Scientists have worked out why common anti-depressants cause around a half of users to feel emotionally ‘blunted’. In a study published today, they show that the drugs affect reinforcement learning, an important behavioural process that allows us to learn from our environment. According to the NHS, more than 8.3 million patients in England received an antidepressant drug in 2021/22. A […]
Nearly half a million people missed out on starting medication to lower their blood pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to research supported by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre at Health Data Research UK published today in Nature Medicine [1]. The researchers say that thousands of people could suffer an avoidable heart attack or stroke due to delays […]
For the millions of people living with diabetes, insulin is a life-saving drug. Unlike many other medicines, though, insulin cannot be easily delivered by swallowing a pill — it needs to be injected under the skin with a syringe or pump. Researchers have been making steps toward an insulin pill, and now, a team reports in ACS Nano that they’ve delivered insulin […]
EU regulation pertaining to good manufacturing practices and environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals does not adequately consider the environmental emissions of pharmaceuticals in global manufacturing supply chains, a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland concludes. Published by the European Commission in 2020, the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe highlights the need to revise the EU’s general pharmaceutical legislation (Directive 2001/83 and Regulation 726/2004) with […]
There is new evidence that a 50-year-old blood pressure drug could find new purpose as a treatment to mitigate the often life-altering effects of increasingly prevalent PTSD, scientists say. Clonidine is commonly used as a high blood pressure medication and for ADHD. It’s also already been studied in PTSD because clonidine works on adrenergic receptors in the brain, likely best known […]
Molnupiravir (taken as an 800mg dose twice daily for five days) does not reduce hospital admissions or deaths in vaccinated adults with COVID-19 infection who are at higher risk of mortality, according to the results of a randomised controlled trial, published in The Lancet journal. However, the patients treated at home with molnupiravir recovered quicker compared to the control group. Previous studies […]
Tonia Vincent, Professor of Musculoskeletal Biology & Honorary Rheumatologist at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS), said: ‘Hand osteoarthritis is a common and debilitating medical condition that affects mainly women, especially around the time of the menopause. We currently have no effective treatments that modify their disease.’ The researchers started by investigating a common gene variant […]
For many, inhalers are a sort of miracle drug. From gasping for air one minute, to breathing normally the next, patients can experience significant relief after one or two puffs. What few people realize is that these life-saving medicines can actually stop working in the long term, especially in people who use them often and in high doses. Researchers around […]
Compared to other experimental therapies, treatment with the ADHD medication lisdexamfetamine resulted in the lowest risk of hospitalization and death among people with amphetamine addiction, researchers reported on Nov. 16, 2022 in JAMA Psychiatry. ”Our results suggest that lisdexamfetamine is associated with the best outcomes, and encourage the conduction of randomized controlled trials to explore this further,” said investigator Jari […]
Recent findings by UCSF and Arc Institute scientists open up new possibilities for overcoming a fundamental challenge in drug discovery. There can be a tradeoff between optimizing a drug’s key-in-a-lock fit with its target and the drug’s ability to make its way across the cellular membrane and get to that target in the first place. Now, a new study published […]
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