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Students in the Humanities and Medicine Program get spots in med school as long as they meet certain requirements — but don’t take the usual pre-med pre-requisites.

Read the original here:  Mt. Sinai Program Lets Some Pre-Meds Swap Orgo for Shakespeare

A report coming out tomorrow will recommend that the government intervene to put limits on the amount of sodium in food, and the FDA will act on that advice, the Washington Post reports.

The FDA is considering cutting short a trial comparing the safety of two diabetes drugs — GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia and Takeda’s Actos, the WSJ reports. Given that Avandia has been linked since 2007 to an increased risk of heart attacks, some scientists have said it’s not ethical to put study participants at risk. If the trial is stopped, the FDA will also consider asking Glaxo to stop selling the drug.

The recent history of a medicine used to treat gout provides another chapter in the book of unintended consequences. We’ll recount some highlights of the tale as spelled out in this morning’s WSJ:

“In evaluating an anticoagulant,” says heart researcher Michael Ezekowitz, “it’s all about getting the dose right.”

That’s the next big challenge for Merck and its partner Portola as they prepare to advance the closely held South San Francisco biotech’s drug betrixaban into a large-scale clinical trial in the burgeoning race to develop a replacement for the heart drug warfarin.

The annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology gets underway this weekend and some heart-related items are in the news this morning:

Another day, another stock-price jump.

First, the preliminaries: An advisory panel this afternoon recommended the FDA approve a lung drug developed by InterMune, with majorities of the outside experts saying the proposed treatment appeared effective and safe.

The FDA is expected to decide by early May whether to go along with the panel’s recommendation on pirfenidone, which is intended to treat patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The FDA usually follows the lead of its advisory committees.

A new pill-container top called a “GlowCap” is equipped with a wireless transmitter that notifies patients when it’s time to take their medicine. WSJ’s Anna Mathews explains how it works.

Read the original: Digits: Beep! Time to Take Your Medicine/a>

Last we heard of Fablyn, an experimental bone drug for the treatment of postmenopausal women, U.S. regulators were holding off on approval after FDA staff and outside reviewers raised concerns and Pfizer, the pill’s maker, was shopping it around to other companies.

High-tech medical equipment can improve outcomes for patients — but it can also create new complications and safety risks.

This morning’s New York Times makes that point by examining Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy — a high-tech system for treating cancer patients with radiation.