Recent Medicare legislation calls on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to conduct research related to the comparative effectiveness of health care items and services, including prescription drugs. This reinforces earlier calls for head-to-head comparative trials of clinically relevant treatment alternatives. Using a game-theoretic model, the authors explore the decision of pharmace...

Catherine A. Heyneman is the director of the Idaho Drug Information Service and an assistant professor of Pharmacy Practice at the Idaho State University College of Pharmacy, Pocatello, Idaho. Medicinal herbs have been used since the beginning of recorded time. Approximately one quarter of prescription drugs on the market today are still derived from plant products (eg, digoxin from the foxglov...

BACKGROUND The only drug approved for pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) in Japan is pimozide. Several psychotropic drugs are also prescribed for offlabel use in Japan, but details regarding their prescription and use are largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to clarify the use of drug treatment in Japanese children with PDD. METHODS Data were extracted from claims data from the...

We investigated in a sample of Latinos the practices of antimicrobial drug importation and use of nonprescribed antimicrobial drugs. In interviews conducted with 219 adults, we assessed health beliefs and past and present behaviors consistent with acquiring antimicrobial drugs without a prescription in the United States. Many (30.6%) believed that antimicrobial drugs should be available in the ...

CONTEXT Recent public outcry has highlighted the rising cost of prescription drugs worldwide, which in several disease areas outpaces other health care expenditures and results in a suboptimal global availability of essential medicines. METHOD A systematic review of Pubmed, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian was performed to identify articles rel...

Abstract Background: Prescribing pattern is also important factor to identify the problems related to prescribing and best tool to improve the quality of prescription and patient care. Methods: The aim of current study was to evaluate the quality of prescription and prescribing practices as per WHO drug core indicators in Lahore, Pakistan. A descriptive and cross- sectional study wa...

BACKGROUND Age, gender and socioeconomic status have been shown to be associated with the use of prescription drugs, even after adjustment for multimorbidity. General practitioners have a holistic and patient-centred perspective and our hypothesis is that this may reflect on the prescription of drugs. In Sweden the patient may seek secondary care without a letter of referral and the liability o...

Using 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey data, this paper examines the effect of public and private prescription drug insurance on the utilization of psychotropic and non-psychotropic drugs. It is found that prescription drug utilization is characterized by two stochastic regimes requiring use of latent class modelling framework. In many instances, results differ for the classes of high and ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to assess the magnitude of prescription drug misuse among Oklahoma high school students, examine associated risk factors, and inform state-based prevention strategies. METHODS Data from the 2013 Oklahoma Youth Risk Behavior Survey were used for this analysis and were representative of public school students in grades 9 through 12 in Oklahoma. Variables we...

background and purpose: rational use of drugs remains a problem in iran. polypharmacy, overuse of antibiotic, misuse and overuse of injections, short consulting time and poor patient compliance are common patterns of irrational use of drugs in eastern azarbydjan - iran. concerning the promotion of rational use of drugs, this study aimed the effect of educational intervention as interactive grou...