Everyday medicines like antibiotics, acne pills and other routine treatments that are already in bathroom cabinets could be used in the battle against dementia as developing new drugs is too costly and slow, experts have suggested.

According to experts, it is time to re-examine medicines already in circulation as cheaper, quicker alternatives to new treatments.

Many have multiple effects on the body, so some could be able to ease the effects of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

There are only four Alzheimer's drugs in use which can help relieve symptoms but do nothing to stop damage to the brain.

"Defeating dementia is one of the biggest challenges facing both medicine and society as a whole," the Daily Mail quoted Professor Clive Ballard as saying.

"Developing new drugs is incredibly important but it comes with a huge price tag and, for those affected by dementia, an unimaginable wait," Ballard said.

It can take up to 20 years and 600 million pounds to create a drug from scratch. Hopes of quickly adding to available treatments were recently dashed when several promising new ones failed the final stage of testing.

So Mr Ballard, professor of age-related diseases at King's College London, and other experts turned to the possibility of using everyday drugs.

They drew up a short-list, which includes liraglutide - a diabetes treatment that also acts on the brain.

Others include minocycline, an antibiotic for acne, and acitretin, which treats the skin condition psoriasis. There is also a family of blood pressure drugs called calcium channel blockers.

Some of these medicines cost less than 50p a tablet.
"The idea that drugs for other conditions could fight Alzheimer's is appealing," Rebecca Wood, chief executive of Alzheimer's Research UK, said.

"But it's not yet clear that such a drug exists. Alzheimer's is a complex disease with many risk factors," Wood added.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

Eating even a single junk food meal can be enough to raise the risk of suffering a heart attack, cardiovascular disease or stroke in later life, new study led by an Indian-origin researcher has warned.

Experts at the EPIC Centre of Canada's Montreal Heart Institute, affiliated to the University of Montreal, say the key to staving off heart disease and other illnesses caused by clogged arteries is to switch to a Mediterranean-style diet, based on healthy foods like oily fish, fresh vegetables and olive oil, the Daily Express reported.


Dr Anil Nigam, director of research at EPIC and associate professor at the university's Faculty of Medicine compared the effects of junk food and a typical Mediterranean meal on the ability of arteries to dilate after a temporary five-minute blockage.

The research looked at 28 nonsmoking men, who ate a Mediterranean-type meal first and then a junk food-type meal one week later.

After the Mediterrean-style meal the men's arteries were found to dilate normally and maintain good blood flow.

But after eating the junk food the arteries of the study participants dilated 24 per cent less than they did when in a fasting state.

The findings were presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.

With a rise in the number of dengue cases, health minister Suresh Shetty directedBrihamumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials on Tuesday to take up a cleanliness drive against the disease.

He also wants it to ensure that dengue-causing mosquitoes are eradicated from places with water logging by identifying such areas.

BMC officials were asked to carry out an awareness drive among citizens to educate them about the importance of cleanliness. Health department officials were instructed to make sure that drugs were properly stocked.

As the state and BMC are gearing up to combat dengue, doctors feel that the number of cases will soon drop, but are instead seeing a rise in malaria cases. Dr Pratit Samdhani, consultant physician, Jaslok Hospital, said, "Malaria cases are slightly on a rise."

Moreover, in a education committee meeting on Tuesday, the BMC decided to fumigate all schools in the city, including private ones, to deal with dengue.

Congress corporator Ajanta Yadav raised a point of order and said, "There is a possibility that school premises have breeding spots. So, an anti-mosquito drive is needed."

Committee chairman Vitthal Khartmol said that all municipal schools should be surveyed to verify this possibility.

"The BMC should take immediate preventive measures and submit a report to the committee next month," he said.

All generic drug makers, including Ranbaxy Laboratories, Cipla, Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Lupin, are now required to pay a fee to the US drug regulator while seeking permission to launch their products in the world's largest drug market.

The US Food and Drugs Administration (US FDA) recently made amendments to its law to introduce a generic drug user fee. According to the new law - The Generic Drugs User Fee Amendment (GDUFA) of 2012 - companies will have to pay a fee ranging between $17,435 and $51,520 an application to seek an approval. The fee, in force since October 1, is also for applications pending without a tentative approval.

Besides, drug makers will also have to pay for inspection of their facilities by the FDA outside the US, and for supplying active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for manufacturing generic drugs in the US.

However, the current rates are in effect only till September 30, 2013, and will be revised every year.

According to US FDA, companies will have to pay $17,434 per generic drug application pending without tentative approval till October 1. For applications seeking generic drug approval on or after October 1, companies will have to pay $51,520, whereas for Drug Master File (DMF-filed for supplying API or raw material for generic drugs), companies are required to churn out $21,340.

However, a firm has to pay only a one-time fee on DMFs whenever they supply it for a new generic drug.

"The DMF fee is a one-time fee, incurred on first reference of the DMF on or after October 1, 2012. This fee is not incurred every time a DMF is referenced," the FDA said.

It added, "GDUFA specifies that the amount of the fee for a facility located outside the United States and its territories and possessions shall not be less than $15,000 and not more than $30,000 higher than the amount of the fee for a domestic facility. The differential amount is designed to reflect the higher costs of inspections funded, in part, through GDUFA."

Before this, FDA did not charge any fee for generic drug applications. However, under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), the regulator collects a fee from companies for any newly innovated medicine.

While the move is expected to have a financial impact on generic drug makers with various companies already making quarterly provisions, US FDA claims that both patients and the industry would benefit as the fee would enable the regulator to do faster approvals.

"GDUFA will deliver greater predictability and timeliness to the review of generic drug applications, slashing review times and saving industry time and money," the FDA said.

According to the FDA estimates, during the five-year period from financial year 2013 through 2017, the generic drug industry will provide FDA an inflation-adjusted $299 million each year through user fees, supplementing the agency's allotted budget for assessing the safety of generic drugs.

The proposed generic user fee is expected to give FDA the additional resources required to expedite and improve the review of drugs. Currently, it takes the regulator an average of 30 months to review an application; it aims to reduce the review time to 10 months by 2017.

The development is significant as a large number of Indian companies are targeting various generic launches in the US, in the wake of expiring patents.

"We have a number of launches planned and we have a total of 178 fillings with the US FDA, so we have made a provisioning for the generic user fee," says Vinita Gupta, Chief Executive, Lupin Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Even companies like Ranbaxy, Cipla Sun Pharma and Glenmark have a huge pipeline of drugs pending with the US FDA for approval.

In 2011, the ANDA fillings in the US went up to 946, against 793 in 2006. This led to a sharp increase in the backlog of processing ANDAs. Analyst estimates show 2,696 generic drug applications were pending with the FDA as of December 2011, as compared to 1,216 in December 2006.

The US generic market, 70-75 per cent of the total US pharmaceutical market, is currently estimated at $350 billion and seen to grow at 3 to 5 per cent yearly. Sales by Indian companies make up for around 10 per cent of the US market.

Around 1,000 generic applications are filed in the US market every year by Indian drug companies.

Pancreatic cancer, which tops mortality rates of all cancers, with Apple`s founder Steve Jobs being its most famous victim, is many diseases rolled into one, says new research.

A large-scale analysis done by the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), University of Queensland, defines the complexity of underlying mutations responsible for pancreatic cancers in more than 100 patients.

The analysis, Australia`s contribution to the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), brings together the world`s leading scientists to identify the genetic drivers behind 50 different cancer types, the journal Naturetoday reported.

"We found over 2,000 mutated genes in total, ranging from the KRAS gene, which was mutated in about 90 percent of samples, to hundreds of gene mutations that were only present in one or two percent of tumours," said professor at the IMB, Sean Grimmond, according to an IMB statement.

"So while tumours may look very similar under the microscope, genetic analysis reveals as many variations in each tumour as there are patients," Grimmond said.

"This demonstrates that so-called `pancreatic cancer` is not one disease, but many, and suggests that people who seemingly have the same cancer might need to be treated quite differently."
Pancreatic cancer is one of the few for which survival has not improved substantially over the past 40 years.

Andrew Biankin, professor at Garvan Institute of Medical Research, along with Grimmond, led an international team of more than 100 researchers who sequenced the genomes of 100 pancreatic tumours and compared them to normal tissue to determine the genetic changes that lead to this cancer.

"In this study, we found a set of genes, the axon guidance pathway, that is frequently damaged in pancreatic cancer patients and is associated with a potentially poorer outcome for those patients. It is a new marker of pancreatic cancer that can be used to direct prognoses and treatments," said Biankin.

"`Personalised medicine`, where the molecular profile of a patient is matched to the best treatment, is the way the world is moving for many diseases, not just cancer."

"The challenge now will be in moving from population healthcare and a `one drug fits all` model to personalised healthcare.

"First we must take the time to develop the necessary genetic knowledge and implement health systems to translate that knowledge effectively," added Biankin.

Biankin and Grimmond acknowledged the vital assistance of the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative, a network of more than 20 hospitals and research institutions Australia-wide, with over 200 members - surgeons, pathologists, nurses and researchers - that all contributed to the project.