Archive for the tag "clinical trials"

The PReP roller-coaster: no good for women? (22/04/11)

Just as we were getting all excited about giving people antiretorvirals to protect them against HIV infection, a large trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PReP) in women is being shut down because the pills are unlikely to prevent HIV. It’s a huge disappointment to those who were hoping that the pill-a-day-to-avoid-a-pill-a-day solution might drag us out […]

Prozac doesn’t work: how depressing is that? (26/02/08)

Now that over 40 million people are taking Prozac and similar medication to cheer themselves up, we learn that they may as well be taking sugar-pills. Waving the Freedom of Information act as a warrant to gain access to data drug companies haven’t wanted to publish, researchers looked again at whether people popping Prozac actually […]

Microbicides: the real disappointment is that women are human too (25/02/08)

Many of us were hugely disappointed when the Population Council announced last week that the microbicide they’d been testing in a huge trial in South Africa didn’t work. But buried in the trial results were some other shocking and hugely disappointing facts. Here’s the real shocker in my opinion: Only one woman in 10 used […]