In this population, they found 1, 500 instances of drug side effects, of which 27% were preventable.
The FDA's ability to track drug side effects is "a joke, " says David Nathan, a diabetes drug expert at Harvard Medical School who reviewed Nissen's paper.
According to the FDA, 300, 000 people are injured in some way because of drug side effects each year--a flaw the agency blames partly on confusing medical information.
Among his suggestions: better methods for tracking drug side effects, substantially less direct-to-consumer advertising, and giving the FDA the legislative authority to force drugmakers to conduct trials that fully examine the risks of their medicines.
In addition, I am of the view that EVERY DRUG has side effects.
FORBES: Why David Healy Is Wrong About the Safety of New Medicines
Because the drug does have side effects, women need to assess how much benefit they will reap from taking the drug.
CNN: Scientists confirm tamoxifen works but say it isn't for everyone
German drug giant Bayer failed to tell the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of a study that connected a controversial heart surgery drug to dangerous side effects and death, even as FDA convened a panel of experts to evaluate the drug's safety.
Many doctors may still be reticent to use the drug, whose side effects include nausea, headache and dizziness.
But the drug can have side effects and cause adverse events, including heart failure, in a small minority.
Putting kids on multiple drugs could put them at risk for drug interactions and side effects, they say.
The thought of exposing patients to a drug with these side effects for many years has to be worrisome.
FORBES: For Pfizer-JNJ Alzheimer's Drug, It May Be Too Late To Try
Lieberman, who headed up the study, agreed that Pfizer now might have grounds to say its drug has milder side effects.
After three grueling years Medford and Tardif had the first evidence of the drug's superiority, with no evidence of the older drug's side effects.
The company does have a promising pipeline, however, including Vardenafil, an anti-impotence drug with fewer side effects than Viagra, expected to go on sale next year.
However the dosages used in the trial, 350mg three times a day, were higher than those normally recommended - and the prescription antidepressant compared against it is an old drug with more side effects than the latest varieties.
In December Celgene won approval for its second drug, Revlimid, the product of a 13-year quest to develop a version of thalidomide that would be as potent against cancer but would lack most of the old drug's side effects, such as nerve damage and fatigue.
Its lead drug to treat chemotherapy side effects failed, and the Bayer deal yielded nothing fast.
In this case it was fen-phen, the diet drug with potentially devastating side effects.
FORBES: Superlawyer Stanley Chesley Faces Disbarment Over Fen-Phen Case
Prescriptions will be sent out only after both physician and patient have been briefed on the drug's potential side effects.
The new drug consists of just the active portion of that drug to eliminate toxic side effects such as bowel inflammation.
FORBES: A Biotech Billionaire And His Radical DNA Drug That Kills Cancer From Within
GlaxoSmithkline executives believe that anticipating negative Web buzz around Alli, the over-the-counter diet drug it introduced in June, helped it control the conversation about the drug and its embarrassing side effects.
The drug does cause side-effects in some patients, including, rarely, cancer of the lining of the womb, but the scientists said that the increased chance of preventing breast cancer returning far outweighed the risk.
There is a multitude of things that can go wrong, from regulatory snafus at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to unfortunate side effects to an outright inability to prove that the medicine is effective.
While red yeast rice has no known drug interactions and fewer side effects than statins, it could theoretically interfere with other medications and should be avoided by women who are pregnant or nursing and people with severe liver or kidney disease.
"Understanding how our bodies prepare for fight or flight is just one of the applications of their work, which has also opened the door for a wide range of new, more effective drug treatments with fewer side effects, " Poliakoff added.
For instance, AstraZeneca's (nyse: AZN - news - people ) Seroquel is often used for its sleep-promoting or calming effect. (see: " Antipsychotic Prescribed as Sleeping Pill") Eli Lilly 's (nyse: LLY - news - people ) Zyprexa has even been used in rare cases in patients with anorexia--one of the drug's potential side effects is weight gain.
The case illustrates the difficulty of pinning a side effect to a particular drug based on the scant reports of side effects that come to the FDA. It is extremely difficult to link a side effect, like an inflamed pancreas, with a particular drug.
The claim: The union's health plan wouldn't have paid for the drug had it known the side effects.
That drug has not only liver side effects, but also must be injected and can cause painful injection-site reactions.
FORBES: Aegerion Cholesterol Drug Approved. Will It Treat 300 Patients, Or 3,000?
And like some drug complications, ecological side-effects may take years to appear.
应用推荐