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Randomised trials of vitamin D supplementation for cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality have generally reported null findings. However, generalisability of results to individuals with low vitamin D status is unclear. We aimed to characterise dose-response relationships between 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) concentrations and risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality in observational and Mendelian randomisation frameworks.

While many states use a fixed-date conformity approach (i.e., a state adopts Internal Revenue Code changes at a certain date) to disallow bonus depreciation, North Carolina's scheme imposes a unique [...]

The reconfigurable over-the-air (OTA) chamber (ROTAC) is a reverberation chamber with antennas positioned along the chamber walls. By controlling the signals driving a small number of these antennas and tunable impedances terminating the ports of the remaining antennas, the ROTAC offers dynamical control of the field incident on a mobile device during OTA testing. This article uses finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic simulations and measurements from a ROTAC prototype in combination with a network model to characterize the fields incident on the device as a function of the excitations and terminations. A gradient search optimization is formulated to determine the excitations and terminations required to approximate specified field characteristics in the chamber test zone, including multipath direction of arrival, signal correlation, and fading statistics. The article further explores the relationship between the field spatial sampling within the test zone and the ability to synthesize a field with the specified characteristics.

Even eight years after its Today Show cameo, Given Imaging's PillCam sounds like something out of a Bond film. The Israeli company is about to launch the third generation of [...]

Consumer advertising of prescription drugs is effective. It's controversial--reviled, even. It influences the medical decision-making of lay people with little medical knowledge--while educating them about diseases and treatment options they [...]

Sanofi came into 2012 staring down at the steepest patent cliff in the industry. Plavix, for which Sanofi's share of 2011 global sales was $2.6 billion, lost US exclusivity in [...]

The patient support site has become a standard element of the drug marketing armory--offering patients C a mix of disease info, lifestyle tips, tools to manage their illness, maybe even [...]

Imagine a patient with type 2 diabetes plugs a port little larger than a thumb drive into her iPhone and inserts a test strip. Up pops a three-digit number--her blood-glucose [...]

The prescription drug ads of tomorrow won't interrupt our favorite TV show to suggest that we ask our doctor about some pill to treat a condition we probably don't have, [...]

Rheumatoid arthritis is a mysterious progressive autoimmune disease which strikes mostly women of child-bearing age, often suddenly, causing them to suffer wracking joint pain that renders them unable to perform [...]

In April, FDA approved Roche Diagnostics' Cobas HPV test (below), which uses Polymerase Chain Reaction technology to screen for 14 high-risk HPV types, including types 16 and 18, which are [...]

MM&M takes a look at the top 20 drug manufacturers and breaks down the sales data by company, prescription drugs and therapeutic class. We also track total promotional spend, professional [...]

Rest in peace, Digger, Abe and the Beaver. Soldier on, Lunesta Moth, Nasonex Bee and VESIcare pipe people. You may be the last of a dying breed, flitting across our [...]

Merck's Vree is a Swiss army knife of an app for type 2 diabetes patients. Launched in September for iPhone and iPad. it lets them track their blood sugar, medications, [...]

With the dust beginning to settle on a wave of massive patent expirations--and massive sales force downsizings that came with them--a new commercial model is starting to come into focus. [...]

Adherence is a pricey problem. Patients failing to take their meds as directed or at all costs us anywhere from $170 billion to more than a quarter-trillion in added healthcare [...]

The cartoon ladies looked as though they might have leapt from the pages of The New Yorker, but here they were, in Ladies' Home Journal, hawking the world's first orthopedic [...]

Just a few years ago, the news that pharma ad spend was up a mere 2% would have been greeted with horror in adland. But that was before--before a dizzying [...]

Perhaps no large pharmaceutical company is so well positioned to survive the approaching patent cliff as Novartis. And it's no accident that the Swiss giant is in such good shape [...]

Though better known for his jump shot, the president is also a chess player, habitually thinking several moves ahead and hard to faze. It shows in his healthcare game. [ILLUSTRATION [...]

Certified and accredited CME has undergone a sea-change in recent years, with policies now in place emphasizing quality and leaving little room for bias (not that you'd know it, for [...]

Consumer marketers aren't exactly turning off the TV just yet, but with budgets tightening, blockbusters going off-patent and DTC TV in disrepute, they are spending more time on YouTube and [...]

Graphical abstract:

The prospect of unified Democratic control in Washington is cause for some unease in an industry that has, for years, aligned closely with Republicans. Indeed, President-elect Obama and congressional Democrats [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] His healthcare plan calls for allowing drug reimportation and direct government negotiation of drug prices with companies that, he says, 'benefit most from the status quo, and in [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Pharmaceutical companies seem to be holding the line on grants for now, but with intense pressure from officials, academia and increasingly, the medical community, not to mention their [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Direct-to-consumer advertising is set for a sea-change, as marketers embrace more targeted and digital-heavy media plans to push more modest products and fewer mega-blockbusters through--not that you'd know [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When the going got tough, Merck got back to basics. Today, only a few years after a toxic combination of high-profile drug failures and the Vioxx safety debacle [...]

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] A cautious FDA sweating product safety issues and going slow on new approvals. An election year in which healthcare tops the agenda. Increased oversight, increasingly demanding payors and [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As big pharma binges on biotechs to feed anemic pipelines, at least one major player isn't getting indigestion. Wyeth has been in the biotech game for more than [...]

Innovative new oncology drugs and an increase in prescribing volume due to Medicare Part D drove a rebound in US prescription drug growth of 8.3% for 2006, up from 5.4% [...]

It's been 10 years since it was first 'time for Claritin,' and DTC advertising as we know it was born. A decade after the FDA issued its draft guidance on [...]

Hearings, hearings and more hearings on the dastardly doings of the pharmaceutical industry will be the order of the day for a Democratic Congress, Washington insiders say. While congressional Dems [...]

With sales forces feeling the pinch from physicians, Merck is turning to technology to realize efficiencies and help reps hit their targets. The firm has deployed tablet PCs to 5,000 [...]

Pharmaceutical companies spent $518 million advertising to doctors in 2005, according to research firm PERQ/HCI, and another $1.6 billion on magazine ads aimed at consumers, according to TNS Media Intelligence. [...]

The medical advertising and communications behemoth Publicis Healthcare Communications Group saw strong organic growth this year, expanding its business with core clients Sanofi-Aventis and AstraZeneca as it rebranded one of [...]

Consumer drug advertising is back--if it was ever really gone--nattily attired in a starched lab coat. After an apocalyptic post-Vioxx pause, when many marketers folded their wallets, held their breaths [...]

While pharma's biggest players continue to wear their poker faces in the game of sales-force contraction, Wyeth has boldly laid its cards on the table, announcing a creative solution to [...]

Analysts are hopeful that both companies and consumers will come out ahead with the implementation of Medicare Part D, but the realignment will take all parties into uncharted waters. For [...]

National TV advertising may be losing some of its luster, but disease-specific cable and local broadcasts beckon, offering advertisers a cheaper and more targeted means of reaching patient communities. Leading [...]

DTC OUTLOOK Pharmaceutical companies are facing increasing pressure from Washington, the media, the public and from fellow pharma chiefs to advertise to consumers in a more responsible way, conveying risks [...]

The crisis over the safety of COX-2 inhibitors is almost certainly the most severe to hit the industry in decades. At stake are the reputations not only of Merck and [...]

Much of Big Pharma breathed a sigh of relief at the news of President Bush's re-election, as Kerry and Edwards, two of the industry's harshest critics, were sent back to [...]

'Most companies, when they're launching a product in primary care, will advertise to PAs and NPs,' says Carla Duryee, who heads marketing to midlevel practitioners for Sanofi-Aventis. 'But very few [...]

Pharmaceutical advertising doesn't exactly have the wildest reputation within the marketing business, but you could hardly want for a more exciting environment these days, as agencies buffeted by wave upon [...]

What really keeps the custodians of the world's best-selling prescription drug awake at night? It's not so much the competition, nor is it patent exclusivity. What worries the relationship marketers [...]

Genentech's head of corporate relations. Mary Stutts, reckons the drug industry could do with fewer celebrity endorsers and more heroes. That's why Napoleone 'Napo' Ferrara is the new face of [...]