"Can an antipsychotic drug from the 1950s be paired with a 1980s antibiotic to shrink 21st-century tumors?"
That's the first line from the NYT's recent article on biotech companies mixing two unrelated generic drugs to treat medical problems. Alexis Borisy, the executive of CombinatoRx, is spearheading the movement to mix and match two different generic drugs in the hopes that the combo will cure or effectively treat a disease that may be unrelated to the drugs' initial purposes.
"Orexigen, in creating its obesity drug Contrave, took a treatment used for drug and alcohol addiction and combined it with an antidepressant sometimes used to help people quit smoking." (My guess is that the antid was Zyban.)
It's a nice concept, but I'd hate to see risk of side effects doubled. One med can be a doozy; coupled with another could turn out to be problematic.
More from the NYT: Pharmaceutical companies pay psychiatrists (to push their products) more than doctors in any other specialty.
"For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved."
Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program.
Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the state said.
The number most likely represents a small fraction of drug makers’ total marketing expenditures to doctors since it does not include the costs of free drug samples or the salaries of sales representatives and their staff members. According to their income statements, drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.
Doesn't the last sentence make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? It's great to know that getting people to use drugs are more important to these companies than making sure these drugs are safe to use. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a company and companies are only out to make profits. Whatever kind of optimist is in me wants to believe that maybe there's one doctor out there who is more motivated by helping others than by pharma-backing money. But I'm only a slight optimist.
depression introspection 