Featured series 
Tag: pharmacology
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Health
Initiative challenges drug crisis
Taking aim at the alarming slowdown in the development of new and lifesaving drugs, Harvard Medical School is launching the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology, a comprehensive strategy to transform drug discovery by convening biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore together how drugs work in complex systems.
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Campus & Community
Harvard students win in Collegiate Inventors Competition
Harvard doctoral candidate Alice Chen won first prize in the Collegiate Inventors Competition, while several other Harvard students took home second and third prizes.
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Science & Tech
Value of direct-to-consumer drug advertising oversold, study finds
Direct-to-consumer advertising may not be giving big pharma such a big bang for their five billion bucks after all. Despite the billions spent on bringing drug marketing campaigns straight into patients’ living rooms, such strategies have a modest effect at best—and in some cases, no effect at all. “People tend to think that if direct-to-consumer…
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Health
Warning labels on high-risk drugs inconsistently heeded by doctors
In a survey of approximately 930,000 ambulatory care patients, researchers from the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care) and colleagues found that 42 percent received prescriptions for drugs with Black Box Warnings (BBW), the Food and Drug Administration’s strongest label for high-risk medication. Additionally, physicians’ compliance…
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Health
Low-dose aspirin shown to reduce risk of first stroke in women
The Women’s Health Study is a large, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial funded by both the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Cancer Institute to evaluate the benefits and risks of low dose aspirin as well as vitamin E supplementation in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The trial included healthy women 45…
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Health
Long-term Celebrex use increases cardiovascular event risk
The findings prompted the suspension of Celebrex within the Adenoma Prevention with Celecoxib (APC) Trial, in which participants were to take celecoxib or placebo for three years. “These data suggest that there may be an increase in cardiovascular risk associated with the use of celecoxib. This information should be viewed in light of other studies…
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Health
Food ingredients may be as effective as antidepressants
Researchers report that omega-3 fatty acids and uridine, two substances in foods such as fish, walnuts, molasses, and sugar beets, prevented depression in rats as effectively as antidepressant drugs. “Giving rats a combination of uridine and omega-3 fatty acids produced immediate effects that were indistinguishable from those caused by giving the rats standard antidepressant medications,”…
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Health
Researchers find high levels of potentially toxic heavy metals in herbal medicine products
“This study, yet again, highlights the need for Congress to revisit the way dietary supplements are regulated in the U.S.,” said co- author David Eisenberg, MD, the Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Harvard Medical School Division of Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies. “Over-the-counter herbs and supplements…
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Health
Drugs are effective against eye disease
Results of two large international clinical trials have shown positive results using Macugen, an experimental treatment that targets the abnormal blood vessels found in the “wet” form of macular degeneration. The results, described in November 2003 at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., demonstrated the drug’s ability to decrease vision loss.…
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Health
Risk of becoming resistant to antibiotics may be lower than expected for chronic sinus infection sufferers
“This study was designed to help determine how great a risk antibiotic resistance was among chronic sinus patients to determine if there is a need to re-evaluate how we diagnose and treat the condition. Interestingly, our research shows that patients suffering from chronic sinus infections may be able to lower their rate and likelihood of…
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Health
Drug-coated stents don’t save money but are reasonably cost-effective, study shows
Treatment with the Cypher sirolimus-coated stent, developed by Johnson & Johnson’s Cordis division, cost approximately $2,900 more per patient compared to the use of bare metal stents. The drug is designed to prevent restinosis, where a blood vessel cleared of an obstruction begins to close back up again. Even after factoring in other costs associated…
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Science & Tech
Prying the lid off the FDA
Even though asthma is responsible for more deaths and more hospitalizations than arthritis in the United States, the greater political influence of arthritis sufferers prompts the federal Food and Drug Administration to work more expeditiously on their behalf. “Why give one drug priority over another?” asks researcher Daniel Carpenter. “Well, the FDA has limited resources…
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Health
Resistance mutation found for Gleevec
The drug Gleevec was stunningly successful in treating patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) at early stages of disease, but quickly stopped working in most patients with more advanced forms of CML. Last year, researchers at UCLA headed by Charles Sawyers found that some resistant patients carried a mutant version of Bcr-Abl. The original mutation,…
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Health
Early administration of clot-buster drug may improve outcome for heart attack patients
The immediate goal of the treatment of heart attack patients is reperfusion, or the swift opening of the blocked artery and the restoration of blood flow to the heart muscle. Early reperfusion minimizes the extent of heart muscle damage and preserves the pumping function of the heart. Optimal benefit is obtained if reperfusion can be…
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Science & Tech
Drug patents not crucial in AIDS fight, researchers find
About 25 million people are infected with AIDS in Africa and just 25,000, or one in 1,000, are receiving antiretroviral drug treatment. Patents for anti-AIDS drugs have come under fire repeatedly in recent years, with activists charging that the patents keep drug prices high and block manufacture of cheaper generic alternatives that could save lives.…
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Science & Tech
Researchers publish HIV study results despite efforts to block
Researchers refused to suppress publication of data that indicates an experimental drug did not slow the progression of HIV infection, even though the drug company that sponsored their research tried to block the publication in court. Stephen Lagakos, chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a colleague from…