Medication on the rise

There has been an increase in the use of medications to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in both adults and children between 2001 and 2015, according to a major observational study involving over 154 million individuals from 14 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal. The study provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of trends in ADHD medication use, a note from the journal said. Global estimates suggest that ADHD affects 5 per cent to 7 per cent of children and around 2.5 per cent of adults.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Lumoxiti (moxetumomab pasudotox-tdfk) injection for intravenous use for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory hairy cell leukemia (HCL) who have received at least two prior systemic therapies, including treatment with a purine nucleoside analog. Lumoxiti is a CD22-directed cytotoxin and is the first of this type of treatment for patients with HCL. HCL is a rare, slow-growing cancer of the blood in which the bone marrow makes too many B cells (lymphocytes), a type of white blood cell that fights infection.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Commission have published additional information material on biosimilar medicines, as part of their ongoing collaboration to improve understanding of biosimilars across the European Union (EU). A biosimilar is biological medicine that is highly similar in all essential aspects to a ‘reference’ biological medicine already authorised.

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