and Lexapro for unapproved uses in children and teenagers.
In a civil complaint filed by the United States attorney’s office in Boston, federal prosecutors alleged that former top executives at Forest concealed for several years a clinical study that showed that the drugs were not effective in children and might even pose risks to them, including causing some to become
.
From 2001 to 2004, Forest heavily promoted results from another Read the rest of this entry »

PHOENIX — Calling Mexican drug trafficking organizations “a national security threat,” Attorney General
’s most powerful drug cartels.
More than 750 people nationwide have been arrested, tons of cocaine and marijuana have been seized and the distribution of drugs has been disrupted through a series of raids and arrests as part of an investigation begun under the Bush administration 21 months ago, Mr. Holder said.
The operation Read the rest of this entry »

ALAMEDA, Calif., Feb. 25, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avigen, Inc. (Nasdaq:AVGN), a biopharmaceutical company, announced today that two preclinical reports with glial attenuator AV411 (ibudilast) support the pharmacological effect of the drug on enhancing the pain-killing effect of opioids while reducing the addiction properties of commonly used opioids such as morphine and oxycodone. Both studies are published online in Brain Behavior and Immunity.
Read the rest of this entry »

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - An attorney for the state of Alabama has asked a jury to order generic drug manufacturer Sandoz to pay the state as much as $170 million for causing the Medicaid program to pay too much for prescription drugs.
But at attorney for the German-based pharmaceutical said no drugs were mispriced.
Montgomery attorney Jere Beasley told jurors Monday that Sandoz was greedy in the way it reported prices that the state used to determine Read the rest of this entry »

The recommendation is certain to add a level of complexity to one of the most vexing debates in medicine: how men older than 50 should deal with the threat of prostate cancer. Each year, about 200,000 Americans are diagnosed with the disease, and about 29,000 die. A host of complications and controversies attend nearly every dimension of the disease, from prevention to diagnosis to treatment.
In their statement, the American Society of Clinical Read the rest of this entry »

A drug company will pay more than $1 million to settle allegations that it defrauded the Wisconsin Medicaid program.
Baxter Healthcare Corp. is the fourth defendant out of 36 to settle claims they reported inflated wholesale prices, driving up Medicaid reimbursements.
In all, companies have agreed to pay more than $4 million to reimburse Medicaid and cover the state's legal fees.
The settlement comes one week after a jury ordered a subsidiary Read the rest of this entry »

* Shares down as much as 40 percent.
Feb 23 (Reuters) - MAP Pharmaceuticals Inc (MAPP.O:
,
,
) said
its experimental treatment for asthma in children, failed a
late-stage study, sending its shares crashing 40 percent in
after-hours trading.
Data from the study, which involved 360 children, did not
show statistical significant difference when compared with a
dummy drug.
The company said unit dose of the drug, budesonide, did not
meet the Read the rest of this entry »

(Updates with details, testimony beginning in ninth paragraph.)
TRENTON, N.J.
Merck & Co.
(MRK) took a "tortured path" in
developing its blockbuster asthma and allergy drug Singulair, a lawyer for the
company told a judge Monday in an effort to ward off early generic competition.
In opening statements of a federal trial,
outside attorney,
, said the U.S. patent for Singulair was valid and enforceable, and that
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, a drug has won approval in Europe before the U.S. This time, it’s the anticlotting drug prasugrel from Eli Lilly and Daiichi Sankyo. The companies
that the drug has been greenlighted in Europe for certain patients who have stents put in to clear the arteries around the heart.
The drug, marketed under the name Efient, will compete with the blockbuster Plavix, which is co-marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis.
when Read the rest of this entry »

For the past five years, Daniels, a 47-year-old with a thick
stomach and a slow walk, was enrolled in the county's drug court
program. To beat his heroin addiction, his urine was tested twice a
week, he had a 7 p.m. curfew, and he attended Narcotics Anonymous.
He also attended a job training program in Jersey City, where he
swept the city's streets. More importantly, he met Sandy Roman,
herself a recovering drug addict in the program.
They dated Read the rest of this entry »