Medical Journals

DTC Advertising: Doctors Still Hate It But Industry Continues to Use It

New England Journal of Medicine recently published a paper looking at “A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs”, where the study authors looked at pharma company spending on DTC advertising and physician promotion in the past 10 years (1996-2006). The authors also looked at the FDA regulation of drug advertising during this time. While [...]

Read the full article →

Updated Heart Attack Treatment Guidelines

This week the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology have published updated treatment guidelines for heart attacks (or, as the journal article titled it, “Update of the Clinical Competence Statement on Cardiac Interventional Procedures”). The entire update is currently available in full from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) [...]

Read the full article →

Backgrounder on Diabetes Drug Avandia Controversy

I’ve been tracking the various developments and commentaries on the controversy surrounding diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline). For those of you interested in background information and commentaries relating to the use of Avandia and increased risk for heart disease, as well as the affordability of chronic medications like diabetes drugs, I’ve compiled a [...]

Read the full article →

Drug Ads Should Make Journals Free for Us

In 1999, Louis Constan, MD wrote an article called, “Doctor, Tell Me About This New Drug” within the humor category of The Journal of Family Practice. It’s now almost 7 years later, and many of what Dr. Constan highlighted have become reality. I will share one of my personal favorites to start: Magazines have so [...]

Read the full article →

Does it Pay to Pray?

By Yvonne Kao A study1 on the effect of intercessory prayer on recovery was reported in the American Heart Journal. The study procedure, in short: Cardiac bypass patients all around the country were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups: Uncertain/No Prayer: Patients in this group were told they might or might not receive [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries