Bonus For GPs If Patients Join Drug Trials In Plan To Lure Firms To NHS
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
£650m boost for medical research after number of participants slumps
These three paragraphs outline what is to be done.
Tens of thousands more patients will be signed up for clinical trials as ministers promise drug companies better access to the NHS to expand the economy and develop cutting-edge treatments.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is promising a £650 million package to boost life sciences as he attempts to lure pharmaceutical giants to Britain.
GPs will be offered financial incentives to recruit patients into trials of new treatments and hospitals will be given research targets under plans to reverse a slump in clinical testing while the NHS struggles with the backlog from Covid-19.
It all sounds good to me.
I have been involved in several trials and medical research projects.
- As part of my coeliac disease diagnosis, one endoscopy was performed by Rebecca Fitzgerald at Cambridge, as she was taking samples of bile fluids for her research into Barrett’s esophagus.
- After the death of my wife, I was interviewed by PhD students in the Psychology Department at Liverpool University for their research into widowhood.
- Oxford University interviewed me on diet for their coeliac disease research.
- After my stroke, I spent an entertaining afternoon at the University of East London doing balance tests by computer. Their aim was to develop a reliable balance test for stroke and other patients, that could be carried out by physiotherapists quickly, than by more expensive doctors.
- I have also been on a drug trial at Queen Mary University, but that drug was useless and had no good or bad affects, so the trial was halted. However, it did lead to other enjoyable activities in the field of patient relations with treatment and research.
As a confirmed coward, I should note that with the exception of the drug trial, all of the other projects were low risk.
I should say, that I also sponsor pancreatic cancer research at Liverpool University, in memory of my son, who died from the disease. I wrote about the first Liverpool project in There’s More To Liverpool Than Football And The Beatles!.
A Database Of Projects Open For Volunteers
I believe that this is needed, so that those like me, who like to contribute to research can volunteer.
Perhaps some of the £650 million, that has been promised by Jeremy Hunt, could be used to create the database.
I also believe the database could be used for other non-medical research.
Are Boots Marching In The Wrong Direction?
My family has used Boots at the Angel since about 1900.
But have they ever been so disorganised?
Yesterday, I went to pick up some Warfarin, which I have taking for a dozen years.
It must be one of the most common and cheapest drugs they dispense.
I needed both 1 mg and 3 mg tablets.
But they didn’t have any 1 mg tablets.
The pharmacist explained that Boots didn’t have any.
Surely, this is a bit like Sainsbury’s running out of baked beans?
I Can Now See Why A Big Pharma Company Liked My Software Daisy
Yesterday, I went to a seminar about medical research.
There was a presentation, where data in several dimensions was shown and the data was crying out for a Daisy Chart.
A Daisy Chart
This chart is a very simple presentation of telephone data, but I can imagine arcs showing factors like Dose, Blood Pressure, Sex, Patient Satisfaction etc.
Note.
- This chart is what I call a Day of the Week/Hour of the Day chart, which is a powerful way of looking at any time-based data, like faults or A & E arrivals.
- You can click on the nodes and links of the chart to access the data underneath. So if you wanted all female patients with high blood pressure in a separate Excel spreadsheet, this is possible with a couple of clicks.
- The charts can also be clipped from the screen and inserted into reports.
Daisy was used by one Big Pharma company twenty years ago and after yesterday’s presentation, I can understand, why they used it.
The seminar changed my mind about my attitude to Daisy and I got rather fired up about its possibilities.
Who Needs A Spoonful Of Sugar?
This article on The Times is entitled Lie Right To Help The Medicine Go Down.
These are the first two paragraphs of the article.
Next time you take an aspirin, try speeding up its effect by lying on your right. But don’t turn over, or you could be waiting a long time for pain relief.
Scientists have modelled the dynamics of the stomach in an attempt to understand how posture can affect drug absorption.
Strangely, I generally lie on my right.
In my life, I have done a lot of mathematically modelling of all sorts of systems.
It has surprised me several times how unexpected the results have been.
Moonshot Is The Spanner In The Covid-19 Works The Country Needs
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-title of the article.
Antivirals like molnupiravir are the third line in our long-term fight against coronavirus.
The article describes how scientists in Oxfordshire looked for an antiviral that could be Covid-19’s nemesis, which Tom Whipple called molecular kryptonite.
The American pharmaceutical[ molnupiravir has been the first antiviral to be licenced for Covid-19, but it is pricey.
But helped by the Diamond Light Source, it appears that, progress has been made in Oxfordshire.
Tom Whipple says this.
After 18 months of study they last week gained funding from the Wellcome Trust to narrow the options to one, in a project called Covid Moonshot.
And this.
The goal of Moonshot is a generic drug that is cheap, plentiful and, a stipulation of the project, off-patent from the beginning.
Has the Diamond Light Source has struck again?
- The Diamond Light Source And COVID-19
- The Diamond Light Source And Ebola
- The Diamond Light Source And Malaria
The Diamond Light Source might have cost £ 400 million and needs a budget of £ 40 million a year to run, but it is certainly starting to pay back the investment.
Has Ciprofloxacin Attacked My Tendon?
After my gallstone operation, the hospital gave me a week’s Ciprofloxacin, which is an antibiotic, to take.
I took one tablet on Thursday evening and another on Friday morning. But as I returned from shopping at the Angel, it felt like I had a splinter in the heel of my left foot.
The pain was so bad I could hardly walk this morning.
I have had plantar fasciitis in the past in my left foot, and as someone, who has spent a working life looking for connections in databases, I wondered if the Ciprofloxacin had anything to do with it.
So I looked up the data sheet on MedLinePlus, which is a trusted site, from the US Library of Medicine.
The data sheet starts with this Important Warning.
This is the first paragraph of the warning.
Taking ciprofloxacin increases the risk that you will develop tendinitis (swelling of a fibrous tissue that connects a bone to a muscle) or have a tendon rupture (tearing of a fibrous tissue that connects a bone to a muscle) during your treatment or for up to several months afterward. These problems may affect tendons in your shoulder, your hand, the back of your ankle, or in other parts of your body. Tendinitis or tendon rupture may happen to people of any age, but the risk is highest in people over 60 years of age. Tell your doctor if you have or have ever had a kidney, heart, or lung transplant; kidney disease; a joint or tendon disorder such as rheumatoid arthritis (a condition in which the body attacks its own joints, causing pain, swelling, and loss of function); or if you participate in regular physical activity. Tell your doctor and pharmacist if you are taking oral or injectable steroids such as dexamethasone, methylprednisolone (Medrol), or prednisone (Rayos). If you experience any of the following symptoms of tendinitis, stop taking ciprofloxacin, rest, and call your doctor immediately: pain, swelling, tenderness, stiffness, or difficulty in moving a muscle. If you experience any of the following symptoms of tendon rupture, stop taking ciprofloxacin and get emergency medical treatment: hearing or feeling a snap or pop in a tendon area, bruising after an injury to a tendon area, or inability to move or to bear weight on an affected area.
After reading that, I decided the best thing to do was to call a doctor, so I dialled 111 and within three hours I was seeing a young local doctor in his surgery.
He decided to be prudent and changed the antibiotics.
I have since found out from this page on celiac.com, that not all Ciprofloxacin is gluten-free. Mine was from a company called Torrent.
Covid: Merck’s Antiviral Pill Molnupiravir Slashes Chances Of Illness And Death
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
The title almost sounds to go to be true, but on reading the article, that seems to be even better.
- Halves the chance of going to hospital.
- Slashes chance of death.
Xi Jinping was said to be unavailable for comment.
Coronavirus: Protein Treatment Trial ‘A Breakthrough’
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
These are the first three paragraphs of the article.
The preliminary results of a clinical trial suggest a new treatment for Covid-19 reduces the number of patients needing intensive care, according to the UK company that developed it.
The treatment from Southampton-based biotech Synairgen uses a protein called interferon beta which the body produces when it gets a viral infection.
The protein is inhaled directly into the lungs of patients with coronavirus, using a nebuliser, in the hope that it will stimulate an immune response.
I first heard of Synairgen about five months ago, when I read about the company in the Sunday Times. It was only a few words, but it did say, that they were developing an inhaled beta interferon for use by Covid-19 patients or those with lung problems.
I should say, that I know about inhaled pharmaceuticals. Not because, I’ve ever used any, but because I funded the development of a very successful metered-dose inhaler for asthma drugs.
Two inventors; Stephen Dunne and Terry Weston came to me looking for finance to complete the development of an aerosol value, that instead of using CFCs or HCFCs as a propellant, used purified air. In fact it was pure nitrogen, but the average user of a deodorant or fly-spray doesn’t know that nitrogen is a constituent of air and thinks it’s posionous.
We formed a company called Dunne Miller Weston or DMW.
It was a technical success and the company’s MP; John Gummer, took details of the breakthrough to the conference that resulted in the Montreal Protocol.
The device and the associated patents were sold to Johnson & Johnson.
The two inventors had other ideas and one was for a metered dose inhaler for asthma drugs.
I remember that they were able to get a grant from Glaxo to prove the concept of the device.
Because, the full development would need more money, we now had a fourth partner; Mike.
I remember going with Mike to see Glaxo and we were unable to reach agreement on how Glaxo would contribute to the full development. They tended to give out these grants and I got the impression, that ours was one of the first to get a positive result and they didn’t know how to handle it.
But, it didn’t matter, as we were able to raise the funding from elsewhere and develop a successful device.
This was sold to Boehringer Ingelheim for a lot of money and all investors were very satisfied. Their product name is Respimat.
Glaxo carried on using an HCFC device.
I earned a reasonable about of money from my investment, but I also learned a lot about pharmaceuticals.
- At the time, New Zealand had the highest level of asthma inhaler use in the world.
- Pharmaceutical companies are very conservative.
- Doctors tend to give out inhalers like toys.
- Naked flames are a big cause of asthma.
But the most important knowledge I acquired was over a drink with an engineer in a pharmaceutical company, that the fine spray we obtained with our device would have lots of medical applications, including delivery of insulin for diabetics. We’d already had very good feedback, from test users in Germany.
Some other applications are stored in my brain. One could be a very big seller in the modern world!
So when I saw the report in The Sunday Times, I bought a few shares in Synairgen.
I have been well-rewarded today!
My Past Is Worrying Me!
It must have been in the early 1970s, when I was acting as a mathematical-modelling consultant.
I was asked to do some modelling by a major drug company of the propagation of a virus through the UK population.
Their aim was to show how serious these pandemics could be and they wanted to get substantial grants from the Government to fund various lines of research.
With their data and the model I built, we were able to show how a dangerous pandemic could evolve.
But I never found out how successful they were in obtaining the money needed to start the research!
It does look like this pandemic could be the one that researchers at the company were predicting nearly fifty years ago.
Asthma Carbon Footprint ‘As Big As Eating Meat’
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Many people with asthma could cut their carbon footprint and help save the environment by switching to “greener” medications, UK researchers say.
I know more than a bit about metered dose inhalers.
I backed an inhaler, which is marketed under the name of Respimat, as when I saw the technology of the company, my physics knowledge told me that they had something.
The device was purely mechanical, with no batteries, electrical supply, gases or noxious chemicals. It effectively used the principle of an old-fashioned air pistol, that fired drugs instead of pellets.
I still have the prototype in my garage.
It was a bit of a roller-coaster of an investment, but I made a good return in the end, when we sold the device to Bohringer Ingelheim.
I was saying what Cambridge University are now saying, nearly twenty years ago!
The Anonymous Widower 