LifeCare Chiropractic

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Drug Research

Declines in DHEA Sulfate Concentrations and Cognitive Performance – (08-25-00)

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Declines in DHEA Sulfate Concentrations and Cognitive Performance

This article suggests that no relationship exists between lowered levels of DHEA with aging and cognitive decline. There are two ways to take this. First, the proves that DHEA is another of the over the counter wonder drugs that is more hype than performance. On the other hand, this would not be the first time that researchers have found negative results with a substance that later turned out to have benefits. The idea with research is to look at the totality of the evidence, and keep an open mind until to jury is no longer out.

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UK Group Sees Disaster in Direct-To-consumer Drug Advertising – (07-23-01)

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UK Group Sees Disaster in Direct-To-consumer Drug Advertising

So they could see it in England but not here in America…direct to consumer advertising, while a major source of funding for newspapers, magazines and TV, has led to a substantial increase in pharmaceutical sales. Common sense would suggest that advertising should have no impact whatsoever in pharmaceutical use. But no one ever said common sense was common in medicine…

(article) The Consumers’ Association warned Tuesday that if the European Commission relaxes rules banning direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising in Europe, “disastrous consequences” would follow for the UK National Health Service, leading to spiralling drugs budgets. In a new report, “Promotion of prescription drugs: public health or private profit?” — due to be published on July 18 — the association says EC proposals to relax the rules on providing information on drugs for AIDS, diabetes and asthma will lead to a US-style boom in pharmaceutical marketing targeted at consumers. The consumer group has written to EC officials and the UK Government, urging them to put “public interest before the demands of the pharmaceutical industry.” It argues that the introduction of DTC pharmaceutical advertising in the US helped fuel an 84% increase in drug bills between 1993 and 1998. Louise Ansari, spokesperson for the Consumer’s Association, said that DTC drug advertising had “had a monumental impact on drug budgets in both New Zealand and the US.”

Study Questions Cost-Effectiveness of COX-2 Drugs – (06-24-02)

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Study Questions Cost-Effectiveness of COX-2 Drugs

This is one of those articles that raises some eyebrows. The fabulous new selective COX-2 inhibitors are being severely overused. The overview of this study goes into the specifics, but I do know one thing for sure–you can bet the pharmaceutical reps and direct to consumer advertising had something to do with it. Makes me wonder if some nutriceutical company came up with millions of dollars to advertising saw palmetto for prostate health to women, how effective would it be? Money talks and buyer beware!!

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Nutritional genomics – (06-24-02)

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Nutritional genomics

Gosh…what can I add to this article? This topic has the potential to be the future of medicine if we would drop the dogma and take the money out of pharmaceutical drugs. There are currently urine tests to analyze certain genetic variations that alter a patient’s need for certain nutrients. While clinically available now, I would guess that I’ll be long retired before this actually makes it into standard practice. It will take half that long for the researchers to spend the money to determine that nutrition really does play a role is disease prevention/management and half again for the clinicians to read their own medical journals.

bmj.com Elliott and Ong 324 (7351): 1438

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Association between competing interests and authors’ conclusions – (08-12-02)

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Association between competing interests and authors’ conclusions

This isn’t “beat up on the pharmaceuticals” week, but when they make such a juicy target its very hard to resist. Basically, this article supports what we all already know–money talks and can influence research. Remember this next time your doctor wants to give you a “new” drug that is supposed to be more effective. The “free samples” are always a clue… To further confound the issue or faulty data, the “placebos” that are used in many of these trials are not “sugar pills” as they so lightly mention in the commercials. When was the last time you sucked down a sugar packet and experience nausea, vomiting, headache and diarrhea?? Many times the placebos are actually compounds known to contain substances that mimic the side effects of the testing medication. Starting to wonder what you can believe??

bmj.com Abstracts: Kjaergard and Als-Nielsen 325 (7358): 249

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Western medicine: a confidence trick driven by the drug industry? – (08-12-02)

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Western medicine: a confidence trick driven by the drug industry?

There have been times I have seen the general public realize just how much of a travesty has been played on them by the pharmaceuticals–but at that point I usually wake up in a cold sweat with one of my dogs licking my nose… But seriously, I am strongly against any kind of governmental controls on the costs or practices of the pharmaceutical countries. I would rather see the general public coming to terms with the lack of efficacy or increased efficacy of new drugs over old ones and of the side effects of many medications and the damage to our physiology. Alas, I truly, truly believe that this will never happen and the control that the pharmaceuticals have over many’s daily lives will increase. I do know that there will always be a small percentage of the population that will educate themselves and resist drugs in all cases except the most necessary.

bmj.com 325 (7358): 0h

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Alosetron: case study in regulatory capture, or victory for patients’ rights? – (09-19-02)

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Alosetron: case study in regulatory capture, or victory for patients’ rights?

This article brings to light the scary concept that the FDA is funded strongly by the pharmaceutical companies they are supposed to regulate. Does anyone get a little nervous about this association besides me?

bmj.com Moynihan 325 (7364): 592

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Teratogenicity of Most Recent Drugs Is Not Known – (09-12-02)

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Teratogenicity of Most Recent Drugs Is Not Known

Okay, does anyone out there need me to go into detail on this one? If this does make any pregnant woman nervous, I’m not sure what will. Consider how flippantly many drugs are prescribed to pregnant women and considered “safe”.

Obstet Gynecol 2002;100:465-473

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More than 90% of drugs approved since 1980 have not been properly tested to rule out possible teratogenic effects, study findings show. Animal testing is the first step to determine if a drug is a possible teratogen. After drug approval, careful follow-up studies are still needed to confirm the drug’s safety. However, Drs. J. M. Friedman and W. Y. Lo, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that for the vast majority of new drugs these follow-up studies have not been performed. As such, more than 90% of new drugs are still considered to have an “undetermined” risk of producing birth defects, according to the report in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. “My experience is that many members of the general public, both pregnant women and their partners, are surprised and frustrated about how little we really know about the safety of medications in pregnancy,” says Dr. Friedman. The solution, Dr. Friedman said, is simply to keep track of what effects the drugs have in pregnant women who take them. “I would like to see an ongoing effort to obtain information about the effects on the baby of maternal use of prescription medications in human pregnancy,” he added. The authors base their findings on a review of information regarding the birth defect risk of 468 drugs approved between 1980 and 2000. They found that 91% of these new drugs were designated as carrying an “undetermined” risk of birth defects if taken by pregnant women. Dr. Friedman said that the companies that manufacture the drugs often have no financial incentive to conduct further studies on birth defects once the drug is FDA-approved. Proper studies cost money, the researcher noted, and there is usually no regulatory requirement that the companies perform these tests. Studies could follow a group of pregnant women and record what medications they take and the subsequent health of their infants, or interview parents of infants with birth defects and determine which medications the mothers took, Dr. Friedman suggested. “The point is that such studies are possible, and I believe that they need to be done on a sufficient scale to learn about the safety of all medications in human pregnancy,” he emphasized.