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A couple of articles from the Net:
Americans spend most on Lipitor, drug survey findsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumers spent more money on the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor -- more than $9 billion -- than any other prescription drug in 2004, according to federal estimates released on Wednesday.
Cholesterol drugs in general raked in the most money for their makers, according to the survey by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 12 (HealthDay News) -- In a disheartening result that confounds existing research, a team in France says a new stem cell therapy for a rare kidney disease is no better than the usual chemotherapy-only approach.I'm a little disturbed by these findings, but they finish the article like this:The study "has major limitations and must be interpreted with caution," said Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Still, he said, it conflicts with "a widely held belief" that the stem-cell approach -- combined with aggressive chemotherapy -- is better for some patients...
Stem Cell Therapy Disappoints Against Rare Kidney AilmentThere are some caveats, however, Rajkumar said. For one, few patients took part in the study, lowering its statistical power. For another, many of the patients who received stem-cell transplants got them at facilities that didn't have much experience in the procedure, which is very complicated, he said.
Considering that, it's possible that treatment with stem-cell treatments may be a better option in some cases, Rajkumar said.
posted by Tony @ 7:20 AM |
2 Comments:
Hi,
I have followed your blog for the last few years and have been silently cheering you on. My dad had a stem cell transplant for amyloidosis in 2001 and is still going strong, just passed his annual check up at Mayo. I had to write now as after reading the published report from Forbes, I'm afraid that this news article will make it even tougher for amyloidosis patients/families with their insurance companies which is already a battle to get some to approve the stem cell therapy. I'm glad that the doctor from Mayo added some caveats at the bottom that statistically this isn't a valid number of patients, but some insurance companies will use this.
Kristi from North Dakota, klr3025@hotmail.com
Hi Kristi,
Thanks for writing (and for your visits!)
I never thought of this angle before, and perhaps it may have some negative effects on approving the procedures. However, this is the only "minority report" I could find. Plus the report states that it wasn't more effective, not that it didn't work. And that's without the disclaimers thrown at the bottom...
I have a slight worry about whether insurance companies will read into this, but no worry at all in regards to the effectiveness of the procedure.
-Tony
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