drug prices are often argued to provide inadequate incentives for innovation. We propose a drug-licensing model for health care, which has the promise of increasing drug use without altering patients' out-of-pocket spending, health plans' costs, or drug companies' profits. In such a model, p...

BACKGROUND A topic of great concern in bioethics is the medical research conducted in poor countries sponsored by wealthy nations. Western drug companies increasingly view Latin America as a proper place for clinical research trials. The region combines a large population, modern medical facilities, and low per capita incomes. Participants from developing countries may have little or non altern...

To The Editor: Various pharmacological agents are used for the treatment of migraine. In the last five years, various drug companies in Bangladesh have been marketing pizotifen as a preventive treatment of all types of migraine. Pizotifen is a serotonin antagonist acting mainly at the 5HT1, 5-HT2A and 5HT2C receptors. It also has some activity as an antihistamine (1). Pizotifen is a wellestabli...

D rug development is indispensable to deal effectively with disease [1]. However, two dilemmas emerge from clinical research devoted to this goal. First, new drugs are the source of a huge economy ruled not by the standards of the medical profession, but by the rules of business and the market [2]. Second, although the testing and the medical community's " blessing " of a new drug lie entirely ...

Designing a global pricing strategy for a new pharmaceutical product has become increasingly difficult as geographic reference pricing and parallel trade have introduced global price interdependencies between different nations. What may have been an optimal pricing strategy in a single country may no longer be optimal when considering the international ramifications of this price. The prices se...

A survey of the involvement in and attitudes towards continuing medical education of 101 general practitioners achieved a 95% response rate. Ninety per cent of the 96 doctors worked in practices which held meetings the content of which was organized by representatives of pharmaceutical companies but only 46% worked in practices which organized their own educational meetings. Seventy six per cen...

BACKGROUND The Orphan Drug Act is an important piece of legislation that uses financial incentives to encourage the development of drugs that treat rare diseases. This analysis studies the effects of a portion of the Orphan Drug Act, the orphan drug designation. Specifically, it studies the value that investors place on the orphan drug designation, by investigating how investors react to compan...

When an innovative (brand-name) drug is going off patent protection, the innovative drug companies and/or generic drug companies may file an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) for generic approval through the conduct of a bioequivalence study. Bioequivalence testing for generic approval is based on the Fundamental Bioequivalence Assumption that when two drug products have similar drug abso...