Author Archives: Sarah Houlton

NICE Stats Spur Controversy and Back Patting

By Sarah Houlton | Published: September 23, 2009
The UK’s National Health Service has released its first statistics that show how NICE approval has affected medicines uptake in the UK. The NHS Information Centre’s Metrics Working Group looked at 26 medicines that the NICE has said should be reimbursed and how they were prescribed in 2008. It then compared the actual usage with [...]
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UK Animal Tests on the Rise

By Sarah Houlton | Published: September 2, 2009
Image by epicnom via Flickr Latest government figures show a big rise in the number of animal experiments, but this is underpinned by an increase in investment in research The number of animal experiments carried out in the UK last year topped 3.5 million, representing a 14 percent increase on the year before. However, industry claims this [...]
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Statins Get Boost from New Study

By Sarah Houlton | Published: July 22, 2009
Image via Wikipedia Statins should be given to people with high blood pressure or diabetes, even if they don’t have heart disease, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. While several studies have shown that statins benefit those with cardiovascular disease, this is the first large study which looked at statins as primary [...]
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Pharma Accused of Keeping Good Generics Down

By Sarah Houlton | Published: July 15, 2009
Image via Wikipedia The European Commission has accused the pharmaceutical industry of delaying the entry of generic drugs to the market. As a result, it intends to step up its scrutiny of the sector under EU antitrust law. “We must have more competition and less red tape in pharmaceuticals,” claimed Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. “The inquiry [...]
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