July 2010

New Jersey may still be America's medicine chest, but India is fast becoming the world's medicine plant. As big pharma turns to outsourcing to shed costs. India's homegrown pharma industry turns towards world's generic medicines, the subcontinent's drug output is growing fast with 13 percent growth expected this year.

Treatment with natalizumab (Tysabri, Biogen Idec and Elan) leads to improved language processing and retrieval of newly learned verbal material in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to research presented here at the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers 24th Annual Conference and the Third Joint Meeting of Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis.

The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) has initiated efforts to include radiopharmaceuticals, used in the field of nuclear medicine, as tracers in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases including cancer, in the Indian Pharmacopoeia for the first time.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) clearance for a liquid-cooled fiber (MoXy; American Medical Systems) to be used with the company's recently launched 180-watt laser system (GreenLight Xcelerated Performance) for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia.

In a study of hemodialysis patients without angiographic evidence of obstructive coronary artery disease, oral nicorandil lowered the risk for cardiac death by more than 85%. Coronary artery disease is one of the leading causes of death in patients on hemodialysis, and even hemodialysis patients without significant coronary lesions are at elevated risk for cardiac death.

Researchers have identified LGI1 (leucine-rich, glioma-inactivated 1) rather than voltage-gated potassium channels as the autoantigen associated with limbic encephalitis, a finding that may change diagnosis and classification of the disorder.