Although, not all drugs surpassed expectations as Nuvigil, their new sleep disorder drug intended to cushion sales once blockbuster sleep drug Provigil faces generic competition, failed to achieve growth targets.
And its efficacy is better than some, but not all, MS drugs.
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Not all of these new drugs came from big pharma as biotech companies like Regeneron (Eylea for wet acute macular degeneration), Vertex (Kalydeco for cystic fibrosis) and Incyte (Jakafi for bone marrow disease) had major drugs approved.
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During an earlier job at Syntex, a Mexican pharmaceutical company that gave the world the Pill, he noticed that hormones do their job better in the body if they are released at regular intervals, not all in one go as drugs usually are.
And to be clear, I am not at all advocating that people who do not have ADHD use stimulant drugs to feed their professional ambitions.
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All had promised not to do drugs, smoke or consume alcohol for at least two months, hopefully forever.
Most people are treated with steroids, but the drugs do not work for all.
All had to promise not to do drugs, smoke or consume alcohol for at least two months.
Pfizer argues in a briefing document filed with the FDA that all Cox-2 drugs are not alike.
Schering, Merck, and bullish Wall Street analysts have also pointed to the statements from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association that seemingly defend the use of these drugs, countering the widely quoted opinion of powerful Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steven Nissen, who says the drugs should not be used at all.
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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But the expense of new drugs is preferable to not having them at all.
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Because of this, good drugs are being delayed or not developed at all.
The problem in predicting sales potential of all these drugs is that it is still not clear in many of these cases what the ultimate proflles (and eventual labeling) will be for these agents.
Moreover, he says, the MEDAL study takes into account not only heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular events, but also clots in the veins and lungs, which might not be the result of Cox-2 drugs at all.
However, those older women who still had independent lives may be able to tolerate the treatment and so cancer specialists should not assume all elderly women with advanced cancer cannot cope with the drugs.
"If the situation stays as now, all improvements on an original compound are not protectable and such drugs would probably not be rolled out in India, " Paul Herrling, former Novartis's head of research and development, told the Financial Times.
Promising new medical treatments like Gardasil, a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, and new diabetes and cancer drugs may make up some of the loss, but not all of it.
This will intensify because while all the new drugs will be better than warfarin, it may not be clear how much better they are than one another.
All makers of multiple sclerosis drugs have patient assistance programs to help pay for the drugs in cases where all or part of the cost is not covered by insurance.
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"All drugs given to populations work in some members of the population and not others, " says Jay Cohn, a cardiologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.
All were right-handed, in good mental health, and not currently using any psychiatric drugs.
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But the devices are so new it is not at all clear how they compare with one another, let alone how they stack up against drugs or surgery.
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