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The number of youngsters in the UK being prescribed weight-loss drugs has risen 15-fold in recent years, a study suggests.

It has been more than 50 years since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last approved a new medicine specifically for lupus - when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Existing treatments have been 'borrowed' from other disorders and the risk/benefit ratio of these treatments is far from optimal. However, hope is on the horizon.

Treatment for psychiatric patients is better than ever, and it's thanks to diagnoses and drugsRichard Bentall is right: psychological and social psychiatry research has been a Cinderella to biological and genetic explanations (Diagnoses are psychiatry's star signs. Let's listen more and drug people less, 31 August). He is also spot on about the exaggeration and hype of many of their 'breakthroughs'.However, much of his article is so one-sided that those messages risk being lost. It is simply untrue that the 'outcomes for patients suffering from the severest forms of psychiatric disorder . have hardly changed since the Victorian period'. Presumably Bentall is referring here to the proportion of schizophrenia patients who are still symptomatic into old age (which has not changed dramatically). medical treatment is, however, not just about 'curing' diseases but reducing suffering and disability.Wellbeing and functioning during the schizophrenia patient's lifetime have improved enormously.

Knopp Neurosciences Inc. announced that it received Fast Track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the development of KNS-760704 in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Knopp has completed the randomized, placebo-controlled portion of its Phase 2 studies of KNS-760704 in 102 ALS patients and expects to initiate Phase 3 studies in the U.S. and Europe in 2010.

NEW YORK -- Score another victory for the cheap, cholesterol-lowering wonder drugs known as statins. People getting an artery unclogged or repaired were much less likely to die or have a heart attack afterward if they took preventive doses of the pills before and after their operations, a Dutch study showed.

Drug maker was accused of marketing drugs for uses not approved by FDA

Sex and scandal have not been enough to make major sellers out of books about Bernard Madoff.

The 'disgusting' blob that Fred Denegri's wife says she poured out of his Diet Pepsi can was probably a gutted frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The 'disgusting' blob that Fred Denegri's wife says she poured out of his Diet Pepsi can was probably a gutted frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a record $2.3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil liability for illegally promoting certain pharmaceuticals, the Justice department announced Wednesday.