News & Features

October, 2007

October edition of M.D. Pharmacy's monthly newsletter. Articles regarding your medications, their safety, and the price you pay for them. Please share this with your neighbors.

FDA Approves First Anti-Psychotic for kids

The powerful anti-psychotic drug Risperdal was approved by the Food & Drug Administration for use in children and adolescents who have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Until this point, the agency had not approved any drug for adolescent schizophrenia. For bipolar disorder, only lithium had been approved for adolescents 12 and older. Diagnosing children with these conditions is difficult, and that can lead to misdiagnosis and use of inappropriate medications, said Dr. Charles Goodstein, Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical School. Test results have shown that patients taking Risperdal had fewer side-effects, including hallucinations and delusions.

43 Million Americans Take Aspirin Daily

According to a U.S. Government survey one-fifth of the adult population of the U.S.A. take an aspirin every day or almost every day. Most are taking the pills for their health-such as to prevent heart attacks or strokes the agency found, but while making the blood clot less efficiently, thus preventing deadly blockages, aspirin also relieves pain and reduces fever effectively. Newer drugs such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) have largely replaced aspirin in treating fevers and everyday aches and pains, theoretically because aspirin can also cause sometimes deadly stomach and intestinal bleeding. Ironically, ibuprofen, naproxen (Aleve) and other drugs of its type can also cause bleeding. Acetaminophen while not causing stomach bleeding is less effective in treating inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, but exceeding its daily recommended dose or drinking alcohol can cause severe liver damage.

Many using online "rogue" pharmacies

The DEA has reported that "rogue" pharmacies on-line are still used to obtain prescription medications. The websites approach doctors, often those who are in debt or retired and are seeking extra income. The doctors write prescriptions for which they are usually paid between $10 and $25. The websites then approach small pharmacies struggling to make ends meet, and persuade them to fill the prescription and ship the drugs to the customer, charging an additional fee on top of the cost of the medication. These rogue pharmacies ignore the rules that legitimate pharmacies follow, like requiring a doctor-patient relationship and getting a certification from state boards of pharmacy. Even as law enforcement agencies police, and state governments crack down on this problem, rogue pharmacies continue to grow filling hundreds of illegal prescriptions (mostly for illegal narcotics and controlled substances) daily.

Your warfarin dosage will be subject to closer scrutiny

FDA approved updated labeling including information relating to the pharmacology, precautions, and dosage and administration sections of the prescribing information for the widely used blood-thinner warfarin (Coumadin). This new information explains that people's genetic makeup may influence how they respond to the drug. Specifically, people with variations in two genes may need lower warfarin doses than people without the genetic variations. The dosage and administration of warfarin must be individualized for each patient according the patient's INR (International Normalized Ratio) response to the drug. Ongoing warfarin therapy should be guided by continued INR monitoring.

Astra Zeneca's Biochemical Chutzpah

When Astra Zeneca's patent on their heartburn drug Prilosec expired in 200l they were faced with the loss of exclusivity of a drug that had brought them $6 Billion a year in sales. With their patent protection gone, the company would have to compete with cheaper generic versions and could no longer charge whatever it wanted. Instead A/Z attempted, and got away with, a clever act of biochemical chutzpah, by introducing the exact mirror image of Prilosec, and calling it Nexium. The company then quadrupled its sales force and spent over $16 Million in one month alone to convince doctors to switch from Prilosec to the virtually identical Nexium. More than 7 million Americans now take Nexium, which grossed over $5 Billion last year for Astra Zeneca. All those wasted billions of dollars for a pill that sells for more than six times as much as another drug that does the same thing, and is made by the same company.

The pharmacists and staff at M.D. Pharmacy, your neighborhood pharmacy.

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