Dramatic progress has recently been made in defining the pathogenesis and treatment of HIV infection. For the first time in the history of the AIDS epidemic, clinicians have at their disposal an understanding of the replication kinetics of HIV, reliable assays to measure viral load, an...

We reviewed the clinical measures used in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) economic evaluations with respect to their relevance and sensitivity to changes in survival, health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) and costs. We compared the measures from the economic perspective and discussed the validity of...

Objective: Pramipexole was recently approved in the US for treatment of the symptoms of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). Although pramipexole has been found to be safe and efficacious when compared with placebo, little data are yet available on its cost effectiveness when compared with...

Background: The introduction of the conjugate vaccine PnC-7 implies that a pneumococcal vaccine is available, for the first time, which also gives children under the age of 2 years reliable protection against invasive pneumococcal infections and offers some protection against non-invasive...

The cost effectiveness of early treatment with lisinopril in acute myocardial infarction (MI) was estimated using survival and cost data gathered prospectively during the hospitalisation of the overall population of patients enrolled in the third study of the Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della...

Alzheimer Data on the effectiveness of these drugs from information beyond the short-term clinical trials (e.g. long-term clinical trials and non-trial data) are now emerging. In most cases, the results indicate that, at least for some patients, continued treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors...

Schizophrenia is a chronic disease that typically manifests during adolescence and early adulthood. Treatment of this disease consumes a significant proportion of the healthcare budget (billions of dollars in the US). Primary management options for schizophrenia include both pharmacologic and...

Patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have poor survival prospects, as most have advanced disease at diagnosis. Chemotherapy can be used to treat these patients if their performance status is good, although there are geographical differences in chemotherapy use. Combination...

Objective: To evaluate the cost effectiveness of a new product, oral ganciclovir, in comparison to a current therapy, intravenous (IV) ganciclovir, in the maintenance treatment of newly diagnosed cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis in patients with AIDS. Design: This was a retrospective economic...

Introduction and objective: In 1983, the launch of cyclosporin was a significant clinical advance for organ transplant recipients. Subsequent drug research led to further advances with the introduction of cyclosporin microemulsion (cyclosporin ME) and tacrolimus. This paper presents the results...