But randomized controlled clinical trials also are used to prove benefit in big drug studies.
Ballantyne has conducted cholesterol drug studies funded by a joint venture of Merck and Schering-Plough (nyse: SGP - news - people ).
Khan says drug studies in suicidal patients are possible and ethical.
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Dug studies also may overestimate benefits of antidepressants because many drug studies have a placebo "washout" period, which attempts to exclude people likely to respond to a placebo.
Kindler also lured Neil Gibson, formerly chief scientific officer at biotech OSI Pharmaceuticals, to head oncology research, and Briggs Morrison, a former oncologist who made clinical trials run faster at Merck, to design drug studies.
Kindler also lured Neil Gibson, formerly chief scientific officer at biotech OSI Pharmaceuticals, to head oncology research, and Briggs Morrison, a former oncologist who made clinical trials run faster at Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ), to design drug studies.
While patients with the KIF6 gene who were in the placebo arms of the drug studies had elevated heart risk, the risk seemed to decline dramatically or dissappear among patients with the gene variant who were in the arms of the study that got the cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Only 7% of patients on the drug in studies dropped out because of side effects.
Researchers in the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES) performed a retrospective observational analysis of administrative databases in Canada, the UK and the US containing more than 2 million patients newly treated with statins. 59, 636 of the subjects already had chronic kidney disease.
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Sutent, a targeted cancer pill, could become a big drug if ongoing studies in breast cancer prove effective.
The large pharmaceutical company had recalled its lung drug Thelin after studies showed it was linked to potentially life-threatening liver damage.
Using only one cholesterol-lowering drug simplifies the studies.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration generally only accepts studies in which patients are assigned to take a drug randomly, eliminating the possibility that people who take statins do better simply because they take better care of themselves.
Five active programs exist, according to Thomson Pharma, and they are all in drug discovery or preclinical studies.
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First, the FDA should add warnings proactively, and make drug companies do safety studies to get rid of them.
The FDA approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months.
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The research team at the University of East Anglia compared the risks associated with each drug by analysing 16 studies of more 800, 000 patients.
If the study results in approval for brentuximab vedotin, it will also be proof that the FDA does sometimes approve drug based on small studies, or without placebo groups.
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Nationwide studies of drug use, such as the University of Michigan survey of high-school students, suggest that although teenage marijuana use has risen in recent years, experimentation with cocaine or heroin among young, first-time users has stayed fairly steady.
In order to meet the demands and expectations of oncologists, regulators and payers, the sponsor of the next ALK inhibitor will need to prove not only that its drug is effective, but the sponsor also will need to run comparator studies of its new drug against Xalkori.
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Recent studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that the drug has potential, but more studies must be done to confirm the results.
Brent Wisner of the Los Angeles firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, argues the Food and Drug Administration shouldn't have approved Zoloft because Pfizer didn't publish some clinical studies that found the drug about as effective as a placebo.
Initially, Natrecor was approved for limited use in hospitals, but now there are many reports of doctors prescribing the drug outsidea hospital, a potentially lucrative practice for physicians that is not backed up by the studies conducted with the drug.
Worse, he says, studies on the drug were not extensive enough to provide clear answers.
The agencies cited the crucial role the studies play in drug development and urged groups to work together.
This appeared to contradict other studies showing the drug does boost heart risk.
Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.
Pending more studies, the drug is likely to be approved for patients who have failed with other therapies, limiting its sales potential.
In one of Novartis' biggest studies of the drug, it reduced hip fractures by 35% and the risk of death by 28%.
Early studies hint the drug may be more effective than current treatments.
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