Similarly, various studies have shown that barely half of those taking drugs for chronic conditions comply even roughly with the regimen.
The real challenge for pharmaceutical companies is coming up with new blockbuster drugs for chronic disease, not acute outbreaks like swine flu.
However, one wonders if this experience will impact how the EMA treats applications of new drugs intended for chronic use.
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What's more, pharmaceutical companies tend to prefer investing in new drugs to treat chronic illnesses like diabetes, because patients take them for a long time, making them much more lucrative than antibiotics.
Despite the fact that these drugs have been on the market for more than two decades, like any class of drugs that are prescribed for chronic use, their effects over decades of use are unknown.
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At cash-strapped state hospitals in Athens, patients arriving for treatment of chronic conditions are told to bring their own prescription drugs.
Barzilai hopes his research will lead to a new generation of protective drugs that will let people avoid major chronic diseases of the elderly.
And yet, unlike AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria that require drugs for treatment, many of these chronic diseases can be treated or even reversed if people simply make big enough changes in diet and lifestyle.
For example, the doctor could create an asthmatic patient with chronic heart disease who is taking a handful of certain drugs and is currently experiencing anaphylactic shock, a severe allergic reaction.
Many doctors see a lot of brand name drugs that treat most, if not all, chronic conditions like high cholesterol, hypertension, asthma and diabetes available in cheaper generic form but paying to delay generics is unnecessarily keeping certain brand names on the market.
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The final study looked at a new class of drugs called PI3K delta inhibitors, being tested in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
He said many patients with chronic headaches often conventional medicines often did not work, so many overused the drugs.
Leprosy usually becomes a chronic disease, Krahenbuhl explains, but it can be cured if it is treated with multiple drugs in the early stages, when the disease has only caused skin lesions.
Oncology is attractive not only because of the huge need for better drugs but also because that's where the impact of the human genome project has been greatest, yielding targeted drugs such as Genentech's Herceptin for breast cancer and Novartis' Gleevec for chronic myeloid leukemia.
After years of living with chronic pain, Jaesson has now turned her focus to alternative medicine techniques and stress reduction instead of drugs.
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