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Despite Biden administration efforts, children’s hospitals across the country report some chemotherapy drugs commonly used for leukemia and lymphoma are hard to find. Pediatric cancer doctors are sounding the alarm about a growing shortage of chemotherapy drugs for children. The dwindling supplies add another layer to the ongoing cancer drug shortage crisis that’s left doctors scrambling and forced patients to make difficult choices about treatments since early February. The Biden administration has taken steps to address the crisis, in some cases successfully: Doctors say that shortages of two cancer drugs, carboplatin and cisplatin, have eased significantly in recent weeks. However,...

Liver cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer worldwide. Most patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, which leaves them with few treatment options. Unfortunately, the first-line drugs are not very effective and offer only modest clinical benefits. Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to develop new therapies for HCC by analyzing specific genetic abnormalities. One of the most common mutations in HCC occurs in CTNNB1 gene, which encodes a protein called β-catenin. However, no therapies targeting β-catenin-related pathways have been approved yet. With this goal, the researchers first conducted a screening experiment using...

Annie England Noblin, a 40-year-old resident of rural Missouri, had never had a problem filling her monthly prescription for methotrexate until this week. …… It also happens to be one of the first medicines prescribed by doctors to treat rheumatoid arthritis

A POTENT new pill has been developed which harnesses the body’s natural inflammation-busting ability to beat crippling arthritis. The “smart” drug not only helps relieve the devastating joint inflammation which leaves sufferers in daily agony but researchers also say it has no side-effects. The breakthrough offers real hope that the hundreds of thousands of Britons struck down by rheumatoid arthritis could soon be treated with a powerful medication which uses their own body to fight the disease naturally. Current drug treatments, once the disease has taken hold, have unpleasant and potentially dangerous side-effects. Methotrexate, or MTX, is the standard treatment...

<p>A national drug shortage is threatening to disrupt cancer therapy for 24-year-old Tammie Miura and at least 100 Hawaii patients who use the medicine as a main source of treatment.</p> <p>Hospital officials nationwide are fearful that the drug, methotrexate — a crucial medicine in the treatment of childhood cancers — will be exhausted within the next two weeks after a major supplier stopped producing it in November. Hawaii has not yet seen a shortage because local hospitals typically stock up on the drug, though medical providers and patients are worried that could soon change.</p>

A mother is suing the obstetrician who she claims misdiagnosed her pregnancy as ectopic and injected her foetus with an abortant, resulting in birth defects. Thirty-five-year-old Rachel Schoger of Caldwell, Idaho, says she was four weeks five days pregnant with her daughter, Seraphine, when her doctor injected her foetus with chemotherapy drug methotrexate in 2006. Two weeks later, the baby was found inside the uterus. And against all odds, Seraphine made it through term. But the little girl will never lead a normal life, her mother says, after she was born without reproductive organs or a rectum as a result...

FT. LUPTON, Colo. -- She is six weeks pregnant and when she went to the pharmacy to pick up an antibiotic her doctor had prescribed, the pharmacist gave her an abortion drug by mistake. Mareena Silva might lose her unborn child because of the prescription drug error, which occurred last Thursday. "I took it because I thought it was mine," Silva said. After she took it, Silva started feeling nauseous. "I came back and I looked at the bottle and it wasn't my name," she said. The methotrexate was intended for a 59-year-old woman with the exact same last name...

Extract led to more or less absorption in rats, depending on the drug SALT LAKE CITY — Licorice has long been used as a good treatment for plenty of ills, but the compound that gives the extract its healing powers may also interfere with certain drugs, suggests new research in rats. The findings, presented March 24 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, suggest that some patients should hold off from sweets made with the plant extract. Glycyrrhizin, the active compound in licorice, is a major constituent found in the roots of Glycyrrhiza species, a group of plants in...

BEIJING (AFP) — Chinese authorities have ordered the recall of two contaminated leukaemia drugs blamed for adverse reactions among child patients, state media reported Sunday. Most of the drugs, produced by a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai, have already been recovered and authorities have tracked down the remainder, Xinhua news agency reported, quoting the Shanghai government. Authorities suspended production and sale of the drugs, methotrexate and cytarabin hydrochloride, after receiving reports that several child leukaemia patients experienced difficulties in walking after being injected with them. The drugs had also caused urine retention among some leukaemia patients. The health ministry and the...