NEW EYE DRUG
The Times on Monday covers pSivida's Iluvien, saying the eye-drug has the potential to restore the sight of diabetes patients who have lost their vision as a side effect of the disease. (taster p34, full story p35)
The eyelash-sized tube of medicine which is implanted in the back of the eye and releases a steroid for up to three years has gained a UK license, the paper says.
GROWING USE OF COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT DRUGS
Saturday's Daily Telegraph (p24) commented on the growing use of cognitive enhancement drugs. By the Telegraph's reckoning, use of drugs such as modafinil (Cephalon's Provigil) has spread from the military to leading universities in the U.S. and is now "spreading to England's top-tier universities".
The Telegraph claimed "smart" enhancers were also showing up in the City and on Wall Street and asked what would happen once use such drugs spreads into the wider economy. The newspaper said some scientists believe the legacy of these drugs will be "burnout, brain damage and addiction", although not enough data exists yet to tell corroborate this.
TUBERCULOSIS
The World Health Organization has warned that one third of the world's population is carrying tuberculosis and that the disease could become incurable if governments fail to act, reported The Independent on Sunday (p39).
The WHO said the fight against TB is being hampered by lack of funding for public health programmes, the sale of inaccurate blood tests and the misuse of drugs particularly in the private health sector, The Independent wrote.
The Independent said how experts believe drug resistance to TB is growing because of private sector doctors under-prescribing courses and patients failing to finish their course of antibiotics.
Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB campaign, told The Independent that inaccurate serological blood tests supplied mainly by western companies were also to blame, given that these can give "false positives and false negatives of up to 50%".