Security and data protection are priorities in any online transaction, especially for healthcare. This pharmacy’s website is equipped with advanced...
You might have noticed the key details mentioned on medical medicine boxes whenever you pick them up from a pharmacy. Information, precautions, symbols, and brand details mentioned on these boxes are important for individuals who are going to consume these medicines. Custom medicine boxes thus serve as an effective means of conveying the desired insights to the exact audience who is going to benefit from the relevant medicines for curing their specific health issues.
Brands make sure to keep the details mentioned on medical medicine boxes highly relevant and assure the safety of individuals at all times while keeping them informed of the right dose of the medicine they are going to consume.
This post explores how important are these custom packaging solutions for your pharmaceutical brand and what are the key features of medical medicine boxes.
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There are ways to make getting funding easier and more effective. One idea is to simplify the application process for...
Beth Hahn, PhD, Director
U.S. Value Evidence and Outcomes,
GlaxoSmithKline,
Research Triangle Park, NC
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Biologic therapies are increasing as a treatment for patients with severe asthma, with multiple therapies approved by the FDA. There is also an increasing understanding of the factors influencing preference for and adherence to biologic therapies for patients with severe asthma; however, little is known about why patients discontinue biologic therapy. In patients who have access to biologic treatment, understanding the circumstances and asthma characteristics associated with discontinuation of biologic therapy may allow for the identification of barriers to treatment success . The objective of this study of cross-sectional physician and patient survey data was to assess the patient characteristics and the given reasons for treatment discontinuation in a US patient cohort with severe asthma treated with biologic therapy.
A total of 117 physicians and 285 patients completed surveys with 70% of patients continuing biologic therapy (N=200). This study included a number of different FDA approved biologics. From the perspectives of the physicians included in the current study (85 providing a rationale for discontinuation), the majority reported a lack of symptom control, particularly shortness of breath (46%), exacerbations (26%) and other chronic symptoms (29%), as a key reason for discontinuing biologic therapy in severe asthma. Symptom control was also key for patients, with these three symptom categories among their top six reasons for biologic discontinuation. The cost of biologic treatment was also an important factor, cited as the 5th most common reason for discontinuation among physicians and the 3rd among patients.
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Collin Tebo BA
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Washington, DC
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The growing cost of pharmaceuticals is an issue of increasing concern in the United States where a large portion of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is health care spending. During the past decade, visits to Emergency Departments (EDs) have increased considerably. Pharmaceutical drugs are utilized in the care of most patients who visit the ED therefore, rising drug prices are a concern for emergency medicine physicians, administrators, and patients throughout the US.
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Dr. Kirhan Ozgurdal
Global Medical Affairs Physician
Oncology, Bayer
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
There is increasing financial interest in oncology so addressing the risk associated with financial interactions with industry and conflicts of...
George P. Ball PhD
Operations and Decision Technologies Department
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405,
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We sought to examine how the intense pressure on firms to produce generic drugs more cheaply might influence product quality.
We find that the greater proportion of generic drugs a firm manufactures, the more severe product recalls they experience, because of an apparent relaxation of manufacturing quality standards. Additionally, they experience fewer less severe recalls, which may also result from forces of competition.
When the opportunity exists to not announce a recall that has high discretion, competition may lead firms to forgo the recall to avoid negative ramifications associated with recalls.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Julie M. Donohue, Ph.D.
Associate professor and Vice Chair for Research
Graduate School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management
University of Pittsburgh
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Donohue: We looked at data on medication use from January through September 2014 on 1 million Affordable Care Act-established marketplace insurance plan enrollees. Our analysis found that among people who enrolled in individual marketplaces, those who enrolled earlier were older and used more medication than later enrollees. Marketplace enrollees, as a whole, had lower average drug spending per person and were less likely to use most medication classes than patients enrolled in employer-sponsored health insurance. However, marketplace enrollees were much more likely to use medicines for hepatitis C and for HIV, which is particularly important given the general concerns about the rising costs of these medications for consumers.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Professor Andrew W. Munro FRSC FSB
Professor of Molecular Enzymology
Manchester Institute of Biotechnology
Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester
Manchester UK
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Munro: Statins are blockbuster drugs that inhibit the key enzyme in cholesterol synthesis: 3-beta-hydroxymethylglutaryl CoA reductase (HMG-CoA reductase), which catalyzes the rate-limiting step in the biosynthesis of cholesterol. As a consequence, statin drugs reduce levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL-) cholesterol, are effective against hypercholesterolemia and reduce the risk of atherosclerosis and heart attack. One of the major statin drugs is pravastatin, which is derived from a fungal natural product called compactin. The process of conversion of compactin into pravastatin involves the use of an oxygen-inserting enzyme called a cytochrome P450 (or P450), which catalyzes the hydroxylation of compactin to form pravastatin. In order to produce a more cost-efficient and streamlined route to pravastatin production, our teams from the University of Manchester (UK) and DSM (Delft, The Netherlands) developed a single-step process for pravastatin production. This process involved harnessing the productive efficiency of an industrial strain of the beta-lactam (penicillin-type) antibiotic producing fungus Penicillium chrysogenum. The beta-lactam antibiotic genes were deleted from this organism, and replaced by those encoding for compactin biosynthesis (transferred from a different Penicillium species). This led to high level production of compactin, but also to substantial formation of a partially degraded (deacylated) form. To get around this problem and in order to further improve compactin production, the enzyme responsible for the deacylation (an esterase) was identified and the gene encoding this activity was deleted from the production strain. The final stages of development of the novel, one-step pravastatin production process involved the identification of a suitable P450 enzyme that could catalyze the required hydroxylation of compactin. A bacterial P450 was identified that catalyzed hydroxylation at the correct position on the compactin molecule. However, the stereoselectivity of the reaction was in favour of the incorrect isomer – forming predominantly epi-pravastatin over the desired pravastatin. This was addressed by mutagenesis of the P450 – ultimately leading to a variant (named P450Prava) that hydroxylated compactin with the required stereoselectivity to make pravastatin in large amounts. Determination of the structure of P450Prava in both the substrate-free and compactin-bound forms revealed the conformational changes that underpinned the conversion of the P450 enzyme to a pravastatin synthase. The expression of P450Prava in a compactin-producing strain of P. chrysogenum enabled pravastatin production at over 6 g/L in a fed-batch fermentation process, facilitating an efficient, single-step route to high yield generation of pravastatin.
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