FDA Redacts Names Of Drugs From Reports On Contaminated Factories
ProPublica reports that, according to the FDA, releasing the names of the drugs in inspection reports on foreign facilities would violate federal law protecting confidential commercial information. Experts worry that removing this data renders the reports useless for keeping Americans safe.
They were the sort of disturbing discoveries that anyone taking generic medication would want to know. At one Indian factory manufacturing drugs for the United States, pigeons infested a storage room and defecated on boxes of sterilized equipment. At another, pathogens contaminated purified water used to produce drugs. At a third, stagnant urine pooled on a bathroom floor not far from where injectable medication was made. (Cenziper and Rose, 10/23)
More pharma and tech news 鈥
For the past few months, CVS Caremark has resisted adding a new Gilead Sciences HIV prevention drug to its formularies, repeatedly explaining there are 鈥渃linical, financial, and regulatory considerations鈥 that must be reviewed before it will take that step. Not surprisingly, though, what the largest pharmacy benefits manager in the U.S. simply wants is a much lower price, according to an email sent this week by a company executive to an AIDS patient advocacy group. (Silverman, 10/22)
The anti-obesity drug boom may be cooling, as overall prescribing of GLP-1 medicines remained relatively flat for the three months ending in September, according to a new analysis of electronic health records. (Bettelheim, 10/23)
Doctors have long known that antidepressants come with side effects for cardiovascular and metabolic health. But a major analysis from a team of researchers in the U.K. has, for the first time, pulled together data from more than 150 clinical trials to compare the physical side effects of dozens of antidepressants. (Stone, 10/23)
The leading professional organization for European oncologists has rolled out its first set of guidance on how its members should use large language models, a type of artificial intelligence, in cancer medicine.聽(MacPhail and Trang, 10/22)
