Infectious and parasitic diseases create enormous health burdens, but because most of the people suffering from these diseases are poor, little is invested in developing treatments. We propose that developers of treatments for neglected diseases receive a "priority review voucher." The voucher could save an average of one year of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review and be sold by the...

A compilation of effective non-drug treatments could help increase their uptake in clinical practice n 2004, the Journal published a randomised controlled trial of graded exercise for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). 1 As with several similar trials, this trial found that graded exercise was an effective intervention. But what is graded exercise? In response to numerous emails from both doctors ...

Drug dependence is a chronic relapsing brain disorder characterized by neurobiological changes that lead to a compulsion to take a drug with loss of control over drug intake. Abused drugs (cannabinoids, opioids, ethanol, nicotine and psychostimulants) by interacting with various neural pathways in brain induces pleasant state and responsible for relapses. All abused drugs have common property o...

Psychopharmacology is a large and wide topic ranging from the molecular biology of centrally-active molecules to the social and economic aspects of psychotropic drug usage. Psychopharmacology and social psychiatry are complementary and synergistic, particularly with respect to treatments for the mentally ill. Accordingly, I have concentrated on the topic of drug treatments and their relevance t...

OBJECTIVE To explore registered nurses' experience of medication management in municipal care of the elderly in Sweden, with a focus on their pharmacovigilant activities. DESIGN A qualitative approach using focus-group discussions was chosen in order to provide in-depth information. Data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. SETTING Five focus groups in five different long-term car...

OBJECTIVE COX inhibitors and β-adrenergic blockers were recently shown to reduce cancer progression in animal models through various mechanisms. These include the prevention of immune suppression during the critical perioperative period, and the preclusion of direct promoting effects of catecholamines and prostaglandins on malignant tissue growth. To assess the safety of such pharmacological tr...

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a major problem in drug therapy and drug development. Inter-individual genetic differences can have significant roles in determining an individual’s susceptibility to ADRs. The rapid development of techniques in the area of genome analysis has put the scientific community in a power position and facilitated identification of new pharmacogenomic biomarkers that ...

Multidrug treatments are becoming more important as resistance to antibiotics and cancer treatment increases. We explore the possibility of multidrug treatments in which drugs are administered sequentially. The aim is to use a first drug to drive the evolution of a pathogen to a certain point in the fitness landscape from which there is no mutational path to a genotype of peak fitness in the la...

The development of antiviral drugs for Ebola and Marburg viruses has been slow. To date, beyond supportive care, no effective treatments, prophylactic measures, therapies, or vaccines are approved to treat or prevent filovirus infections. In this review, we examine the current treatments available to administer care for filovirus infection, the potential therapeutic targets that can be used for...

Biomarker-guided personalized therapies offer great promise to improve drug development and improve patient care, but also pose difficult challenges in designing clinical trials for the development and validation of these therapies. We first give a review of the existing approaches, briefly for clinical trials in new drug development and in more detail for comparative effectiveness trials invol...