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Just 10 new “breakthrough” drugs could cost government health programs more than $49 billion over a decade, according to a new Avalere report commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans. (Karlin, 6/8)

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this week considers experimental cholesterol-lowering drugs whose approval could pave the way for blockbuster medicines with potentially billions of dollars in sales. The panel is evaluating evolocumab from Amgen Inc. and alirocumab from Sanofi SA and partner Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., new LDL-lowering agents that would be the first major additions to the coronary heart-disease medicine chest since statin pills were first prescribed in the late 1980s. (Rockoff, 6/6)

Advocates for children with rare diseases are watching closely a congressional effort to streamline the nation’s drug approval process because the bill includes a provision extending a federal program that rewards companies making remedies for these young patients. (Gillespie, 6/8)

The pill was OxyContin, a painkiller that its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, says deters abuse by being difficult to chew or liquefy into forms that give addicts stronger highs, orally or through injection. Since adding these features to its original and widely abused OxyContin in 2010, the company has likened the pill to a virtual seatbelt to restrain the nation’s epidemic of prescription drug abuse. But as thousands of addicts still find ways to abuse OxyContin and similar painkillers, called abuse-deterrent formulations, some experts caution that the protections are misunderstood and could mislead both users and prescribers into thinking that the underlying medications are less addictive. (Schwarz, 6/6)