Consumer Reports has published a valuable article identifying common prescription drugs that can be dangerous for older patients. Healthcare consumers over age 65 are more than twice as likely to suffer from adverse drug reactions; the publication lists the following drugs as posing a high enough risk that they should be avoided if possible:

Antianxiety drugs [...]

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As you know, we like to post links to parodies of pharmaceutical commercials. Rather than publish these individually, though, I thought I’d provide all these links in a single roundup post. Here are some popular parodies of current drug ads — one for each drug. (Be warned that some of them are a [...]

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Fox News ran a provocative story Thursday slamming Big Pharma for overhyping the benefits — and downplaying the dangers — of anti-depressants such as Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac and Effexor. You can read the transcript here or watch the piece below.

Frankly, it’s surprising to me to see this kind of anti-Big Pharma slant from Fox [...]

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The most searched-for drug on eDrugSearch.com for the past two months has been Abilify, which treats the symptoms of psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Initially approved in November 2002, more than 12.5 million prescriptions have been written for Abilify in the United States as of June 2007.
Expect those numbers to [...]

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We thought it would be of interest to pharma bloggers and others to share a monthly list of the most-searched-for medications and medical conditions on eDrugSearch.com. Here are the top 25 searches for the month of September:
1. High Blood Pressure
2. Abilify
3. Provigil
4. Yasmin
5. Lipitor
6. Lamisil
7. Synthroid
8. Levitra
9. Phentermine
10. Vytorin
11. Topamax
12. [...]

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In this 10-minute video, Natalie, a lovely Austin, Texas-based nutritionist, discusses how to improve your diet so you can take fewer statins (cholesterol drugs like Simvastatin), proton pump inhibitors (drugs for heartburn and acid reflux like Nexium and Prilosec) and antidepressants (Prozac, Zoloft, etc.)

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We stumbled across a kind of soap opera/game show called “Moral Dilemmas” on a site called BustedHalo.com and thought we’d share it, since it involves a pharma rep.
Basically, the idea is to tell a story that sets up a moral dilemma, and then let visitors to the site debate what the character should do in [...]

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If you believe the comedy troupe Secret Pants, it can be dangerous to shop over the phone with brick-and-mortar pharmacies:

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Rite Aid Corp. — the third-biggest drugstore chain, which recently agreed to buy the Eckerd and Brooks chains as well — has seen its profits rise of late after its introduction of generic versions of drugs such as Zoloft.
Why? Because generic medications carry a higher profit margin for the big chains than brand-name drugs.
Let me [...]

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