Independent research, involving over 3 million Italians, conducted by Henley Management College and the University of Milan has concluded that the prescription costs for men over the age of 65 is significantly higher than it is for women. The study is published in the July 4th issue of the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.

A review of previous studies indicates that an increase in prescription drug cost sharing is associated with a decrease in drug spending and use of pharmacies; and for some chronic conditions, higher cost sharing is associated with greater use of expensive medical services, according to an article in the July 4 issue of JAMA.

The drug most commonly used to arrest preterm labor, magnesium sulfate, is more likely than another common treatment to cause mild to serious side effects in pregnant women, according to a study from researchers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine. Their findings suggest that, since the effectiveness of the two drugs appears similar, physicians should consider side effects more strongly when choosing which drug to prescribe.

New versions of drugs like buffered aspirin and Vioxx could produce fewer harmful side effects thanks to research being done at Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

With Chinese manufacturers poised to increase exports of drug ingredients and perhaps even begin shipping finished drug products to the United States, an article http://pubs.acs.org/cen/business/85/8525bus1.html in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS's weekly newsmagazine, questions allegations that foreign-made ingredients often are manufactured in factories that have never been inspected by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

A research abstract that will be presented Monday at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) finds that the health care costs of patients with insomnia are higher than for those without insomnia.

Researchers have called for urgent studies into the long-term safety of newer antiepileptic drugs after discovering that the number given to children has increased significantly over recent years, reports the June issue of British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Northwestern University's Charles Bennett, M.D., is a super sleuth of potentially deadly prescription drug reactions. He leads a national SWAT team of doctors called RADAR (Research on Adverse Drug Events and Reports) based out of Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. They swoop in to investigate early signs of trouble years before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes notice.

Just months after receiving FDA approval, natalizumab, a medication for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory disorders, was voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturers after three patients developed a brain infection known as Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML).

According to the prescription drug bill passed by the senat today, FDA will be required to monitor the pharmaceutical companies and the medications they make three years after the drugs are approved. This is a very significant move by the Senat to helping FDA to ensure the safety of prescription drugs.

The Medicare Trustees Report issued yesterday shows that while Medicare's financial outlook remains troubling, the program's outlook has improved slightly compared to last year's estimate. The Trustees note that Medicare expenditures were $408 billion in 2006, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and are projected to increase to over 11 percent of GDP in 75 years.

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