This analysis, however, only included the time while patients were actually taking the study drugs.
This can motivate companies to study drugs against untreatable diseases first, in the hopes that once a medicine is approved, doctors will start prescribing it for other indications, increasing sales.
"Afinitor is another example of the value of continuing to study drugs in additional types of cancer after their initial approval, " said Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA's cancer drug office.
Two of these affiliates: Axogen, set up to study neurological drugs, and Neuralab, set up to study Alzheimer's drugs.
Six-month patent extensions are automatically granted to drug companies who study their drugs in children.
What Genentech has managed to do--in a way that many biotech companies don't--is study its drugs with an incredible aggressiveness.
That panel was charged with helping to decide what kinds of studies needed to be done to study the drugs.
But he said the FDA does not have the legal authority to force companies to study their drugs in specific types of patients.
FORBES: The Sick Patients Glaxo, Pfizer, and Lilly Refuse To Help
Olson proceeded to enroll Markingson in a study of antipsychotic drugs, despite the objections of Markingson's mother, Mary Weiss.
The National Institutes of Health responded by funding a study showing the drugs are equally effective ( see here).
Professor Michael Seckl, who also worked on the study, said drugs were already in development that can block the action of FGF-2.
In this study, both drugs were included, and patients who got Actos were at lower risk of having a heart attack than those who received Avandia.
He will continue to prescribe the drug to his patients, who all suffer from the genetic illness familial hypercholesterolemia and desperately need their cholesterol lowered, but he wants more evidence about how Zetia works before a big study of the drugs benefits concludes in 2012, at least a year later than originally expected.
As a result, the study failed to show a difference between the drugs with a study of a marker of risk.
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The results of a much-watched study comparing stents and drugs were revealed at a Boston Scientific meeting Sunday night.
Also, if many people in the study were taking cholesterol drugs, that would tend to hide any heart risk.
Mass producing stem cells to screen drugs and study the progress of disease is not the sexier side of the field.
But Dr Andrew Moore, editor of the medical website Bandolier who carried out the study, said the drugs should be more widely available.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence, a government body set up to study the efficacy of drugs and treatments, is currently looking at Taxol.
His study shows that the drugs failed to produce any significant benefits and exacerbated difficulties with thinking and communication - the distressing symptoms of Alzheimer's itself.
Dr Walter Atwood, a virologist based at Brown University who worked on the study, said the drugs may prove to be an effective, ready-made therapy for PML prevention or treatment.
William Boden of Buffalo University, one of the leaders of the study, said on a conference call that the study emphasizes the importance of getting bad cholesterol down with cholesterol drugs, which everyone in the study got.
FORBES: HDL-Raising Drug Fails To Show Benefit In Government Study
The study suggested that some cancer drugs, which have already been developed, may help.
The Institute of Medicine has just released a visionary report on how we should study the safety of approved drugs.
Psychiatrist Arif Khan has spent years trying to convince drug companies to study their antidepressants and psychiatric drugs in suicidal patients.
FORBES: The Sick Patients Glaxo, Pfizer, and Lilly Refuse To Help
University Hospital said it was in a good position to study the affect of the drugs because it treated patients from different PCTs across the Midlands.
One big question that remains is whether Zyprexa would have done as well if it had been given in the doses for which the drug was approved, as the other drugs in the study were.
In fact, it is running what could be the definitive test of fish oil-based drugs: a study of whether adding Vascepa to a statin medicine in patients with high triglycerides reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease.
FORBES: Could A Fish Oil Backlash Wash Out Amarin Pharmaceuticals?
The study was funded by the U.K.'s Medical Research Council and other cancer organizations as well as Novartis SA, which is sponsoring a broader study of one of its drugs that the four patients were enrolled in.
Researchers at Harvard simultaneously led an even bigger study testing the same two drugs and found that those on the high dose Lipitor were far less likely to have new heart attacks, strokes or heart procedures than those on Pravachol.
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