In the old days, sales representatives from drug companies would chat up local pharmacists to learn what drugs doctors were prescribing. Now such shoulder-rubbing is becoming a quaint memory — thanks to vast databases of patient and doctor information being used by pharmaceutical companies to market drugs. (New York Times)

People and policymakers may eventually wake up to the fact that we are not a bunch of sick individuals, each of us having a bunch of psychiatric diagnoses, cumulatively constituting a sick society. This is a myth generated by an overly ambitious psychiatry and a remarkably greedy pharmaceutical industry. (Wired)

IF A new and deadly strain of influenza were to arise, putting together a vaccine against it in the least possible time would be a priority. To test how quickly that could be done a group of researchers have just had a race with themselves. (The Economist)

Injectable nanoparticles developed at MIT may someday eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin. (Phys.org)

Advanced genetic engineering is already changing vaccine development and could make inroads into other branches of medicine. (MIT Technology Review)

The clinical study demonstrates for the first time that the India-developed rotavirus vaccine ROTAVAC- is efficacious in preventing severe rotavirus diarrhoea in low-resource settings in India. ROTAVAC- significantly reduced severe rotavirus diarrhoea by more than half-56 percent during the first year of life, with protection continuing into the second year of life. Moreover, the vaccine also showed impact against severe diarrhoea of any cause. (News-Medical)

Dr. Tria may be an outlier, but gifts and payments to physicians from drug and medical device companies have been rampant in medicine for decades. Over a two-and-a-half-year period, device and drug companies shelled out over $76 million just to physicians licensed in Massachusetts, according to a study published online this month in The New England Journal of Medicine. That amount does not include outlays of less than $50, which are exempt from disclosure. (New York Times)

Thinking about cancer as an ecosystem is giving biologists access to a new armoury of mathematical tools for tackling it, such as evolutionary game theory. (MIT Technology Review)

Researchers have developed a novel nanoparticle DNA hybridization device which can identify different species of bacteria in less than 2.5 hours. (Forbes)

The new innovation includes a nano biotechnology hemostatic mesh, which creates a mechanical barrier stopping blood flow in wounds and integrates both physical and chemical protection, and antibacterial properties. (The Wall Street Journal)

DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has awarded $6 million to a team of researchers to develop nanotechnology therapies for the treatment of traumatic brain injury and associated infections. (Nanowerk)

In 2013, neither Barry Bonds nor Roger Clemens made the Baseball Hall of Fame, even with their clearly superior records, because they used steroids. This was despite the fact that, as a New York Times editorial put it, the Hall of Fame is hardly a Hall of Virtue, filled as it is with “lowlifes, boozers and bigots.” Steroid use is apparently a different level of sin: It is cheating. (Slate)

UCLA researchers led by Drs. Peiyee Lee and Richard Gatti at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to advance disease-in-a-dish modeling of a rare genetic disorder, Ataxia Telangiectasia (A-T). Their discovery shows the positive effects of drugs that may lead to effective new treatments for the neurodegenerative disease. (News-Medical)

Randles, along with UBC professor Steve Heine, set out to test a new approach to issues that lie at the heart of anxiety, whether it takes the form of social nervousness or existential dread. What if, they wondered, instead of drugging patients out of feeling anxious, we could target and disarm the neural alarm system that raises those feelings in the first place? What if, in other words, we could trick a habitually anxious brain into seeing unpredictable circumstances as relatively harmless? (Scientific American)

Girls who received two doses of human papillomavirus vaccine had immune responses not worse than those who had three doses, Canadian researchers say. (UPI)

Now researchers have identified a blend of naturally occurring fibres such as cellulose and silk that makes progress towards affordable and effective cell-based therapy for cartilage repair a step closer. The EPSRC-funded study, published in Biomacromolecules and undertaken by University of Bristol researchers, explored the feasibility of using natural fibres such as silk and cellulose as stem cell scaffolds — the matrix to which stem cells can cling to as they grow. (E! Science News)

McNeil’s lab, part of the federally funded research and development center operated by SAIC-Frederick for the National Cancer Institute, worked with a drug company to reformulate TNF-alpha by coupling it with gold nanoparticles. Using the nanotechnology-enhanced protein, it appears possible to safely inject up to three times the amount that had been lethal with previous versions. The modified drug has been through a Phase 1 clinical trial and is entering Phase 2. (Science Daily)

Pfizer has taken the unusual step of selling its erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra, to consumers on its Web site, in an effort to establish a presence in the huge online market for the popular blue pill, considered to be one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world. (New York Times)

Duke University biomedical engineers have grown three-dimensional human heart muscle that acts just like natural tissue. This advancement could be important in treating heart attack patients or in serving as a platform for testing new heart disease medicines. (R & D Magazine)

The ability to encapsulate potent drugs in tiny particles measuring billionths of a meter in diameter is opening up new options for super-accurate drug delivery, increasing precision hits at the site of disease with, hopefully, fewer side effects. (Reuters)

Many diseases - obesity, Type 2 diabetes, muscular dystrophy - are associated with fat accumulation in muscle. In essence, fat replacement causes the muscles to weaken and degenerate. (Medical News Today)