PLoS medicine
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Malaysia's stable health care system is facing challenges with increasing medicine costs. To investigate these issues a survey was carried out to evaluate medicine prices, availability, affordability, and the structure of price components. ⋯ The free market by definition does not control medicine prices, necessitating price monitoring and control mechanisms. Markups for generic products are greater than for IBs. Reducing the base price without controlling markups may increase profits for retailers and dispensing doctors without reducing the price paid by end users. To increase access and affordability, promotion of generic medicines and improved availability of medicines in the public sector are required.
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Mohiuddin discusses the lessons learned from large animal xenograft models and why the immunological barrier is still the most important hurdle preventing clinical xenotransplantation of organs.
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Meta Analysis
Loperamide therapy for acute diarrhea in children: systematic review and meta-analysis.
Loperamide is widely used in adults for acute diarrhea. However, its use in children has been discouraged by the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics owing to concerns over safety and efficacy in young children. ⋯ In children who are younger than 3 y, malnourished, moderately or severely dehydrated, systemically ill, or have bloody diarrhea, adverse events outweigh benefits even at doses
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The Kassena-Nankana District of northern Ghana lies in the African "meningitis belt" where epidemics of meningococcal meningitis have been reoccurring every eight to 12 years for the last 100 years. The dynamics of meningococcal colonisation and disease are incompletely understood, and hence we embarked on a long-term study to determine how levels of colonisation with different bacterial serogroups change over time, and how the patterns of disease relate to such changes. ⋯ The observed lack of a temporally stable and genetically diverse resident pharyngeal flora of meningococci might contribute to the susceptibility to meningococcal disease epidemics of residents in the African meningitis belt. Because capsular conjugate vaccines are known to impact meningococcal carriage, effects on herd immunity and potential serogroup replacement should be monitored following the introduction of such vaccines.