Pharma Veterans

More on GLP-1 Medications – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1138 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1138 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Andres Ayrton Credit: Artem Podrez Preamble I had earlier discussed GLP-1 in my blogpost #1111 of May 26, in relation to the changes in medical aesthetics demand created by these medications. In this blogpost, I talk about these therapies with reference to their economic and public health implications. Some details in this post are taken from Mckinsey article. Link at the end. Beginning in the 2000s, doctors primarily prescribed GLP-1s to help treat type 2 diabetes. But in late 2023, GLP-1s began making headlines for their success in helping people lose weight. Ozempic, Wegovy, and other brands started to become household names and sales rapidly acceler...

Healthcare Landscape in Pakistan – Burden of Disease – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 980 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 980 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com . Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Cliff Booth Credit: Marcus Aurelius Credit: Mateus Souza Credit: Rene Terp Credit: Shotpot Burden of Disease Burden of Disease – BoD – is the impact of health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. It is often quantified in terms of Quality-Adjusted-Life-Years – QALY – or Disability-Adjusted-Life-Years – DALY. Both of these metrics quantify the number of years lost due to disability, or disease, or years lived with disability/disease. One DALY can be thought of as one year of healthy life lost. In simpler words, the sum of mortality and morbidity is called the burden of disease because both c...

AVASTIN Injection Debacle – An Objective Analysis – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #859 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #859 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko Credit: Pakistan Today Credit: MART Production Off-Label Drug Use “Off-label drug use involves prescribing medications for an indication, or using a dosage or dosage form, that has not been approved by the FDA. Since the FDA does not regulate the practice of medicine, OLDU has become common”, says National Institute of Health, USA.  Off-label drug use is based on practice and experience and may even be supported by some clinical studies. However, large scale clinical trials and their review by a regulatory authority is miss...

New Diabetes Drug – Facts Vs Misinformation – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #838 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #838 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. A friend of mine forwarded the following text to me yesterday. It is a very catchy message for diabetic patients as it promises a revolutionary ‘treatment’ for diabetes. If you remember, I had done a blog showing that Pakistan had become number #1 country in the incidence of diabetes with over 38% population suffering from it. Pakistanis are also averse to standard treatment of diabetes and keep looking for miracles which never happen. For us, this kind of message is not just misleading, it is killing.  Let me tell me that this entire message is a pack of l...

Probable Reasons for Diabetes Explosion in Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #818 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #818 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk Photo Credit: Zubair Abbasi Photo Credit: Mikhail Nilov My last post about Pakistan becoming number #1 in diabetes prevalence raised quite a bit of interest, surprise, concern, and disbelief. I also mentioned that obesity in our population is much lower than many other countries, so there would be other probable reasons for such high prevalence.  I am taking from two published research articles and a news report for the German publication DW. Research article titled ‘Type 2 diabetes prevalence in Pakistan: what is dri...

Pakistan Becomes Number One in Diabetes Prevalence – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #817 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #817 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Alesia Kozik Photo Credit: Mikhail Nilov Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk The country rankings of diabetes prevalence have been published by Wisevoter and Pakistan has earned the dubious distinction of becoming number one in diabetes prevalence at 30.8%. It means that almost every third person in the country is diabetic.  To put it in perspective, global average rate of diabetes is 8.8%. On the contrary, the incidence of obesity in Pakistan is only 8.6% against a global average of 19.1%. The point I wish to raise here is that the primary...