According to the CDC, about 20 million Americans have some form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which will be the subject of an upcoming article in The Medical Letter. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors are used to treat neovascular (“wet”) AMD, and 2 complement inhibitors were recently approved for treatment of geographic atrophy, which […]
Relaxium SLEEP
September 27, 2024 by 1 Comment
Suffering through the commercials on my favorite cable news channel, I received a televised visit from Dan Marino, the former (excellent) quarterback of the Miami Dolphins. A little thinner than in his playing days, Dan was recommending a product called Relaxium SLEEP for viewers with sleep problems. Curious to know more, I visited the product’s […]
Slow GA with Syfovre?
August 6, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Ask your retina specialist about Syfovre. That’s what the television set was urging me to do. Nothing wrong with that. It is legal for pharmaceutical manufacturers to advertise their products directly to the general public. In the US and New Zealand. Nowhere else. But what is GA and why would anyone have a retina specialist? […]
On Prevagen
July 3, 2024 by 3 Comments
As I watched my favorite news program the other night, a familiar name appeared in an advertisement. A woman named Caron came on to talk about all the things she enjoyed doing in New York City and how much more she enjoyed them since she started taking Prevagen (that’s the name) 4 years ago. She […]
A New Federal Rule Regarding TV Drug Advertisements
March 18, 2024 by 3 Comments
The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that permit the advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers. In 2020, 564 new ads for prescription drugs were submitted to the FDA for approval; the reported expenditure for those ads, according to the Federal Register, was $4.58 billion. Expensive brand-name drugs […]
Pushing Vaccinations
February 1, 2024 by 2 Comments
A recent issue of JAMA includes a viewpoint article titled “Is Vaccination Approaching a Dangerous Tipping Point?” authored by Peter Marks, Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Robert Califf, who is the Commissioner of the FDA. The subject of the article is the increasing resistance in the US to vaccination […]
Alcohol and Atrial Fibrillation
December 20, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The next issue of The Medical Letter will celebrate the arrival of a new guideline from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association by devoting the entire issue to atrial fibrillation, which is often referred to as the most common arrhythmia in the world. This year’s guideline puts considerable emphasis on the […]
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