Drugs and Medications News: March 2007 Archives

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Mar 20 - Laws that mandate disclosure of payments to physicians by pharmaceutical companies provide limited public information, according to a new report.

At present, five states and the District of Columbia have legislation requiring payment disclosure. Among these states, Minnesota and Vermont require that the information be made available to the public.

In the current study, reported in the March 21st issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Joseph S. Ross, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and colleagues examined the accessibility and quality of information provided by the disclosure laws in Minnesota and Vermont.

LONDON, March 7, 2007-The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has requested Pfizer to withdraw an advertisement making potentially misleading claims about Zyvox (linezolid), an antibiotic used to treat certain types of serious infection.

The MHRA became aware of the advertisement in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) claiming that Zyvox has superior cure rates compared to products containing the active ingredient vancomycin. At the time, Pfizer was in discussion with the MHRA about emerging concerns relating to the efficacy and safety of Zyvox compared to vancomycin in a clinical trial in patients with catheter-related infections.

U.S. senators vowed on Wednesday to move forward with legislation to legalize the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from certain countries, despite resistance from regulators and drugmakers.

One Democrat and three Republicans said their plan would provide money and safeguards for the Food and Drug Administration to assure the imports were not dangerous.

"I believe this legislation puts in place an effective regulatory framework to make importation of FDA-approved drugs safe for consumers," Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), a North Dakota Democrat, said at a hearing.

The use of drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, has more than tripled worldwide since 1993, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

And spending on such drugs rose nine-fold between 1993 and 2003, the team at the University of California, Berkeley reported.

"ADHD could become the leading childhood disorder treated with medications across the globe," Richard Scheffler, an expert in health economics and public policy who led the study, said in a statement.