A contrast agent doesn't make you feel better or treat what's ailing you. But by making CT scans clearer, contrast might be crucial in helping your doctor make the right diagnosis.
Drugmakers add inactive ingredients to stabilize medications and sometimes to help the body absorb the active ingredients. But the inactive constituents can cause side effects in rare cases.
Lawsuits over the way drugmakers have marketed opioids are already putting a dent in companies' reputations. Litigation has forced the release of internal documents that are shifting the narrative.
When the AIDS crisis started in the 1980s, the official response was tepid. Then activists channeled their anger into into one of the most effective protest movements in recent history.
A lot of vaccines and some medications need to be delivered by injection. Two groups of researchers are designing ways of delivering these medications by putting them in pill form.
Some antidepressants inhibit a liver enzyme that converts common opioids into their active form. The interaction may reduce the effectiveness of certain opioids for people taking both medicines.
Loretta Boesing is on a mission to make sure prescription drugs delivered by mail are safe and effective. The life of her son — and others who order medicine by mail — could depend on it, she says.
Booker is introducing a bill this week in response to an investigation by the Center for Public Interest and NPR. He calls drug firms' infiltration into Medicaid's decision process "nefarious."
Patients and doctors should have nuanced conversations about the benefits and risks of statins before deciding to start them. The drugs can reduce heart attack odds but also carry some side effects.
The Government Accountability Office found breakdowns in the way the Food and Drug Administration evaluates drugs for rare diseases. The analysis came after an investigation by Kaiser Health News.
Pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, often win patents for incremental changes with debatable value. Now there's a twist involving an opioid addiction treatment.
Federal officials will allow private Medicare insurance plans to require patients who are candidates for certain expensive drugs to try cheaper drugs first.
Massachusetts planned to exclude expensive drugs that weren't proven to work better than existing alternatives from its Medicaid plan. Medicaid drug spending had doubled in five years.
A consortium of hospital systems and three foundations is moving ahead with a nonprofit drugmaker that would produce some of the generic medicines health care facilities need the most.
Officials in Texas are responding to the findings of an investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity into drugmakers' influence over medication choices for Medicaid patients.
After an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR into conflicts of interest in Medicaid decisions about drugs, Arizona's governor added new transparency rules.
Drug companies have infiltrated nearly every part of the process that determines how their drugs will be covered by Medicaid, an investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity finds.
The vast amount of data held in electronic medical records and insurance bills contains bits that could be useful in refining the use of approved for drugs. But how to find it?
ProPublica found that drugmakers spent less to market opioids to doctors in 2016 than in prior years. Studies have shown that payments to doctors are linked to more prescriptions for the drugs.
A Harvard Medical School project aims to become the first national registry for exceedingly rare cancer patients who respond mysteriously well to treatments that failed to help others.
With 113 locations in the U.S., Brain Balance says its drug-free approach has helped tens of thousands of children. But experts say there's insufficient proof of its effectiveness.
The civil lawsuit is just one of many the opioid drug manufacturer now faces — but the complaint filed Tuesday adds an unusual wrinkle: It also singles out the Sackler family, which owns Purdue.
Legislation that would give terminally ill people a direct path to get experimental treatments raises questions about how the Food and Drug Administration would safeguard patients.
