Reports the Times:

But they stopped short of specifying what the safety warnings should say and did not recommend limiting use of the drugs to a proposed five years. About 11 percent of women 55 and older take the drugs to prevent bone fractures.

The medical advisers did not press the issue as strongly as the F.D.A. staff itself did in a 45-page report issued on Wednesday. The staff report said studies “suggest no significant advantage of continuing drug therapy beyond five years.”

The F.D.A. is expected to issue a revised label in November for the drugs, known as bisphosphonates, including Fosamax, Actonel and Boniva.

In a bit of high-tech recycling, researchers have developed an innovative way to identify already-approved drugs that may work against diseases they weren’t designed to combat.

The scientists have also demonstrated how a couple of such repurposed drugs may have benefits in treating two conditions, inflammatory bowel disease and lung cancer.

The findings, published in two papers Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, come as drug companies and the National Institutes of Health are putting greater emphasis on so-called drug repositioning as a way of lowering the costs of drug development and getting therapies to patients more quickly.

There are several examples of medications being developed for one condition and then found to have efficacy in another. Viagra was tested in a cardiac trial and was found to be useful against erectile dysfunction. But rather than rely on such serendipitous discoveries, researchers would like a fast, inexpensive way of identifying potential hits.

Atul Butte, an associate professor of systems medicine in pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, who led the researchers, said they created a computer program he likened to an online dating service, though one that operates on the principle that “opposites attract.”

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Across the nation, including in Pittsburgh, hospitals are experiencing drug shortages prompted by factors ranging from Food and Drug Administration-ordered shutdowns over regulatory issues to natural disasters like hurricanes to mergers by manufacturers.

“A lot of times a particular medication is only made at one facility, and if it’s shut down for any reason it disrupts the supply chain,” said Scott Mark, a pharmacist turned corporate vice president at West Penn Allegheny Health System who is president of the Pennsylvania Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

And when the supply chain is disrupted, hospital labor costs go up as personnel are assigned to assess and work around shortages.

More important, patients also are affected.

In a recent survey by the American Hospital Association, 82 percent of 820 responding hospitals reported they have delayed patient treatment as a result of a drug shortage. More than 60 percent said a patient had received a less effective drug or did not receive recommended treatment; 35 percent said a patient had experienced an adverse outcome.

Fortunately, no such adverse outcomes have occurred within WPAHS or in UPMC facilities served by H C Pharmacy Central, Inc., the South Side firm that handles drug acquisitions for UPMC, Armstrong County Memorial Hospital and Grove City Medical Center..

But a shortage of a leukemia drug, cytarabine, inconvenienced some UPMC patients, said Phil Nerti, director of H C Pharmacy.

“Patients were affected to the extent that some treatments were rescheduled,” Mr. Nerti said. “The dilemma is you don’t want to schedule [treatments] if you’re not sure you’re going to have the drug.”

So far, cytarabine has been the drug in shortest supply for H C Pharmacy, which maintains a warehouse and which, unlike most hospital systems, buys most of its pharmaceuticals directly from manufacturers rather than wholesalers.

“If we had to pick a category, clearly the oncology segment would be the most problematic for us,” Mr. Nerti added. “There are really at this point two drugs we’ve had to take very aggressive action for.

“Either we couldn’t get them for some period of time or got such limited quantities we couldn’t use the drugs as we would if we had full supplies.”

As a result, he said, drug use would have been limited to patients with no therapeutic alternative. Another option to resolving a shortage would have been to change the brand or form of the drug. For example, a 200-milligram drug in shortage might be replaced by two 100 milligram doses or by taking a portion of, say, a 400-milligram dose.

Cancer drugs and injectable products such as some antibiotics or electrolytes have been problematic at WPAHS, according to pharmacy director Laura Mark.

Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to find out more

The synthetic drug Blizzard, also known as bath salts, has become such a big problem in Blair County over such a short period of time that more than 60 representatives from local agencies met Monday to learn how to recognize and treat its victims.

Dr. Joseph L. Antonowicz, medical director for Altoona Regional Center for Behavioral Health Services, said his department became aware of Blizzard just four months ago when a couple was taken to the crisis center “completely out of their minds,” as he put it.

The couple said they obtained the bath salts locally and then went on a bender, not having slept for days. By the time they were taken to the crisis center, they were experiencing severe mental health problems, holed up in a bedroom fearful they were under attack.

For the rest of the story, read the Altoona Mirror

The Gateway Pharmacy at 165 Nutt Road in Phoenixville, PA. has begun an exciting new program.

For the past month, all unwanted, used and expired medication prescriptions that are no longer in need for use by local community customers and non consumers can be brought into the Gateway Pharmacy for disposal, free of charge.

This program is called the Take Back Program which has been established by two of the Gateway Pharmacists Jenn Szilagyi and Kristin Katra.

Szilagyi and Katra encourage that all who have any unwanted stored drug prescription medications within their home medicine cabinets or in other storage areas within their homes may bring them into the Gateway Pharmacy where these drugs will be turned over to a reputable medication disposal company for proper disposal.

Read the full article: Gateway Pharmacy disposes of old medications

A new report on retail prices of brand-name drugs shows the 217 products most used by older Americans increased by an average of 8.3 percent during 2009, the largest increase in years, even as inflation was negative.

Over the last five years, according to the report to be released on Wednesday by the senior lobby AARP, the retail prices for the most popular brand-name drugs increased 41.5 percent, while the consumer price index rose 13.3 percent. An AARP official called for measures to hold down drug prices.

Drug industry officials challenged the finding, however, saying select brand-name prices did not reflect the reality of more people using low-price generic drugs. Generics now account for about 75 percent of all dispensed prescriptionsin the United States, according to IMS Health, a research firm.

The industry pointed to a broader survey of drug prices showing they rose by 3.4 percent during 2009. The survey, conducted by the government for its official Consumer Price Index, includes generic as well as brand-name drug prices, Jonathan Church, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said on Tuesday.

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Sellers of ginseng, echinacea and other herbal and dietary supplements often cross the line in marketing their products, going as far as telling consumers the pills can cure cancer or replace prescription medications, a U.S. government probe found.

In an undercover probe, investigators at the Government Accountability Office also found that labels for some supplements claim to prevent or cure ailments like diabetes or heart disease — a clear violation of U.S. law.

GAO staff targeted supplements most popular with older consumers and posed as elderly buyers in stores or over the telephone.

“The most egregious practices included suspect marketing claims that a dietary supplement prevented or cured extremely serious diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease,” the GAO said in a report released on Wednesday at a Senate hearing.

For example, one shopper at a supplement specialty store was told that a garlic supplement could be taken instead of prescribed blood pressure drugs. Another staffer posing as a forgetful, elderly consumer was told by a salesperson that he could take aspirin and ginkgo biloba together with no harm. The Food and Drug Administration has said that combination can cause internal bleeding.

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Few people are taking advantage of pills that have been proven to prevent a substantial number of common cancers.

If you didn’t realize such pills exist, you are not unusual. Which is part of the problem.

This barely used arsenal in the war on cancer has grown to four drugs – two for the breast and two for the prostate gland. The first won federal approval in 1998; the fourth is now seeking approval.

Government researchers predicted cancer “chemoprevention” would be a public-health revolution, saving many lives.

In fact, studies show family doctors and the public still do not know much about the option, and even the well-informed usually reject it.

This is not totally surprising. The drugs aren’t magic bullets. They reduce but don’t eliminate the chance of cancer, and they can have dangerous side effects.

But the unpopularity of chemoprevention seems to have more to do with how individuals perceive health trade-offs than the actual statistical probabilities. The same medicine that men are leery of using to dodge prostate cancer is widely used in smaller doses to forestall a harmless condition: baldness. And some women would rather have their breasts removed than be on a drug to preserve them.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20100524_The_cancer_preventers_many_don_t_know_about__or_want.html?viewAll=y#ixzz0orKV14c1

Making simple changes like getting people to take their medicines exactly as directed or to refill their prescriptions on time could save employers and their workers as much as $163 billion a year in healthcare costs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc identified various behaviors including brand loyalty, procrastinating on refills and occasional forgetfulness, that increase treatment costs.

“This is the first time we’ve looked at the behavioral factors that are driving spending,” chief scientist Bob Nease commented about Express Scripts’ annual drug trends report.

The cost of these behaviors is a staggering $1 out of every $5 spent on prescription drugs, which account for 10 percent of the $2.3 trillion Americans spend on healthcare each year.

“When you slice it that way, you get this eye-popping figure of $163 billion,” Nease said in a telephone interview.

The report outlines ways for companies and patients to make people aware of the common habits that can increase the cost of healthcare in the United States as the nation looks for ways to pay for its newly passed healthcare reform legislation.

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A Senate Democrat asked top drugmakers on Wednesday to explain why Americans pay higher prices for prescription drugs than patients do in other developed nations.

Barack Obama  |  Health

Senator Herb Kohl, who chairs the Special Committee on Aging, sent letters to AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis.

Kohl said Americans on average pay twice as much as people in other industrialized countries.

“While I firmly believe that drug quality should not be sacrificed for cost, the large discrepancies in the cost of identical drugs cannot be explained by differences in production or manufacturing,” Kohl wrote to the companies.

Some Democrats have attacked drugmakers as the U.S. Congress works on an overhaul of U.S. healthcare system.

The pharmaceutical industry has pledged to pay $80 billion over 10 years in price cuts and other concessions to help fund wider insurance coverage as part of a healthcare overhaul under consideration in Congress.

Some lawmakers have criticized that amount as a small price to pay for a $315 billion-a-year industry that stands to gain tens of millions of new customers if insurance coverage expands. Democrats are trying to pass a final bill for President Barack Obama to sign into law in the coming weeks.

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