PHARMA LITERATI

Take a moment to think about your health over the last year. How often have you taken a painkiller to manage that headache or fever? These powerful tools have the ability to save you from a day of pain, allowing the survival of that long shift at work or half-marathon which has slowly crept up on you. How many relatives or friends have had their health improved through life saving medications such as chemotherapy or anti-depressants. There are a large variety of medications widely used today that have transformed our lives and we would struggle in a world without them. Many are aware that it is advances in medical research which have enabled the development and availability of these. However, it is often forgotten that when developing such drugs scientists will usually take their inspiration from similar compounds found in nature. But where? This article gives much deserved recognition to nature’s own pharmacologists . After all, these magicians are our true heroes. So, what nat...

India will collaborate with UK to conduct `Add-Aspirin' global drug clinical trials to investigate whether the use of the widely used medicine, aspirin, prevents recurrence of the most common cancers, like breast, gastric and oesophagus . Aspirin is widely-used as an analgesic to relieve pain, as well as to manage heart disease and stroke in certain patients. Till now, there are only “incidental findings'' that aspi ings'' that aspirin can prevent the cancer from coming back in patients who have earlier undergone undergone treatment and are `cured' from the disease. While the UK trials have already started, India will begin the trials as soon as the approval comes in. Researchers at Tata Memorial Hospital have submitted the application to the ethics committee, and plan to conduct these trials on over 1,600 subjects in the first quarter this year, Dr Manju Sengar medical oncologist at the Mumbai-based hospital told TOI. The trials to be conduct...