Editor—Hafeez and Mirza have assessed how seriously (or not) pharmaceutical companies take their responsibility to provide information on request to prescribers in Pakistan. Two of their conclusions are that “providing information on drugs is not a priority for companies in Pakistan” and that “the decision to respond to a request for more information therefore seems to depend on how favourable ...

The worldwide costs of dementia are US$315 billion [1]. Monthly costs of Alzheimer’s disease in Spain are 1,426 per month [2]. What is the purpose, value, and usefulness of such statements? The number of Cost of Illness (CoI) studies is steadily increasing. For almost any high resource-consuming disease, there is some kind of CoI estimate available. There is also a kind of ongoing CoI rally. Li...

PURPOSE: Large price swings for individual drugs complicate the hospital purchasing process, both increasing costs and adversely affecting patient treatment therapy. The objectives for this study are, for a large regional hospital buyer, to describe price changes for individual drugs, therapeutic classes, and drug companies, and to determine factors associated with large price swings. METHODS: ...

The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria last week terminated the initial search for a new Executive Director to lead the agency and reopened the race after a series of allegations, leaks, insufficient due diligence, and divergent political agendas derailed efforts. On March 3, the board announced the appointment of Marijke Wijnroks as Interim Executive Director to s...

BACKGROUND Differential access to basic health information may contribute to persistent cervical cancer disparities. We examined whether human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine awareness, HPV knowledge, and use of information sources about the vaccine differ by sociodemographic characteristics associated with cervical cancer. METHODS Study participants (n = 889) were caregivers of adolescent girls...

This analysis examines the policy issues involved in the removal of sugar from paediatric medicines. It reports a study which investigates the perspectives of professionals, consumers, and the pharmaceutical industry. Interviews were conducted with: parents of children receiving long term medication, dental professionals involved in influencing policy or caring for such children, and drug compa...

OBJECTIVE To determine the impact of the European Union's Clinical Trials Directive on the number of academic drug trials carried out in Denmark. DESIGN Retrospective review of applications for drug trials to the Danish Medicines Agency, 1993-2006. REVIEW METHODS Applications for drug trials for alternate years were classified as academic or commercial trials. A random subset of academic tr...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate whether the quality of pharmaceutical company representatives' (PCRs) visits to hospital pharmacists can be improved by written communication of the results of an evaluation of their visits. METHODS Pilot study with prospective evaluation of overall visit quality and strength of request for adding drugs to the hospital formulary, and of the scientific quality of product...

A drug company wants to investigate the uniformity of one of its products. It has 2 Sites at which the drug is manufactured. From each site three Batches are obtained at random. From each batch 5 samples (pills) are taken at random. The samples are analyzed for Content. One issue is whether the two sites differ; another is whether batch-to-batch variability within the two sites is a significant...

The major barrier to Alzheimer disease (AD) drug discovery and development in the biotechnology industry is scale. Most biotechnology companies do not have the personnel or expertise to carry a drug from the bench to the market. Much effort in the industry has been directed toward the elucidation of molecular mechanisms of AD and the identification of new targets. Advances in biotechnology have...