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Drug for Gout Stolen by
URL Pharma
The herb Colchicum has been used to treat Gout for 2,000 years
and for inflammatory arthritis for 3,500 years. Colchicum’s chemical extract
Colchicine has been the main treatment for Gout for the last 200 years. In 2006
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an initiative which
targeted old drugs that have never been approved under rules set up in the last 75 years.
The drug company URL Pharma seized this opportunity for profiteering and conducted a study of Colchicine in the treatment
of Gout. The study demonstrated that it works just fine. The result is that although it has been a generic drug for
200 years, the FDA gave 3-year marketing exclusivity to URL Pharma, in exchange for URL Pharma doing the new study. URL Pharma
raised the price from $0.09 per pill to $4.85, and sued to remove other versions from market.
Other companies must cease production this year. Colchicine is used in both management of the painful acute attacks of Gout and even more commonly in long term prevention. Patients who used
to pay $65 for a year’s supply of the drug for prevention are now
forced to pay $3,600 a year. Or they can find a good homeopathic practitioner.
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Vitamin D Overdose and
Fractures
Vitamin D supplementation is generally believed to lower the risk
of fractures in older women. Most doctors now test for Vitamin D levels in middle
aged and older patients and provide prescriptions for high dose supplementation as
needed. While previous
clinical trials of the benefit of Vitamin D have yielded
some conflicting results, generally it is thought that doses above
400 IU per day help with fracture prevention. But because some people find it
hard to take daily doses of Vitamin D a clinical trial was conducted using very high single doses once a year for 3 to 5 years. The dose was 500,000 IU once a year. The
dose did raise the blood levels of Vitamin D in the treated women to normal levels.
But the fracture and fall rates were found to be higher in the women who got the massive dose of Vitamin D. A second study confirmed the finding of increased risk of fracture in women getting massive single doses. It seems prudent to not take such large doses of Vitamin A, or I would say any Vitamin
or other micro-nutrient. They are after all micro-nutrients that our bodies only
have experienced in small amounts during our entire genetic history. We must
take pause and remember the tales of explorers going to the Arctic who got sick and even died after eating polar bear liver that contains huge amounts of Vitamin
A. The study that made me wary of large doses of daily vitamins was the now famous
study of middle aged male smokers. They were given Vitamin A and in a later study
Beta Carotene assuming that it would help prevent the development of cancer. Quite
the opposite; those who took the Vitamin A got cancer more frequently than those who took placebo. Since that study I’ve had more respect for the “micro” in micro-nutrients and have advised
only modest quantities of vitamins in most circumstances.
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