Shionogi just purchased Qpex. When I inquired about this, the Qpex folks told me that Shionogi is a company truly committed to the antibiotics space. What I found was truly inspiring! This is a real feel-good story! How often does that happen for antibiotics?
Drugs & Pharmaceuticals
A group of Harvard scientists claims that it has discovered cocktails of certain drugs that will help people live longer. Slow down fellas, you're not even close.
A clinical trial of various schedules for administering the two vaccines found that when they were administered together, "the quantitative and functional antibody responses were marginally lower compared to [COVID-19] booster vaccination alone. Lower protection against COVID-19 with concurrent administration of COVID-19 and influenza vaccination cannot be excluded." Thus, the data are somewhat equivocal, but I'll opt to get the two shots at different times.
There are dozens of fentanyl analogs – mostly illegal – that are being found in street drug samples. But one – para-fluorofentanyl, a drug is now being found left, right, and center.
Two decades after the advent of date rape drugs we now have something conceptually similar but worse. Gangs in New York are using fentanyl to incapacitate bar patrons and then robbing them. This is worse than it sounds. Deaths from incapacitation by date rape drugs were rare; those from fentanyl are not.
Taurine, a dietary supplement, is in the news because of a paper in the journal Science that showed multiple beneficial effects in mice (anti-aging, mental health, weight loss, etc.). Normally, I'm quite skeptical about such claims, but there is some pretty impressive evidence in mouse models, so I'm not so sure. Here's a short lesson on taurine.
Pfizer has just completed phase 3 trials of a new antibiotic that's active against highly resistant Gram-negative infections. It's a real superbug fighter. But what took so long?
A recent prospective study of post-surgical patients confirms what many other studies have already shown: prescribing opioids to control pain carries a very low risk of addiction or misuse.
Negotiating for Medicare drug pricing - will it be the end of the world for Pharma?
Thalidomide, one of the most infamous drugs of all, caused severe birth defects in the children of pregnant women who took the drug for nausea in the 1950s. Its story has been repeated over and over – mostly wrong. Here's why.
Europe’s proposed pull incentive for antibiotic R&D is a mixed bag ...
Accelerated approval is intended to get needed drugs to patients, but there are sometimes distortions and complications in the process that should be addressed.