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New study suggests Ivermectin cuts Covid infections by around 75 per centMore than 30 trials globally found the drug caused improvements in treatmentThe study is set to be published in the US journal Frontiers of PharmacologyA cheap and safe drug widely used against parasites cuts Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths by about 75 per cent, a study shows.More than 30 trials across the world found that ivermectin causes ‘repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease.The peer-reviewed study, to be published in the US journal Frontiers of Pharmacology, says the evidence is so strong...

Some people harbor a strain of bacteria that chews through cardiac medication The next time you pop a pill, know that the microbes in your gut might get to it before you do. Some people harbor a strain of bacteria that inactivates a common cardiac drug, a finding that could explain why people have different reactions to some medications. “Microbes have long been known to ‘steal’ drugs by converting them into inactive forms,” says Peter Turnbaugh of Harvard University, who led the study. But picking out the specific culprits among the gut’s throngs of bacterial suspects has been a challenge...

The taste of beer, without any effect from alcohol itself, can trigger dopamine release in the brain that is associated with drinking and other drugs of abuse, researchers have claimed. Using positron emission tomography (PET), the researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine tested 49 men with two scans, one in which they tasted beer, and the second in which they tasted Gatorade. The researchers were looking for evidence of increased levels of dopamine, a brain neurotransmitter that has long been associated with alcohol and other drugs of abuse. The scans showed significantly more dopamine activity following the taste of...

Drugs made from magic mushrooms could help treat people with severe depression, a new study suggests. Scientists believe that the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, can turn down parts of the brain that are overactive in severely depressive patients, the Guardian reported. The drug appears to stop patients dwelling on themselves and their own perceived inadequacies. However, a bid by British scientists to carry out trials of psilocybin on patients in order to assess its full medical potential has been blocked by red tape relating to Britain’s strict drugs laws. Professor David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at...

New Delhi - It's a disease long associated with the elderly but is now diagnosed in younger people as well and with no permanent cure available till date. However, in what could give hope to thousands suffering from Alzheimer's Disease (AD), the pharmacology department in AIIMS has identified Ayurvedic drugs which could have a role in preventing the onset of AD and also restricting its spread in affected patients. AD is a degenerative neurological disorder leading to progressive loss of cognitive abilities, including the patient's memory due to a drop in chemicals — known as neurotransmitters — which transmits messages...

Enlarge Image Double whammy. Researchers have turned up a pill against heartburn that could be used to treat lung cancer and an antiepileptic pill that might treat Crohn's disease. Credit: Marina Sirota What if a cheap medicine sold over the counter turned out to be a cure against cancer or another deadly disease? Scientists have devised a new way of predicting such unexpected benefits of existing drugs, and they have confirmed two potential new therapies just to prove the point. "This promises new uses for drugs that have already been tested for their safety and offers a faster and...

Deaths of 51 U.S. patients who took widely prescribed drugs to treat attention deficit disorder prompted regulators to start watching for heart attacks, high blood pressure and other problems in 2004, a report released on Wednesday said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff did not say the drugs were responsible for the fatalities, but they urged close monitoring for "the rare occurrence of pediatric sudden death during stimulant therapy." "These reports themselves do not establish a causal relationship between these medications and cardiovascular adverse events," wrote Dr. Gerald Dal Pan, director of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, in...

Some people with depression who do not recover with an initial course of antidepressant therapy can increase their chances of finding relief by trying other drug treatments, researchers are reporting today. The study is the most extensive of people undergoing multiple treatments for depression. The findings underscore the benefits of treatment with antidepressants and its limits. Although 20 percent to 30 percent of the patients who used follow-up regimens recovered, the rest did not. The report is the second phase of a government-financed study that has tracked more than 2,800 depressed adults under the care of doctors or psychiatrists. In...

Soon the tentacles of the BALCO doping case had reached into professional baseball and football, into Olympic track and field, into championship boxing, into the very consciousness of the American sports fan. There was grand-jury testimony and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sanctions and congressional hearings with pumped-up athletes stuffed into designer suits talking about designer steroids. And now the trail has led to a three-story beige building in the cornfields of central Illinois, to a nutritional supplement company called Proviant Technologies and what investigators believe is the true genius behind the whole operation. To a 39-year-old organic chemist who signed off...

Drugs, not just age and disease, are killing Canadian seniors. As many as 3,300 seniors die every year due to adverse drug reactions, according to a CBC estimate done by analyzing Health Canada's adverse drug reaction database (obtained under Access to Information). It's an estimate that has been judged credible by a number of researchers who study pharmacology and adverse drug reactions. "The 3,300 deaths number and the way it's been calculated by CBC I think is quite cautious and is realistic. It's likely to be higher than that, but nobody at the present time has a way of really...