For medicines intended for chronic use, the number of patients studied before regulatory approval is insufficient to properly evaluate safety and long-term efficacy, requiring the need for new legislation, according to a study by European researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

Scientists have discovered a molecular process in the brain triggered by cocaine use that could provide a target for treatments to prevent or reverse addiction to the drug. Reporting in the Journal of Neuroscience, Michigan State University neuroscientist A.J. Robison and colleagues say cocaine alters the nucleus accumbens, the brain's pleasure center that responds to stimuli such as food, sex and drugs.

Doctors at Yale School of Medicine and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) have called upon their fellow physicians to limit or end the practice of prescribing memory-enhancing drugs to healthy children whose brains are still developing. Their position statement is published in the March online issue of the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the AAN.

Researchers have discovered a unique monoclonal antibody that can effectively reach inside a cancer cell, a key goal for these important anticancer agents, since most proteins that cause cancer or are associated with cancer are buried inside cancer cells. Scientists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Eureka Therapeutics have collaborated to create the new human monoclonal antibody, which targets a protein associated with many types of cancer and is of great interest to cancer researchers.

In laboratory studies, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found that stem cells from a patient's own fat may have the potential to deliver new treatments directly into the brain after the surgical removal of a glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor.

A new study has found that women who take aspirin have a reduced risk of developing melanoma - and that the longer they take it, the lower the risk. The findings suggest that aspirin's anti-inflammatory effects may help protect against this type of skin cancer. The study is published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

Television advertising may drive over-diagnosis of high cholesterol and over-treatment with statins, according to a new study by Dr. Jeff Niederdeppe from Cornell University in the US and colleagues. It appears that a trip to the doctor enquiring about statins advertised on TV often leads to a prescription. The work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer.