| CAMPOS: Disease market lucrative
Two classic questions that confront medical science are how to define disease and how to measure and treat pain. Both questions are brought into sharp relief by the controversy over fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a term invented to describe a set of symptoms put into nontechnical language by the Mayo Clinic's Web site: "You hurt all over, and you frequently feel exhausted. Even after numerous tests, your doctor can't find anything specifically wrong with you. If this sounds familiar, you may have fibromyalgia." A cynic might reply, "If this sounds familiar you may merely be getting old, but you can be sure drug companies are developing products to help you manage your new 'disease.' " Sure enough, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has just gained FDA approval for Lyrica, a drug that appears to lessen the pain associated with fibromyalgia, although why it does so remains unclear, as indeed does the more fundamental question of whether fibromyalgia even exists.
Antidepressants Unproven As Treatment For Low Back Pain
Antidepressants might be worthless for treating low back pain, suggests a new review that found no evidence to support using the drugs in this way. Yet, up to 23 percent of U.S. physicians report prescribing antidepressants to patients with low back pain.
"The prescription of antidepressants as a treatment for back pain remains controversial," Donna Urquhart, Ph.D., research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and lead review author.
The review appears in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
Barracuda vows to fight open-source patent war against Trend Micro
Fortinet later settled the patent claims, getting a license from Trend Micro. In addition, Trend Micro filed a similar complaint against Panda Software International and Panda Distribution, which use a proprietary software package, said Mark Davis, Trend Micro's outside counsel. Trend Micro has not targeted the ClamAV project, he said. "This is purely against commercial competitors," Davis added. Commercial software vendor Sourcefire purchased the ClamAV project in August. Sourcefire declined to comment on the patent dispute. Open-source software is not the issue in the USITC complaint, Sweeny added. "We can't see how this would negatively impact open-source development," he said. Barracuda CEO Dean Drako called scanning for viruses at the gateway "an obvious and common technique" used by most businesses.
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