Quality Control News and Research

RSS

Concerns raised over safety of 'electronic cigarettes'

The increasing popularity of 'electronic cigarettes' is causing concern in Britain.

12 Oct 2008

Health plans' quality of care improved in some areas in 2007, NCQA report says

Health plans' quality of care improved in 2007 -- the ninth consecutive year of continued improvements -- according to a study released Thursday by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

5 Oct 2008

Huckabee discusses need to focus on preventable health problems

Former Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Tuesday during the "State of Our Health" conference in Columbia, S.C., said that the U.S. must seek to decrease rates of obesity and other preventable health problems to help reduce health care costs, the AP/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

22 Sep 2008

FDA warns Ranbaxy Labs and issues import alert

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued two Warning Letters to Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., of the Republic of India, and an Import Alert for generic drugs produced by Ranbaxy's Dewas and Paonta Sahib plants in India.

16 Sep 2008

Massachusetts' proposed rule could lead to Federal lawsuit, Partners HealthCare warns

Massachusetts' largest private employer Partners HealthCare on Friday warned that the state could face a federal lawsuit if it implements a proposed rule to increase some companies' contributions to their workers' health coverage, the Boston Globe reports.

10 Sep 2008

Simple hardness test detects fake medicines

The fight against fake medicines could soon be aided by a small, portable device that quickly measures the hardness of a tablet, revealing whether it is counterfeit, according to research presented at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester.

7 Sep 2008

FDA grants CLIA waiver to American Bio Medica for drug test

American Bio Medica Corporation has announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted CLIA waived status to the Company's Rapid TOX point of collection drug test product line.

From Medica Corporation 27 Aug 2008

Media coverage of persistent vegetative state and end-of-life decision-making

In 1990, Theresa Schiavo, an American citizen, had a cardiac arrest that caused irreversible brain damage which led to a persistent vegetative state diagnosis. A few years later, this diagnosis became a source of conflict over the interruption of artificial nutrition.

10 Aug 2008

U.S. EPA calls out nation's largest manufacturer of hospital disinfectants

Consumers should never have to second-guess information on product labels, and through a recent settlement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Lonza Inc., the nation's largest manufacturer of hospital disinfectants, consumers will now assuredly be getting what they pay for.

4 Aug 2008

A counter to counterfeit drugs

The counterfeiting of medicines has been known of since around 1990 and is a growing problem-in both developing and developed countries. Counterfeit medicines are estimated as more than 10% of the global medicines market and in some developing countries it is thought to be as high as 50%. One prediction is that global counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion by 2010.

30 Jul 2008

Cell mechanism discovery may lead to new treatments for cystic fibrosis, other inherited diseases

Researchers in Japan and Canada have discovered a key component of the quality control mechanism that operates inside human cells - sometimes too well. The breakthrough has significant implications for the development of new treatments for cystic fibrosis (CF) and some other hereditary diseases, the researchers say. Their results were published July 25 in the journal Science.

29 Jul 2008

New technique measures formation of clumps of proteins in protein-based pharmaceuticals

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a technique to measure the formation of clumps of proteins in protein-based pharmaceuticals.

23 Jul 2008

Worldwide analysis of cancer survival finds wide variation between countries

Black men and women have substantially lower survival than white men and women in the United States, but US has the highest survival for prostate cancer of all 31 countries included.

16 Jul 2008

Advances in RNA research

RNA, the transporter of genetic information within the cell, has emerged from the shadow of DNA to become one of the hottest research areas of molecular biology, with implications for many diseases as well as understanding of evolution. But the field is complex, requiring access to the latest equipment and techniques of imaging, gene expression analysis and bioinformatics, as well as cross-pollination between multiple scientific disciplines.

10 Jul 2008

Aventix Pharma takes over key patents for innovative screening tool for treatments for cystic fibrosis

The rights to key patents for an innovative screening tool for treatments for cystic fibrosis were transferred today to Swiss biotech company Axentis Pharma AG.

26 Jun 2008

Evidence for an increased cancer risk following the use of radioactive Radium-224 in the therapy for Ankylosing Spondylitis

In the course of an epidemiological study, scientists of the Institute of Radiation Biology of the Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health - have established an unfavourable benefit-risk-ratio for ankylosing spondylitis patients treated with Radium-224 therapy (Rheumatology 2008; 47: 855-59).

23 Jun 2008

Roche chlamydia test approved in Europe

Roche has announced that its new test for detection of Chlamydia trachomatis has received CE Mark certification, allowing it to be sold for clinical use in the European Union.

15 Jun 2008

Elderly too often malnourished and unnoticed in hospital

New research has revealed the shocking plight of some of Australia's most vulnerable citizens.

21 May 2008

Facing the Presidential candidates; pollsters say sweeping health reform unlikely in new administration and congress

Despite the prominent role that health care reform is playing in the 2008 presidential election, leading Republican and Democratic pollsters agree that deep partisan divides among voters -- combined with a worsening economy -- may permit only incremental, rather than sweeping, changes to the health care system. The perspectives of political pollsters William McInturff and Celinda Lake are featured in a far-reaching thematic issue on health reform in the May/June 2008 issue of the journal Health Affairs.

13 May 2008

Lotion which glows under ultraviolet light lights up nasty bacteria

A team of Canadian scientists using a lotion which glows under ultraviolet light have shown that up to a third of patient toilets are not properly cleaned. Their findings, published in BioMed Central's journal, BMC Infectious Diseases, also show that spores from the nasty bacteria Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) linger in the loo even when it has been thoroughly wiped down.

11 May 2008