Despite enormous progress in defining, diagnosing and treating mental disorders, EU health systems face a mounting challenge in responding to 'unmet need'. Mental illnesses produce a societal burden that exceeds that for either cancers or cardiovascular conditions. Leveraging advances in science and medicine to make available new innovative medicines is ...

The paper begins by asking why there is a market for counterfeit medicines, which in effect creates the problem of counterfeiting itself. Contributing factors include supply chain complexity and the lack of whole-systems thinking. These two underpin the author's view that counterfeiting is a complex (i.e. wicked) problem, and that ...

All prescribers will be familiar with the issues associated with the use of branded and generic 'chemical' medicines.(1) For biological products (e.g. epoetin, filgrastim), a biosmilar medicine is a new biological product that is similar to a medicine that has already been authorised to be marketed in the EU (the ...

Over the last three decades many first-generation nanomedicines have successfully entered routine clinical use and it is now important for medicines regulatory agencies to consider the mechanisms needed to ensure safe introduction of 'follow-on' nanomedicine products, 'nanosimilars'. Moreover, drug regulators need to ensure that 'next'-generation nanomedicines enter clinical development and ...

Guidelines for treating various conditions can be helpful in setting practice standards, but the presence of several sets of guidelines from different countries, experts, and settings, written at different times, can also create confusion. Here we provide a "guideline of guidelines" for the treatment of schizophrenia, or "meta-guidelines," which not ...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Traditional medicines in the form of plants, animals and/or minerals are used by millions of South Africans. There is currently no data regarding the commonly used mineral elements thus the potential benefits or hazards of such products remain unclear. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Metal and crystalline salts were purchased ...

Biologic medicinal products developed via rDNA technology as recombinant protein-based medicines that have been in clinical use since the early 1980s as original biopharmaceuticals have greatly contributed to the therapy of severe metabolic and degenerative diseases. The recent expiration of the data protection or patents for most of them created ...

The shift in employment options for vascular surgeons in the current era of major health care reform is being widely debated. After the decision to seek hospital employment or independent practice, the choice of then practicing in a single-specialty or a multispecialty practice remains a difficult decision. Although the trend ...

On January 1, 2012, the law of 12 May 2011 on the reimbursement of medicines, food products of special nutritional purpose and medicinal products, intended to tighten up the reimbursement system, came into force in Poland. The new legislative act has significantly altered the previous principles of retail marketing of ...

Introduction: A 'biosimilar', or 'similar biological medicinal product', is a biologic agent that is similar in terms of quality, safety and efficacy to an authorized reference biological medicine. Since the expiration of the filgrastim patent in Europe, three agents have received marketing authorization from the EMA: Tevagrastim, Zarzio and Nivestim. ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: In recent years an increasing number of public investments and policy changes have been made to improve the availability, affordability and quality of medicines available to consumers in developing countries, including anti-malarials. It is important to monitor the extent to which these interventions are successful in achieving their ...

Guest Editorial of TEB-2011-0678, "Meeting the Need for Regenerative Therapies: Translation-Focused Analysis of US Regenerative Medicine Opportunities in Cardiovascular and Peripheral Vascular Medicine Using Detailed Incidence Data"

Medicine counterfeiting is a serious worldwide issue, involving networks of manufacture and distribution that are an integral part of industrialized organized crime. Despite the potentially devastating health repercussions involved, legal sanctions are often inappropriate or simply not applied. The difficulty in agreeing on a definition of counterfeiting, the huge profits ...

In November 2011, Guido Rasi stepped into the role of executive director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), becoming only the third person to fill that role since the inception of the continental drug advisory body, in 1995. A year into his tenure, Rasi, a clinical immunologist who previously led ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are emerging as an alternative treatment in solid-organ transplantation. The use of MSCs as a therapeutic product requires the translation of basic research protocols into a production process under good manufacturing practice (GMP) to obtain a safe product of high quality. This requires ...

The production of Tibetan pharmaceuticals underwent a far-reaching transformation over the past decade. The introduction of good manufacturing practices (GMP) marked the beginning of rapid industrialization: new factories were built, and the companies re-oriented themselves to the requirements of the market. While officially regarded a great success, many doctors and ...

It is often difficult to keep your staff engaged when the doctor(s) is out of the office. However, there are opportunities for your staff to be productive during this time when there are no patients to see. This article will review ideas and suggestions for small group practices to employ ...

The TruScan(®) handheld Raman device is used for testing finished pharmaceutical products in the field to detect counterfeit and substandard medicines. Present work reports on the device's ability to discriminate between a specific product and similar products from different manufacturers, unrelated medicines, and medicines with different strengths. This investigation evaluated ...

In the US, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCI Act, 2009) provided the pathway to create an abbreviated licensure procedure for biologic products that are demonstrated to be biosimilar to or interchangeable with a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed biologic product. In February 2012, the FDA issued ...

Over the past decade, the annual meetings of national centres participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring have increasingly included discussions on how to improve communication between national pharmacovigilance centres, patients, healthcare professionals, policy makers and the general public, with the aim of promoting the safe use of ...

Background & objectives: The artemisinin-based antimalarial medicines are first line medicines in the treatment of severe and uncomplicated falciparum malaria. Numerous brands of these medicines manufactured in various countries are available in the Ghanaian market. The study was aimed at evaluating the authenticity and quality of selected brands of artemisinin-based ...

Currently, most countries apply the standard generic approach for the approval of intended copies of originator nanoparticle iron medicinal products, requiring only demonstration of bioequivalence to a reference medicinal product by bioavailability studies. However, growing evidence suggests that this regulatory approach is not appropriate. Clinical and non-clinical studies have shown ...

This study evaluated the capacity of the medicine pricing mechanism of the National Medicines and Poisons Board (NMPB), the medicine regulatory agency of Sudan, in controlling prices of imported medicines. The study was conducted between July and September 2008 and data on the 50 most sold medicines in 2007 were ...

Historically, medicine has been an evolving art and science. It never remains the same. Only in the past few decades has it been acceptable for doctors to market and promote their practices. This article will review the history of medical marketing and provide ethical examples of marketing that might be ...

Doctors across the country who operate private medical practices are facing increasing financial obstacles, namely shrinking income as a result of rising costs and lower reimbursements. In addition, as hospitals have become overburdened many physicians have opened up private surgical centers; magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography and positron emission ...

Cooperation and conversation in the public sphere may overcome historical and other barriers to rational argumentation. As an alternative to evidence-based medicine (EBM) and patient-centered care (PCC), the recent development of a modern version of person-centered medicine (PCM) signals an opportunity for a conversational pluralogue to replace parallel monologues between ...

Improving the quality of communication between doctors and their patients and colleagues is of vital importance. Poor communication, especially within and across clinical teams working around patients in pathways of care, leads to avoidable medical error, where an unacceptable number of patients are severely harmed or die each year. The ...

Community Based Mangrove Management (CBMM) has been advocated by both academia and governing agencies as a viable alternative for sustainably managing the ecologically important mangrove forests which are disappearing rapidly worldwide. Drawing insights from diverse sustainability issues, capabilities and performances of worldwide CBMM initiatives were examined in this paper. Higher ...

The Journal of Family and Community Medicine (JFCM) is the official scientific publication of the Saudi Society of Family and Community Medicine (SSFCM). The JFCM was first published in 1994 to meet "...a pressing need for a medical journal that would develop into a forum to address certain issues of ...

Community noise is very common and numerous in urban life. According to the investigation in Shanghai, most of community noise is accidental, and its impact is different from industrial noise, traffic noise and construction noise. Measured by the one-hour or daily equivalent sound pressure level of current standard, the community ...

A communicating bronchopulmonary foregut malformation is a rare anomaly characterized by a fistula between an isolated portion of respiratory tissue and the esophagus or stomach. We describe the thoracoscopic management of a communicating bronchopulmonary foregut malformation in a 23-month-old boy by division of an anomalous bronchus and right upper lobectomy.

In 2001, Thailand implemented the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS), a public insurance system that aimed to achieve universal access to healthcare, including essential medicines, and to influence primary care centres and hospitals to use resources efficiently, via capitated payment for outpatient services and other payment policies for inpatient care. Our ...

This research assesses informal markets that dominate pharmaceutical systems in severely disrupted countries and identifies areas for further investigation. Findings are based on recent academic papers, policy and grey literature, and field studies in Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti. The public sector in the studied countries ...

Clinical translational medicine (CTM) is an emerging area comprising multidisciplinary research from basic science to medical applications and entails a close collaboration among hospital, academia and industry. This Session focused discussing on new models for project development and promotion in translational medicine. The conference stimulated the scientific and commercial ...

Evidence-based guidelines are presented for the management of haemophilia in the fetus and neonate. This includes information regarding the management of pregnancy and delivery as well as aspects of management during the early neonatal period. Specific issues regarding the mode of delivery and the risk of intra-cranial and extra-cranial haemorrhage ...

The use of alternative medicine (AM) in Australia dates back to its earliest times, with the indigenous medicine of the aboriginal peoples and the folk medicine of the early English settlers. AM has until recently existed quite separately from Western biomedicine (WB) and there has been little integration of the ...

Integrative medicine (IM) has attracted increasing attention of the experts and patients around the world. Chinese medicine (CM), as the important part of IM, has played an important role in the treatment of cancer. CM is practiced side by side with Western medicine in many of China's hospitals and clinics. ...

Clinical reports on cardiac syndrome X (CSX) have been increasing in recent years. In general, CSX does not increase the cardiovascular mortality, but it can affect the patient's quality of life (QOL) and increase the incidence rates of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. Although a variety of drugs and therapies have ...

Treating diabetes mellitus (DM) with Chinese medicine (CM) has had a few thousands years of history. Past Chinese medical texts had already recorded numerous medicinal herbs as well as recipes for treating DM and accumulated much clinical experience. In the following article, the prevention of DM using CM in the ...

The prevalence of forestry practices such as thinning and pruning have gradually decreased since the 1980s. Researchers have noted an increased flood risk with decreased forestry practices for coniferous plantations in Japan on the basis of infiltration and overland flow measurements at a plot scale (typically several square meters). However, ...

Contractures are a common and disabling problem for people with spinal cord injuries. To date, contractures have largely been managed with physical interventions such as stretch and passive movements. These are typically administered either manually or with the assistance of various orthoses, devices or aids. However, the results of recent ...

To study the relationship between 500 kinds of commonly used Chinese herbal medicine and the classification of their efficacies in Chinese Materia Medica in relation to the common diseases listed in Internal Medicine. Database retrieval frequency of the quantitative statistical method was adopted. First, the 8 980 kinds of Chinese ...

Chinese medicines (CM) have been attracting interest and acceptance in many countries. Quality control is vital for ensuring the safety and efficacy of CM. Usually, CM are used as whole plant and/or combination of several herbs, and multiple constituents are responsible for the therapeutic effects. Therefore, quality control of CM ...

The 21st century opened with economic shifts the likes of which were not experienced for over half a century. The effects of these shifts require facial surgery specialists to conduct an objective audit of their business to not only survive but thrive in the new economic environment. This article discusses ...

This review focuses on how the study of anatomy in India has evolved through the centuries. Anatomical knowledge in ancient India was derived principally from animal sacrifice, chance observations of improperly buried human bodies, and examinations of patients made by doctors during treatment. The Vedic philosophies form the basis of ...

Today, we have a clear concept of sexual medicine and how to define this medical discipline. But historically, the unification of sexuality and medicine was not a given condition. Medicine was mainly focused on human reproduction and how to prevent and treat sexually transmitted diseases. Hardly any other aspect would ...

Francis Paddock (1814-1889), a graduate of Fairfield Medical College in western New York State, opened a general medicinal and surgical practice in the small town of Salem in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, between 1838 and 1839, where he lived and worked until his death a half century later. Two early volumes ...

The delivery of clinical services and the organisation and teaching of Sport and Exercise Medicine in the UK were developed in concept as long ago as 1912. It accelerated, particularly over the last 36 years, until the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine of the Royal Medical Colleges of the ...

We report the original recipes applied to treat apoplexy in the eighteenth century, as written in the personal notes of doctor of that century.

Using discourse analysis, this study examines the representation of prescription medicines in the UK newsprint media and, specifically, how the meaning and function of medicines are constructed. At the same time, it examines the extent to which the newsprint media represents a resource for health information, and considers how it ...