Generic Risperdal Hits the Market

Patients looking to save on antipsychotics have a new option. The patent protecting Johnson & Johnson’s blockbuster Risperdal expired yesterday, and today the FDA said it granted approval to Teva Pharmaceuticals to market the first generic version.
The Israeli generics maker was at the ready. “Shipping has commenced,” Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley told the Health Blog.
Teva [...]

Glaxo’s Cervical Cancer Vaccine Will Take Longer to Get to U.S.

Just when we were talking about delays keeping drug makers’ products from the U.S. market, GlaxoSmithKline announced that its cervical-cancer vaccine Cervarix may take even longer to get to the U.S. than expected.
The company said today that it wants to submit additional data to the FDA, and it now doesn’t expect an FDA decision before [...]

With Medicare Pay Hold, Claims Backlog Will Build Up

In an effort to buy Congress time to avert a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, the feds said today they’re going to place holds on doctors’ Medicare claims from July 1-15.
That’s actually not such a revolutionary move: By law, under normal circumstances, electronic claims sent in to Medicare aren’t allowed to be paid for [...]

Flurizan’s Failure Leaves Key Alzheimer’s Theory Unresolved

Though Myriad Genetics was hoping its experimental Alzheimer’s drug Flurizan would surprise naysayers in the scientific and investment communities, the company instead announced that its Phase III clinical trial did indeed fail.
The company said Monday that the 18-month, 1,684-patient study – the largest Alzheimer’s-treatment study to date – showed Flurizan failed to improve cognitive functioning [...]

Doctors Win a Reprieve from Medicare Pay Cut

The brinkmanship over Medicare’s payments to doctors has gone to a new level.
For those of you new to the issue, a quick summary: A few years back, Congress created a Medicare funding formula that suggests payments to physicians should be cut. But each year, just before the pay cut goes into effect, Congress steps in [...]

Suit Alleges Financial Conflict in Clinical Trial

Lawsuits around clinical trials have become a big issue for medical researchers in recent years. A key question in many of them: Do patients really know what they are getting into when they sign up?
A lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania Health System and a surgeon there combines that question with another touchy issue: payments [...]

Medical Helicopters Collide Near Arizona Hospital

Emergency vehicles respond to yesterday’s two-helicopter crash in Arizona. Photo: AP Two medical helicopters collided less than a mile from Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona yesterday, killing six people and injuring three.
Both helicopters were headed for the hospital when they hit over a forested area, according to the Arizona Republic. One was operated by Colorado air [...]

California Could Stop Paying for Serious Hospital Errors

California, often ahead of the policy curve, is playing catch-up on paying for hospital errors. Later this year, Medicare will stop paying for certain mistakes, such as giving patients the wrong blood type and leaving objects inside surgical patients.
Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York have restricted payments for avoidable medical errors. And hospital associations in [...]

In ‘Hopkins,’ Patients — And Suffering — Are Real

I’m an avid watcher of hospital shows, from ER (back in the George Clooney days) to Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy today. So I was intrigued to check out last night’s premiere of Hopkins, a six-part ABC News series on real-life doctors and patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Despite being billed as a documentary, the show [...]

iPhone, M.D.

Everybody wants a piece of health IT, and everybody wants a piece of the iPhone. So perhaps it’s inevitable that software companies are rushing to create health-related iPhone applications for doctors and patients.
All the hyperventilating will only increase later this month, when Apple launches the iPhone 3G — and, along with it, the iTunes AppStore, [...]

Should We Mandate Health Insurance for Children?

Map via Wikimedia Commons The Health Blog’s never-ending tour of state health-reform efforts now pulls into New Jersey, where a bill passed this week requiring all children to have health insurance. As part of the deal, the state will expand subsidies to help poor parents insure their kids. The state’s governor is expected to sign it [...]

Want Drugs in a Flu Pandemic? Reserve Them Now, Cheap!

At Health Blog HQ, we can’t even get a burrito for six bucks. But that’s all it will cost to supposedly guarantee a supply of Roche’s drug Tamiflu if the next big flu pandemic breaks out.
The fortunes of the drug have risen and fallen lately on fears of a global flu pandemic. A while back, [...]

Anheuser-Busch to Stop Selling Energy Drinks

The main event out in St. Louis is Anheuser-Busch’s efforts to fend off a buyout by InBev. But an item on the undercard caught our eye.
Eleven state attorneys general said yesterday that they had convinced Anheuser to stop selling its caffeinated alcoholic drinks, the WSJ reports. The AGs alleged, among other things, that the company [...]

Anemia-Drug Warnings Migrate to Europe

European drug regulators said today that cancer patients with a “reasonably long life-expectancy” should get blood transfusions rather than take anemia drugs. A statement from the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) is online here.
Anemia is a common side effect of chemotherapy, and anemia drugs such as Amgen’s Aranesp and Johnson & Johnson’s Procrit (sold in Europe [...]

We’d Quit Too If We Were Worth $100 Million

The CEO of MedImmune, the biotech shop gobbled up last year by AstraZeneca, is quitting, the WSJ reports this afternoon.
David Mott (pictured) decided to leave because he thought it was “time for a change,” not because of any conflicts with AstraZeneca management, a company spokesman told the Journal.
Of course, the fact that Mott is apparently [...]

How to Keep Health Insurance When You Lose Your Job

With unemployment rising, Dow Jones Newswires columnist Victoria Knight provides some strategies this week for keeping health insurance if you find yourself out of work. Your spouse’s employer. Suppose you and your spouse both have full-time jobs. You’re both covered through your employer, so your spouse waives the coverage offered through work. Then you lose [...]

Google, Microsoft Agree to Health Privacy Standards

Google, Microsoft and a bunch of other organizations said yesterday they have agreed to a set of privacy standards for online health records. You can read all about the framework here.
It’s pretty clear that there’s a lot of upside from having peoples’ health records online — less redundancy, fewer missing tests, no more faxing records [...]

FDA Takes Heat on Employee Bonuses

In 2004, Congress expanded a government bonus system to help stem the flow of skilled government workers heading for higher-paid jobs in the private sector. Now, at least one congressman is questioning the FDA’s use of the money.
Figures released yesterday show that last year, 28 top FDA officials together received more than $1 million in [...]

59 Million Americans Scrimped on Health Care in ‘07

One in five people put off a trip to the doctor or went without health care last year, often because of money.
That figure, out yesterday from the nonprofit Center for Studying Health System Change, is a big jump from the one-in-seven figure the group found in a 2003 survey.
Overall, 8% of people said they had [...]

Grassley Questions Stanford Psychiatrist’s Industry Ties

Chuck Grassley is at it again. The senator from Iowa is looking into a Stanford psychiatry professor’s multimillion-dollar stake in a drug company called Corcept Therapeutics.
Alan Schatzberg, who heads Stanford’s psych department, followed the university’s rules and reported having a stake of more than $100,000 in the company. According to Grassley, Schatzberg’s total stake in [...]

Has the Storm Passed for Pharma Stocks?

So have pharmaceutical stocks weathered the storm, or is there more trouble to come?
In a note today, JP Morgan analyst Chris Schott suggests the hard rain isn’t about to let up:
“Faced with FDA uncertainty, a wave of upcoming patent expirations and mixed pipeline prospects, the group is no longer the defensive sector of the past,” [...]

Six Tips for Surviving Medical Residency

In the next week or so, the latest crop of med school grads will pour into hospitals around the country to start their medical residencies, the grueling training programs that teach newly minted docs the real-world skills they’ll need to practice medicine. Work hours are now limited to 80 hours per week for residents, but [...]

One Other Thing Hiding in That Medicare Funding Bill

Start poking around in a Medicare funding bill, and who knows what you’ll find. Earlier today, we reported that a bill passed by the House yesterday to block a pay cut to doctors takes funds from privately managed Medicare Advantage plans.
But the bill would also scale back a plan to lower Medicare’s costs for durable [...]

Training Hospitals’ End-of-Life Ethics Teams

Hospitals across the country have created ethics teams to help families answer the tough, life-and-death questions that are a core part of medicine. But those teams often lack training in the tricky tasks they face, the WSJ reports. Brad Hess Bioethics expert Nancy Dubler (right) consults with a family at Montefiore Medical Center. “Hospitals would never permit staff [...]

House Blocks Medicare Pay Cut. What’s Next?

Congress has made a habit of blocking Medicare pay cuts at the last minute, but this one’s really coming down to the wire.
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to block the looming 10.6% pay cut to doctors that’s set to take effect on July 1. Now it’s up to the Senate — where a similar [...]

Study: RFID Tags Can Mess Up Medical Devices

Radio-frequency identification — a system of using tiny tags to track all sorts of products — could be a smart way for hospitals to keep tabs on everything from surgical sponges to patient beds. Indeed, some hospitals have already started adopting the technology. RFID tags. Photo: Associated Press But a study out today in JAMA suggests RFID [...]

Which Drug Companies Spend the Most on Lobbying?

The big health-policy debates roiling Washington are still up in the air, but it’s already clear who the big winners are: Lobbyists.
The pharmaceutical industry spent $168 million on lobbying last year, up 32% from the year before, says a report out today from the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. Over the past decade, the drug [...]

When Drugs Don’t Help High Blood Pressure

There are lots of drugs out there to treat high blood pressure — old and new, cheap and expensive, available in all sorts of combinations and permutations. But for about 25% of patients, drugs don’t seem to help. That’s a big problem, because lots of people have high blood pressure (aka hypertension), and it’s a [...]

A Free Marketeer Sings Praises of Private Medicare Plans

Congress is trying to figure out how to block the 10% Medicare pay cut to doctors set to go into effect on July 1. To do so, they may cut some funding from Medicare Advantage plans, which come through private insurers and cost the government more than traditional Medicare plans.
Scott Gottlieb (pictured), a doctor who [...]

As FDA Delays Ruling on Eli Lilly Drug, Clock Ticks on Plavix Patent

The FDA was supposed to decide this week whether to approve Eli Lilly’s blood thinner prasugrel, but the agency said yesterday that the decision would take another three months. It’s a complicated decision — in a big study, prasugrel was more effective than Plavix at preventing blood clots, but it also carried a greater risk [...]

Do Hospitalists Improve Hospital Stays or Increase Risk?

With primary-care doctors more frazzled than ever, the field of hospitalists — docs who provide general care to hospital patients — has been growing. Adding fuel was a recent NEJM study that suggested hospitalists’ care is similar to traditional care, but at a somewhat lower cost. But the value of the hospitalist specialty, which since its [...]

Walgreen Shrugs Off Threat from Retailers Pushing Cheap Generics

Discount retailers and grocers including Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger and Giant Food, have been making a push to offer cheaper prices on prescription drugs, especially generics. Does that have big pharmacy chains like Walgreen, which make big profit margins from generics, back on their heels?
During an earnings conference call with analysts this morning, Walgreen President Gregory [...]

American Company Tries Western-Style Hospitals in China

An American company is trying to popularize Western-style hospitals that cater to the elite in China. But it faces significant hurdles when it comes to getting the Chinese to pay for its services.
Chindex International, a Bethesda, Md., company featured in today’s Washington Post, has opened hospitals and clinics where foreign physicians and some of China’s [...]

For the Wealthy, Private Health Care Consultants

Confused or overwhelmed by the chaotic medical system? If you’re rich, there’s someone who’d be glad to help.
Take PinnacleCare, a Boston company founded in 2002 and profiled in this morning’s Boston Globe.
Fees range from $7,000 to $100,000 a year, excluding an initial sign-up fee; a standard family membership is $10,000, the Globe says. For that, [...]

Despite Setbacks, Scientist Devotes Life to Finding AIDS Vaccine

After last year’s high-profile failure of Merck’s AIDS vaccine, several other AIDS vaccine trials ground to a halt and some people questioned whether it was even worth funding vaccine research anymore. Dennis Burton (pictured) wasn’t among them. “Six or seven years ago, I decided that this was what I would be doing the rest of [...]

FDA Got Left Out on Paxil Risk Documents

Litigation over GlaxoSmithKline’s handling of information about the suicide risk from antidepressant Paxil has turned up some documents that say a lot about why the FDA often seems to be in the dark when problems with drugs surface.
Buried in the documents was a strange exchange between lawyers suing Glaxo over Paxil and attorneys defending the [...]

Owe Taxes? IRS Could Dock Medicare Reimbursement

Health-care providers who treat Medicare patients owe more than $2 billion in back taxes. That finding, out yesterday, is one in a series from the Government Accountability Office — but the subtext isn’t about the money, per se. OK, it’s always about the money. But in this case the Congress is pushing Medicare administrators to [...]

Cheap Generics Become a Necessity for Retailers

The biggest grocer around Washington, D.C., just boarded the cheap generics bandwagon. Giant Food said yesterday that it’s selling a three-month supply of 350 generic drugs for $9.99. That’s one of the lowest prices yet.
Since Wal-Mart started charging $4 for a 30-day supply of generics a few years back, a bunch of other retailers (Target, [...]

The Doctor Is In…Your Car

Medical information junkies can now get their fix while stuck in traffic. Sirius Satellite Radio just launched Doctor Radio, a 24-hour-a-day medical channel. Doctor, doctor give me the news (Doctor Radio studio by WireImage/Joe Kohen) Shows cover topics ranging from plastic surgery to pediatrics. Many take calls from listeners. We at the Health Blog would [...]

In Massachusetts, No Pay for Medical Errors

The drumbeat to stop paying for medical mistakes grew louder yesterday, as Massachusetts’ biggest insurer and the state itself both said they’d no longer reimburse doctors and hospitals for 28 medical errors.
The errors are listed at the bottom of this press release. Hospitals won’t be able to bill for operating on the body part. Nor [...]

Biogen Beats Icahn. What Now?

Biogen Idec shareholders may have dealt Carl Icahn a knockout blow this morning when they voted against seating his candidates on the board of directors. That may be the end of Icahn’s often colorful attempts to force a sale of the company. So what’s next for a standalone Biogen?
Perhaps the most important question facing the [...]

Does Weight-Loss Surgery Lower Cancer Risk?

Patients who had surgery to treat morbid obesity had a dramatically lower risk of cancer than similar patients who didn’t have surgery, Canadian researchers are reporting.
The difference was significant in colon and breast cancers, both of which have been linked to obesity.
Bariatric surgeons at McGill University compared the records of more than 1,000 patients who [...]

Costs Crimp Adoption of Electronic Health Records

Only 4% of docs have implemented electronic health records with all the bells and whistles that wonks say will make care safer and more efficient. And only another 13% have implemented electronic records of any sort.
The main factor preventing most physicians from adopting EHRs — all together now — is cost.
Those are the results of [...]

Some Nurses Land Higher Salaries Than Primary Care Doctors

Sure, going to med school’s a good way to make a decent living. But if you really want to do well, become a nurse anesthetist.
In the past year, nurse anesthetists recruited through the staffing firm Merritt Hawkins & Associates landed salaries that averaged $185,000. That beats the pay for family practice docs hired through the [...]

St. Louis: Dreaming of Budweiser, Working in Health Care

InBev’s bid to buy Anheuser Busch is tugging at the heartstrings of St. Louis, the brewer’s home town. But perhaps its time for the town to reconsider its Budweiser-centric self image, local business columnist Mary Jo Feldstein writes in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
With about 6,000 employees in the St. Louis area, A-B doesn’t even [...]

Fish Oil Pinch Spurs Search for Alternative Omega-3s

The global commodities boom extends even to the ocean depths: The price of crude fish oil has nearly tripled in the past five years.
This matters to you, Health Blog reader, because fish oil is a primary source of omega-3 fatty acids, the nutritional supplements that may reduce the risk of heart disease and a host [...]

Countdown to Expiry: Lipitor Goes Generic on 11/30/11

Start the countdown. On Nov. 30, 2011, Lipitor, the biggest selling drug of all time, will face generic competition.
Pfizer, which sells the cholesterol drug, has been battling generics manufacturer Ranbaxy to protect the Lipitor cash cow for a few more years. Ranbaxy had been pushing to sell the drug in 2010, when the basic patent [...]

J&J, Red Cross Stop Suing Each Other

The lawsuits had an absurdist, has-it-really-come-to-this quality about them. Johnson & Johnson and the Red Cross — Band-Aids and baby powder, blood drives and disaster relief — were suing each other over the rights to the red cross emblem that both had long shared.
Now, after getting most of its suit against the Red Cross tossed [...]

FDA Contradicts Genentech on Eye Drug

An FDA letter to Senate investigators appears to contradict one of Genentech’s main reasons for restricting the distribution of its cancer drug Avastin.
Last year, the company said it would no longer sell the drug to compounding pharmacies, which repackage Avastin for use in patients with eye disease. In an open letter, the company said it [...]

Mixed Results for Experimental Alzheimer’s Antibody

The highly anticipated results of an experimental Alzheimer’s treatment from Wyeth and Elan look OK, but not great. Yet even mediocre results were enough to boost shares of the companies. In afternoon trading, Elan shares were up $1.70, or 6%, to $28.81, and Wyeth shares rose $1.97, or 5%, to $45.05. The treatment, an antibody [...]

Be Still My Fake, Beating Heart

In the quaint New England town of Great Barrington, Mass., there’s a group of kindly folks who spend their days churning out body parts– from colons to bladders to beating hearts. Sounds like a Stephen King story or maybe even a slasher flick, we know. But this is for real. The town in the Berkshire Hills [...]

Despite Care Advances, Heart Attacks Remain Unpredictable

Treatment for heart disease is one of the great accomplishments of modern medicine. A wide array of drugs as well as procedures such as angioplasty and bypass surgery have saved thousands of lives.
But for all that, many people still die suddenly of heart attacks — even if they’ve had the best possible care. Tim Russert’s [...]

When Hospitals Fall Victim to Disaster

You know a disaster is bad when even the local hospital has to skip town. Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was evacuated Friday as flood waters ravaged the city. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) The epic floods in Iowa led to the evacuation of nearly 200 patients from Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids last week. [...]

Ben Bernanke: ‘Disturbing Gap’ in American Health Care

The question for economists isn’t whether the country is spending too much on health care, Ben Bernanke said today. “Rather, the question, whatever we spend, is whether we are getting our money’s worth.”
While Bernanke said there’s much to praise about American health care, he also said we could get more for our money. “The evidence [...]

Bright Prospects for J&J Psoriasis Drug

Industry watchers are predicting good things for J&J’s experimental psoriasis drug ustekinumab. (Sorry about the hard-to-say generic name; we haven’t yet heard what the brand name is.) The drug will be vetted tomorrow by a panel of FDA advisers, and the briefing documents for the meeting were published online late last week.
Studies show the drug [...]

Why E-Prescribing Hasn’t Caught On

Prescribing drugs by computer rather than in sloppy handwriting on a prescription pad seems so eminently sensible that you’d think the online approach option would take off, like, Amazon or Google. Electronic prescribing reduces the risk of simple errors, and improves safety by helping doctors track all the drugs a patient is taking. But the [...]

Feds & Illinois Docs Square Off Over Retail Clinics

Illinois docs have been calling for more regulation of the retail clinics springing up in drug stores and big-box retailers around the state. But a proposed state law pushed by the Illinois State Medical Society “could excessively restrict retail clinics to the detriment of Illinois consumers,” the Federal Trade Commission said.
The bill would require special [...]

‘Pro-Life’ Pharmacies Don’t Stock Birth Control

A pharmacy opening in Virginia this summer won’t sell condoms, birth control pills or emergency contraception, the Washington Post reports. The shop will be a so-called “pro-life pharmacy.”
Several states (including Washington and Illinois) have been wrestling with the question of whether individual pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for emergency contraception. But this is [...]

AMA President Tells Fellow Docs to Keep Hope Alive

Ron Davis, president of the American Medical Association, assumed a dual role as doctor and patient in a moving speech before his colleagues over the weekend. Ron Davis, AMA president, fights on against pancreatic cancer and tobacco. (AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels) Davis, 51, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February. Bald and thinner from treatment, [...]

Tim Russert: One of a Kind; One of 300,000

Tim Russert’s death of an apparent heart attack at age 58 is a potent reminder of our vulnerability to the ravages of cardiovascular disease even in the face of major advances in understanding its causes and how to prevent its consequences. Tim Russert, 58, died of an apparent heart attack. (AP Photo/NBC, Virginia Sherwood) Some 300,000 [...]

FDA Takes Its Time Reviewing Generic Drugs

The FDA generally takes longer than the 180-days allowed under federal law to process generic drug applications, a government report released Thursday says, citing, unsurprisingly, the agency’s lack of resources and personnel as a factor. Reviews are convoluted. For starters, when a drug company submits a generic drug application it gets passed around to three [...]

Another Thing Big In Japan: Measuring Waistlines

In the U.S., there’s an outcry about something as simple as putting calories on restaurant menus as a way to help combat the obesity epidemic. But that’s nothing compared to the Japanese, who now have to face measurements of their waistlines during annual checkups if they’re between 40 and 74 years old, the New York [...]

J&J’s Stent Unit Sheds Another Honcho

The revolving door keeps spinning for executives leaving Johnson & Johnson’s troubled Cordis division. Todd Pope, world-wide president of the stent maker, said yesterday that he’ll be gone July 11.
Pope, who joined Cordis in 2006, is the seventh senior executive at the unit to split or announce exit plans recently, according to the count by [...]

Massachusetts Blues Team Up With Google on Records

Google Health, the Googleplex’s Web portal for medical records, has found its first health insurance partner: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Members of the plan will be able to log on for access to health-care claims information and portions of medical records starting this fall, the Boston Globe reports.
Patients will be able to [...]

AstraZeneca Reps Strike Gold in China’s Provinces

Growing in emerging markets like China is a major goal these days in the drug industry, but the best strategy to reach doctors in the sprawling, heterogeneous Middle Kingdom isn’t clear. AstraZeneca decided six years ago to shun the big cities that most of its competitors focused on, and instead cultivate relationships with local doctors [...]

Sen. Grassley Asks FDA to Probe Glaxo Communication on Paxil

Sen. Chuck Grassley wants the FDA to dig in on the data that GlaxoSmithKline submitted to the agency about the antidepressant Paxil to know if the company concealed risk of suicide for users of the drug. The Iowa Republican wants to know who knew what when about the medicine and a link to an increase [...]

New York AG Nabs CVS, Rite Aid Selling Expired Products

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s latest health-related investigation found drugstore chains CVS and Rite Aid were selling expired products, including eggs, baby formula and over-the-counter medicines. Cuomo’s office said today that his office in March began a statewide, undercover investigation of all major drug-store chains in New York, and “uncovered an egregious pattern” at [...]

Safeway Hops on $4 Generic Bandwagon

The Health Blog just found out about the latest company to offer bargain-priced generics. Safeway is the latest company to start offering selected generics at $4 for a month’s supply drugs. Attention Safeway Shoppers: See $4 generics next to bananas The Washington Post reported that the supermarket chain is making the offer in the eastern U.S. [...]

Turning Down the Thermostat May Help Some Baby Brains

For decades, hospital nurseries have taken great care to keep babies warm. You can hardly move in the average maternity ward without tripping over incubators, warming bassinets and receiving blankets. Now, though, some hospitals are turning the thermostat down for a few infants. iStockphoto How come? For babies that didn’t get quite enough oxygen during birth, [...]

Takeover Spam: Novartis Warns Against Mini-Tender

Novartis’s shares may have been in a torpor lately, but should investors really be selling them for less than their market price?
The Swiss pharmaceutical company is joining the ranks of major companies trying to bat away efforts by Canadian investment company TRC Capital to sweep up shares for a real bargain. Novartis said it’s been [...]

Tidbits From the UnitedHealth Backdating Trove

It’s been 20 months since UnitedHealth’s options-backdating brouhaha shook up the company and led to the ouster of longtime CEO Bill McGuire. But only now are some internal company conversations about the practice coming out into the open.
A WSJ story gave a glimpse of the stuff just unsealed—snippets of memos and emails among UnitedHealth executives [...]

Sen. Specter Says FDA Can’t Even Ask for Money Properly

Now that the FDA has gotten around to asking for $275 million more from Congress for inspections, the agency got another tongue-lashing from frequent critic Sen. Arlen Specter, who chastised HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt for compounding months of foot-dragging with a dollop of spin.
If you’re just tuning in, Democrats and some Republicans have been [...]

St. John’s Wort Doesn’t Help ADHD, Still Good for the Blues

One more herbal remedy seems to work no better than a placebo: St. John’s wort for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. Fifty-four kids age 6 to 17 received either 300 mg of Hypericum perforatum or sugar pills three times a day for eight weeks. By the end, the herbal supplement had “no additional [...]

Daiichi Sankyo Dives Into Generics with Ranbaxy Offer

Daiichi Sankyo wants a big piece of India’s biggest drug-maker.
Tokyo-based Daiichi is looking for a majority stake in Ranbaxy Laboratories and is willing to pay a 31.4% premium to get it. The purchase, if it goes through, would include the founding family’s 34.8% stake, the WSJ reports. Daiichi would buy up to another 20% of [...]

Future FDA Commissioner Frank Torti?

The man named two months ago as the FDA’s first scientist in chief may be in line to become the next commissioner. Frank Torti: Next Commish? Frank Torti, a cancer researcher from Wake Forest University, has the chops and the inside track, writes Kate Rawson in the RPM Report. Conventional wisdom inside the Beltway [...]

Smoke Sales Down; Snuff Sales Up

Sales of cigarette packs may be down, but sales of other types of tobacco are up, according to a study in the June 11 issue of JAMA. Cigarillos trump cigarettes in sales growth these days. (AP Photo/Matthias Rietschel) The sales of cigarette packs dropped to 17.4 billion in 2007 from 21.1 billion in 2000, but during the [...]

Viagra Joins Hall of Performance-Enhancing Infamy

We couldn’t let the day end without a look at some fascinating stories in today’s New York Daily News on the new frontier in performance-enhancing drugs for athletes: Viagra.
You read that right. Viagra for on-the-field performance–mostly. “All my athletes took it,” BALCO founder Victor Conte told the News. “It’s bigger than creatine,” he said. “It’s [...]

Calpers Wants Memos on McGuire Options Made Public

Pension giant Calpers wants a federal judge to unseal reams of documents and executive depositions on UnitedHealth’s backdating scandal that the insurer wants to keep under wraps. The scandal unseated former UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire, the company’s general counsel and a board member more than a year and a half ago. It also led to [...]

How Hospitals Can Cut Emergency Room Delays

When it comes to hospital emergency rooms, patients often hurry to get there, only to pass lots of time waiting and eventually getting treated. Patients spent an average of 4 hours and 5 minutes in U.S. ERs last year, up five minutes from 2006, according to a report from health consultants Press Ganey Associates. Press [...]

Bypass Surgery and Dull Thinking Get Another Look

Bill Clinton got a lot of flack for his behavior on the campaign trail. But could his health have anything to do with it?
His aides denied any link between some of his intemperate remarks and side effects from quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004. Such a theory is “false and is flatly rejected” by his doctors, they [...]

How Hospitals Can Cut Emergency Room Delays

When it comes to hospital emergency rooms, patients often hurry to get there, only to pass lots of time waiting and eventually getting treated. Patients spent an average of 4 hours and 5 minutes in U.S. ERs last year, up five minutes from 2006, according to a report from health consultants Press Ganey Associates. Press [...]

Aetna CEO Supports Health Reform, Continuing Role for Employers

Amid heavy discussion of the problem of the uninsured and underinsured, the health insurance industry is often viewed as hard-hearted, unwilling to provide coverage to those who need it most. Aetna CEO Ron Williams wants to be part of health reform (AP Photo/Douglas Healey) This morning, the CEO of one of the largest insurers in [...]

Obama Reaches Out to Elizabeth Edwards on Health Policy

Elizabeth Edwards didn’t stand alongside her husband as he endorsed Barack Obama last month. But now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, he’s working to draw her help on health policy, despite her having previously stated her preference for Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan. Barack Obama looks to work with Elizabeth Edwards on health care. [...]

Obama Reaches Out to Elizabeth Edwards On Health Policy

Elizabeth Edwards didn’t stand alongside her husband as he endorsed Barack Obama last month. But now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, he’s working to draw her help on health policy, despite her having previously stated her preference for Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan. Barack Obama looks to work with Elizabeth Edwards on health care. [...]

FDA Budget Swells as Administration Bows to Congress

If you paid attention to even a few of the congressional hearings this year in which Democrats begged, cajoled and bullied a reluctant FDA to accept more money for overseas inspections, you could be forgiven for wondering what galaxy you were in during a press call by the administration last night to unveil a new, [...]

Insured, Sort Of: Underinsured Ranks Climb to 25 Million

The ranks of the underinsured — people who have health insurance, but not enough of it — are swelling, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund.
Published in Health Affairs, the report says last year about 25 million people aged 19 to 64 were underinsured, up 60% from nearly 16 million in 2003. The [...]

Weight Can Be a Heavy Matter for Children

Weight-management programs for kids under 5 are gaining in popularity as more pediatricians and obesity experts believe it’s never too early to start shedding extra pounds, WSJ reports. The main idea is to teach kids how to eat better. Poor eating habits have contributed to an increase in obesity rates among 2- to 5-year-olds. The [...]

Hospitals Get an Incomplete on Grades for Bypass Quality

Hospital report cards have been around for more than 15 years to help consumers pick high quality centers and to motivate doctors and staff to improve their performance. Now a Canadian research team says the report cards are missing a major part of the picture: They don’t pick up preventable deaths. Hospital report cards could [...]

Marijuana Haven Feels Heat in Backlash Against Medical Pot

If there is such thing as a safe haven for marijuana farmers it is Mendocino County, Calif., home to a flourishing green-leaf economy that emerged in the past decade to supply patients who are legally prescribed the weed for medical uses. A marijuana bud on a plant grown by George and Jean Hanamoto in Mendocino [...]

Technodoc Jay Parkinson Says Hello to Franchising

A virtual primary care practice started growing in Brooklyn last fall. Jay Parkinson, a freshly minted internist, decided he had a better idea for caring for the under-40 crowd in neighborhoods not far from Health Blog HQ. He combined a pre-paid model (no insurance hassles, please) with housecalls and oodles of online support, which he [...]

Third Diabetes Study Is the Charm on Advice for Preventing Heart Risk

The third of three diabetes studies testing whether aggressively lowering blood sugar reduces risk of heart attacks and death from cardiovascular disease offers doctors and patients some clarity amid conflicting reports on the issue, the Los Angeles Times reports. You don’t need a fourth leaf for good luck in managing heart risks of diabetes The study, called [...]

Health Insurance: Extreme Matrimony Edition

How far would you go to land or keep affordable health insurance? Some couples, straight and gay, are finagling wedding dates to quickly get both spouses on a company plan. Other married couples cruising for a breakup can at least agree on postponing divorce to keep both people on the existing health plan of one [...]

Kaiser and Microsoft Head Online Together

Microsoft and Kaiser Permanente are partnering to improve the exchange of patient information online, the WSJ reports.
In a pilot program, the giants of software and health care will tackle the transfer of Kaiser employees’ data between Kaiser’s personal health record — an online repository containing test results, prescriptions and immunizations — and Microsoft’s HealthVault, a [...]

Harvard Psychiatrists Under Fire for Drug-Company Funding

A controversial Harvard psychiatrist whose research and recommendations have paved the way for the wide use of antipsychotic drugs in kids has received more than $1.6 million in consulting fees from drugmakers since 2000, and he failed to properly disclose much of the funding, the New York Times reports.
Joseph Biederman (pictured) is a polarizing figure [...]

Sen. Baucus Would Pay Docs More, Private Medicare Plans Less

Washington health-care lobbyists may be in for some déjà vu as a long-running partisan clash over Medicare Advantage, the controversial private health insurance option for seniors, bubbles up again in legislation to reform Medicare. Sen. Max Baucus has a plan for Medicare reform (AP Photo) Today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat, introduced a [...]

Medicine By the Numbers Isn’t Enough

Two diabetes studies released this afternoon are just the latest evidence that lowering key risk factors isn’t enough to improve health. If patients (and their doctors) use the wrong strategies, they may lower risk factors but raise the chances of serious health problems.
That’s the argument from Harlan Krumholz, a Yale cardiologist whose Perspective piece accompanies [...]

Drop in FDA Warning Letters Signals Enforcement Shift

The drug industry has been grumbling over how tough on safety the FDA is these days, but by one measure the agency has fallen off significantly a few years ago. The number of warning letters the FDA sends out has been cut in half in recent years, Dow Jones Newswires’ Jared Favole reports. FDA is mailing [...]

J&J Aims to Sell Contact Lenses for Kids

With stents and anemia drugs under pressure, Johnson & Johnson is looking for growth wherever it can find it. Are your kids ready for contact lenses? J&J’s Vistakon division sure thinks so. J&J thinks she’d look better in contacts (Getty Images) A recent company-sponsored study showed that kids as young as 8 can wear and [...]

Clinton’s Exit Lessens Odds for Health Insurance Mandates

The end of the Clinton campaign tomorrow means we’ll be hearing a lot less about requiring all Americans to buy health insurance, at least for the time being. A broad health insurance mandate was one of the main tenets of Hillary Clinton’s latest plan for health reform, and the most substantive health policy difference between [...]

Suicidal Behavior Warning Coming Soon for Epilepsy Drugs

The FDA is about to tell drug makers to add warnings about suicidal behavior to the labels of 11 epilepsy drug, the WSJ reports. “We are working on the labeling changes that we want to get to the companies,” Russell Katz, director the FDA’s neuropharmacological drug division, told the paper. “Everything points in the direction [...]

Feds Back Wyeth in Supreme Court Case

In what’s likely to be the biggest court case of the year for the drug industry, the federal government has filed a brief with the Supreme Court backing Wyeth.
The case, Wyeth v. Levine, asks whether a patient who has been harmed by a drug can sue under state law if the drug was produced and [...]

Pfizer Clears Air at Chantix Roundtable

Pfizer invited a bunch of folks, including the Health Blog, to a media roundtable about Chantix at the company’s 42nd Street HQ this morning. Chantix, if you’re just tuning in, has weathered a lot of safety questions recently. The label for the drug has been beefed-up to warn about suicidal thinking, and a recent report [...]

Obama Has 2 Words for Opponents of Health Reform: ‘Whup Them’

Barack Obama’s got a solution for dealing with members of Congress who won’t pass his health-care plan, reports the WSJ’s Amy Chozick. It boils down to two words: “Whup them.” Obama greets supporters after speaking in Bristol, Va. (Photo: Reuters) At a town hall meeting on health care at Virginia High School, a 95-year-old voter gave the [...]

A Father Fights ‘Doctor Shopping’ for Prescription Drugs

Bob and Carmen Pack. Photo: AP In 2003, Bob Pack’s son and daughter were killed by a driver who was abusing prescription drugs. Pack started looking into the issue of prescription drug abuse, and launched a foundation named for his children.
He wound up offering to raise over $3 million to fund a state database that would [...]

Nonprofit Pittsburgh Hospital Starts a Company With GE

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is one of those business-savvy hospital systems that almost makes you forget the “non” in nonprofit hospital. Case in point: The health system is putting $20 million into a joint venture with General Electric to launch a new imaging company. The company, Omnyx LLC, aims to create a “virtual [...]

Icahn, Biogen Idec Wage War of SEC Filings

Accusations of self-serving agendas! Allegations of untruths! This is the kind of boardroom battle the Health Blog can get excited about. The action comes courtesy of Corporate Cowboy Carl Icahn and the bosses at Biogen Idec, who are taking shots at each other this week via the normally dull world of SEC filings. [...]

VA Official Testifies on PTSD Stance in Latest Email Flap

A VA psychologist who circulated an email suggesting her colleagues be less quick to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans got a chance to explain herself to Congress yesterday.
“Several veterans expressed to my staff their frustration after receiving a diagnosis of PTSD from a team member … when they had not received that diagnosis during [...]

In Massachusetts, Businesses Push Back Against Universal Coverge

As Massachusetts struggles to figure out how to pay for its ambitious (and expensive) universal health insurance plan, insurers and businesses are banding together to keep the state from putting more costs on businesses.
A lobbying group called the Coalition for Affordable Health Care met yesterday and said it will fight efforts to raise the state’s [...]

Side Effect Watch: Femur Fractures in Fosamax Patients

A study in the current issue of the Journal of Orthopedic Trauma links Merck’s osteoporosis drug Fosamax to a rare type of fracture in the femur. The small, observational study looked at 70 patients who experienced low-energy femur fractures, which occur when someone falls from a standing height or less. Twenty-five patients (36%) were taking [...]

Novartis CEO on the Downside (and Upside) of Drug Ads

The FDA and Congress have been coming down pretty hard on drug safety issues lately. There are lots of reasons why; one of them, according to Novartis CEO Dan Vasella, may be unreasonable expectations created by direct-to-consumer ads.
“As a seller, you want to promote the benefit and not so much the potential downside,” he said [...]

Epilepsy Drugs May Differ in Suicide Risk

An FDA analysis of clinical data suggesting a possible link between suicidal behavior and a group of 11 widely sold epilepsy drugs still hasn’t been released to the public. But the findings upon which the FDA may decide to add warnings about suicide to the medicines have been summarized in slides that were shown to [...]

A Web Browser Custom-Built for an Autistic Grandson

Zackary Villeneuve, a 6-year-old autistic boy, was overwhelmed by the Internet. So his grandfather, who works in the software business, had a special browser built for him.
It’s called the Zac Browser for Autistic Children, and it’s available free at zacbrowser.com to anyone who wants it. (We tried to download it for a test drive this [...]

FDA Mulls Suicide Warning for Epilepsy Drugs

Drugmakers and the FDA are talking about whether epilepsy drugs increase the risk of suicidal behavior, the WSJ reports.
According to agency data on 11 epilepsy drugs on the market, 0.37% of patients who took one of the drugs in clinical trials showed signs of suicidal behavior, compared with 0.23% of the patients who took placebos.
That’s [...]

Diabetes Studies Get Low Grades on Issues That Matter to Patients

Mayo Clinic researchers are weighing in on the troubled state of randomized clinical trials that are done to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of diabetes drugs. Among a group of 436 current studies whose results haven’t been reported, just 18% are testing the diabetes medicines’ impact on such factors as risk of death, heart attack, or [...]

Moody’s Is Gloomy on U.S. Drugmakers’ Credit

For the next year or so, credit ratings for U.S. drugmakers are more likely to fall than to rise, Moody’s said today. In its semi-annual weather report for the sector, the ratings shop noted a few patches of sun — strong profitability and cash flow, diminishing litigation exposure — but plenty of clouds. Along with [...]

Study: Medication Problems Cause 12% of ER Visits

One in nine patients shows up at the ER because of medication-related problems, Canadian docs are reporting. Vancouver General Hospital, where 12% of ER visits are due to adverse events with medications. (Photo by keepitsurreal via Flickr) Side effects accounted for 38% of the drug-related problems that sent people to the ER, [...]

Med Schools Get Low Grades for Policies on Industry Ties

A big med students’ group published scorecards today grading American med schools’ conflict of interest policies. The schools did pretty badly, with more than twice as many D grades as As. Grades are posted online here.
The grades, compiled by the American Medical Student Association, consider policies relating to things like gifts from industry, industry-funded speaking [...]

Ex-UnitedHealth Chief Says He Didn’t Know Backdating Was Wrong

Bill McGuire, the former CEO of UnitedHealth, was a doctor — not a lawyer or an accountant. So how was he to know that the backdated stock options that helped make him fabulously wealthy (before costing him his job) were improper?
That’s what his lawyers say in a brief arguing that allegations against him in a [...]

Medicare Payments to Doctors May Hinge on Electronic Prescribing

Congress is already bracing for an epic health-reform debate after a new president takes office. But lawmakers–and lobbyists–still have a big piece of unfinished health business for this year: paying doctors. Sen. Max Baucus wants electronic prescribing–now (AP photo) On July 1, doctors face a 10.6% cut in their fees from the federal Medicare program, a [...]

Sign of Success for Massachusetts Health Insurance Mandate

Massachusetts cut the number of its uninsured citizens nearly in half in a single year. In fall 2006, 13% of people in the state were uninsured; in fall 2007, the rate was 7%, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute published online in the journal Health Affairs today.
The decline came as the state put [...]

Why Did Sen. Kennedy Get Treated at Duke?

When the world learned Ted Kennedy had brain cancer, he was being treated at Boston’s Massachusetts General, a world-renowned hospital in one of the richest lodes of medical expertise anywhere in the world. So why did the senator travel all the way to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina for surgery today?
Certainly Allan Friedman, [...]

New Yorkers Get Online Matchmaker for Docs

New Yorkers who spend as much time online as we do, can now at least say they’re looking for a doctor. A new Web site is trying to make finding a doctor on the Internet like buying groceries or finding flights the electronic way. The New York Sun highlights the site, ZocDoc.com, which helps patients [...]

Ad Man Sees Young Cancer Patients as Consumer Bloc

In 1995, Matthew Zachary was a 21-year-old concert pianist. He began to lose the use of his left hand, was diagnosed with brain cancer and given six months to live. As he went through treatment and beyond, he found that cancer support tended to focus on young children and older adults. There seemed to be [...]

Acorda Surges On Study Results for Multiple Sclerosis Drug

Acorda Therapeutics CEO Ron Cohen stopped by last month to talk with us about multiple sclerosis treatments and a drug that his company is developing to help MS patients walk better. He seemed upbeat then about prospects for the company’s drug Fampridine-SR, but he couldn’t give us the details. (You can watch our video interview [...]

Smokers, Accidents and Chantix

As questions swirl about the safety of Pfizer’s anti-smoking drug Chantix, the medicine’s possible role in accidents is drawing particular attention. More than 100 traffic or personal accidents, like falling, have been linked to Chantix in a recent study by outside researchers; their figures came from in the FDA’s adverse events database. One hypothesis is [...]

Poor in India Don’t Get Medical-Tourism Quality

There’s a lot of buzz around the idea of “medical tourism,” traveling to places like India for cheaper medical care. But while the approach may ofter relief for some from the high costs associated with American health care, India’s own system has plenty of shortcomings for those who call the country home. Over the weekend, [...]

Our Wild Weekend at ASCO in Chicago

The Health Blog blew into Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and posted from all over the mammoth McCormick Place convention center.
In case you had other things cooking this weekend, here’s a rundown of Health Blog dispatches from the closely watched cancer meeting:
Minnesota Doctors: No Free Frozen Yogurt for [...]

Minnesota Doctors: No Free Frozen Yogurt for You!

Amid the giant flat-panel monitors in the vast exhibit hall at a meeting of cancer doctors in Chicago, a few small signs warn that the seemingly endless drug company freebies aren’t for everyone. WARNING: May cause regulatory harm if given to Minnesota doctors. Where Eli Lilly is giving away frozen yogurt, for example, a plain white sign [...]

Gene May Point to Risk for Anemia Drugs

Anemia drugs sold by Amgen and J&J have been under the safety spotlight for a while now, with some research suggesting the drugs may stimulate the growth of tumors in cancer patients. A study presented at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology conference points to a possible method for figuring out which patients are [...]

Cancer Drugs Enter the Era of Less

It’s the year of less at the big American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. Rather than buzzing about some promising new drug or treatment, lots of docs are talking about when patients shouldn’t get treated with particular drugs.
“We’re starting to better understand and explore less treatment instead of more for colorectal cancer patients,” M.D. Anderson’s [...]

Are Two Targeted Cancer Drugs Better Than One?

In the years before targeted biotech drugs stormed the cancer scene, progress came in small increments, as doctors slowly worked out which combinations of chemo medicines worked best for which patients.
Now that there are several targeted biotech drugs on the market, researchers are starting to test whether two targeted drugs are better than one. The [...]

Cancer Drugs Enter the Era of Less

It’s the year of less at the big American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. Rather than buzzing about some promising new drug or treatment, lots of docs are talking about when patients shouldn’t get treated with particular drugs.
“We’re starting to better understand and explore less treatment instead of more for colorectal cancer patients,” M.D. Anderson’s [...]