Generic drugs saved the US health system $734 billion between 1999 and 2008. These low-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs account for 75% of all prescriptions filled in the US, a massive increase from the 47% share they held 10 years ago.

Teva, an Israeli company many have never heard of, is the 800 pound gorilla of generic drug makers. Last year, Teva products were used to fill 630 million prescriptions, or one out of every 6 prescriptions in the US. That’s more than Pfizer, Novartis and Merck combined.

Between 1999 and 2009, Teva’s revenues grew from $1.3 billion to $14 billion and its profits rose from $2 million to $135.5 million. Its market cap is now about $53 billion.

Generic companies like Teva can be profitable at lower price-points than pharmaceutical companies, because they don’t have to develop a medication from scratch. Instead, they use the active ingredients major pharmaceutical concerns have already created after their patent protections expire.

Teva entered the US market in 1985, shortly after Congress passed the Hatch-Waxman Act, which expedited federal approval for generic drugs.

Teva’s biggest challenge is maintaining quality control as it grows. Recently for example, the FDA called-out Teva for “serious manufacturing violations” at a facility in Irvine, California.

The issue was bacterial contamination in a generic form of propofol, the intravenous anesthetic made famous by Michael Jackson. Teva recalled thousands of vials of propofol, but officials indicated they weren’t sure the problem wouldn’t recur.

“Can they keep their finger on the pulse of every single smaller company they acquire, every generic maker and ingredient supplier?” Joe Graedon, the co-founder of a drug information Web site asked the New York Times. “We have seen missteps over the last few months.”

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a new tool that could help law enforcement authorities detect bioterrorism attacks, doctors in need of a rapid diagnostic tool for infectious diseases, and regulatory agencies responsible for food safety.

The device, blandly named the Microbial Detection Array, will be able to identify 2,000 viruses and 900 bacteria within 24 hours, according to officials at the lab.
 
“The ability to detect the major bacterial and viral components of any sample can be used in countless ways,” Tom Slezak, an associate program leader for Informatics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told BurrillReport. “This is important because it fills a cost-performance gap that is relevant to many missions: biodefense, public health and product safety.”
 
If the cost of the array can be reduced, it could become a helpful tool for public health diagnostics, Slezak added. The array has the huge advantage of being able to detect a far wider range of viral and bacterial pathogens than the best available technology. That would be multiplex polymerase chain reaction or PCR, which is able to detect 50 organisms at one time.
 
The same benefits would apply to biodefense, where current systems are similarly designed to detect a much smaller set of high-risk pathogens. Not surprisingly, the US Department of Homeland Security is testing the array for its own use.
 
And there’s more: the Livermore group is now testing a new array that has probes covering 5,700 viruses and several thousand bacteria.

Spouses who care for a husband or wife that has dementia are 6 times more likely to develop the condition themselves, according to study by scientists at Utah State, Johns Hopkins and Duke.

To reach this conclusion, the scientists looked at 1,221 married couples who were at least 65 years old. The subjects had been enrolled in the Cache County (Utah) Memory Study, which has followed more than 900 people with dementia since the study began in 1995.

The six-fold increase in dementia rivals that associated with a well-known gene variant, APOE ε4, according to the scientists. The risk was found to be present even after the scientists accounted for socioeconomic status and other factors that are known to increase the risk of dementia. 

Researchers have studied this general topic for years, although most of the earlier studies focused on emotional distress experienced by caretakers rather than any impact on the cognitive abilities of spouses who cared for persons with dementia. 

The scientists suspect that stress associated with caregiving is driving their findings.  

“Caregiving has positive aspects, as well as negative ones,” Peter Rabin, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University told BurrillReport. “If we can boost the positive aspects and reduce the negative ones, we may be able to reduce a caregiver’s risk of developing dementia.”

The Australian government has unveiled a new set of antismoking measures that includes removal of brand images and colors on cigarette packages.

According to the new rules—which have yet to be approved by Parliament—cigarette products would have to be marketed in packaging that is devoid of logos and includes promotional text that is presented in uniform color, font, positioning and point size.

The packaging—in the words of the Australian government—was “one of the last remaining frontiers for cigarette advertising.”

Cigarette boxes in Australia already feature explicit health warnings and photos that depict some of the consequences of smoking, like mouth cancer and gangrenous extremities.

Also included in the proposed rules is a 25% increase in the excise tax on cigarettes. The tax will bump the price of a box of 30 cigarettes by roughly 2.16 Australian dollars, to nearly 16.70 Australian dollars ($15.40).

The increased excise tax will itself cut cigarette smoking by 6%, according to government projections. Approximately 17% of Australians over age of 14 smoke cigarettes. 

The World Health Organization hailed the measures as “a new gold standard for the regulation of tobacco products.”

Tobacco companies questioned the effectiveness of the new measures and said they would encourage counterfeiting.

“There is no evidence to support the government’s notion that this will reduce consumption,” Imperial Tobacco said in a statement. “Plain packaging would seriously harm our brands and infringe the intellectual property rights in which both Imperial Tobacco and its shareholders have invested.”

By a 3-2 vote, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County, California has passed an ordinance prohibiting free giveaways of promotional toys associated with child-sized meal-deals at fast-food outlets, unless the meals meet certain nutritional standards.

The ban will apply to cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets and other fare containing excessive calories, sodium, fat or carbohydrates.

“What we’re trying to do is de-link the connection between unhealthy food and toys,” said Ken Yeager, the board president, who believes that many kids select their meal based on the toy that accompanies it.

“It’s the toys that they want,” Yeager, who does not have children, told the New York Times. “This ordinance does not attack toys. Toys, in and of themselves, do not make children obese.”

The ban takes effect this month in a county in which 25% of the children are obese. Nationally, between 11% and 18% of children are overweight or obese, with low-income residents affected disproportionately.

In adults, the problem is even more widespread: two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

McDonald’s spokesperson Walt Riker expressed disappointment with the board’s decision. “Our Happy Meals provide many of the important nutrients that children need,” including zinc, iron and calcium, he said.

Most of us know we can expect to feel a burning sensation when we consume jalapenos or other hot peppers. But few peope know that such spicy fare might also increase body temperature via a mechanism that burns calories just as effectively as exercise.

At least that’s what scientists at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition seem to have discovered during a recent trial involving 34 volunteers who were trying to peel off some pounds.

The tongue-scorching effects of spicy peppers comes from capsaicin, a chemical produced by plants to discourage animals from turning them into dinner. These same plants also produce a milder tasting analogue known as dihydrocapsiate (DCT).

The UCLA scientists randomized the study subjects to receive either DCT or a placebo with their meals. They subsequently measured the subjects’ energy expenditure and found it to be highest among the cohort that had received DCT. In fact, it was nearly twice as high as in those receiving the dummy pill, and the phenomenon was associated with increased fat burning as well.

The scientists warn however that their findings are preliminary, since their subjects were placed on a low-calorie liquid diet, and it’s not clear the same results would be seen among people on a normal diet. The researchers also said the energy-burning effects of DCT might not be seen in folks who are of normal weight to begin with.

The findings were presented during an April meeting of a conference known as the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting, which was held in  in Anaheim.

Obesity is a serious threat to health, but recent research suggests that being 10-15 pounds overweight doesn’t increase health risks and may help in certain circumstances. Here is a summary of these findings:

Mildly overweight people do not have an increased risk of death from cancer or cardiovascular disease-In a study published in JAMA, Katherine Flegal and colleagues from the CDC looked at mortality rates reported in NHANES, an annual health survey. They found that mortality among those classified as overweight was lower than they had estimated. By contrast, those classified as underweight and obese had higher mortality rates than had been predicted.

Another study of 9,000 people conducted in Australia showed a reduced risk of death among septuagenarians who were overweight when compared to those of normal weight. The scientists concluded a little extra weight could protect folks against illness and injury as they age.

A little extra weight appears to protect against osteoporosis in women-Scientists who have reported this suggest that estrogen, produced by subcutaneous fat, helps increase bone mass. “Women should not worry if they are 10 to 15 pounds overweight, particularly if the fat is not concentrated in [the] belly,” Felicia Cosman, director of National Osteoporosis Foundation told the Wall Street Journal.

Slightly overweight women tend to look younger-According to a study in last year’s Archives of Dermatology, older women who were a bit overweight looked younger because the subcutaneous fat combats sagging and wrinkles.

The key is the location of the fat. Subcutaneous fat, common in the mildly overweight, tends to appear on the hips, thighs and butt. It is benign physiologically. Visceral fat attaches to internal organs and causes protruded bellies. It increases the risk of diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.