Updates on recent FDA approvals, appointments, acquisitions and alliances in the pharmaceutical industry.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched an online gateway providing access to new and comprehensive resources on the health reform law.
In August 2010, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed to change the reimbursement rate of separately payable, non-pass-through drugs and biologicals.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center have found a way to create a vaccine using T cells that activate a distinct part of the immune system.
In Massachusetts, a panel of state officials and healthcare executives moved toward global payments by drafting a first-in-the-nation blueprint for scrapping current fee-forservice payments.
U.S. investigators identified and quantitatively combined all available studies evaluating IgG trough levels and pneumonia incidence in PIDD patients receiving IVIG replacement therapy for hypogammaglobulinemia.
Specialty medications costing more than $600 per year are now classified under two new tiers of Medicare Part D drug benefit plan.
A team of investigators found that delivery of influenza vaccine at 60 percent of the standard dose by either IM or ID route elicited antibody responses generally similar to full-dose IM vaccination among healthy elderly persons.
Benlysta, an experimental lupus drug from GlaxoSmithKline chemically known as belimumab, significantly reduced patients’ symptoms in a recent drug trial.
Setpoint Medical, a startup company based in Boston, is developing a nerve stimulator designed to dampen the out-ofcontrol immune system that triggers autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.is investigating whether its drug Laquinimod, which is in a Phase III clinical trial for treating multiple sclerosis, also is suitable for treating lupus.
In March 2010, the federal vaccines court ruled in three separate cases that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal does not cause autism.