Advertising prescription drugs to consumers is forbidden in most of the world, but since U.S. guidelines were relaxed in 1997, such ads have become nearly ubiquitous in American media. In a newly published review, Brown University researchers examined what has been learned since then about the effect of all that advertising on psychiatric conditions. They found that the data are very limited, but what does exist suggests that ads succeed in driving prescribing with potentially mixed effects on patient care.

Adoptive cell-therapies, in which a patient's own immune cells are used to recognize and target tumors, have shown breakthrough results for patients with certain B-cell malignancies, or cancers of the blood, but this therapy has not seen similar success in patients with solid tumors. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Cancer Center are working to change that, and a new study has shown promising results for several pediatric and adult solid tumor cancers.

A new study suggests gaps exist in the treatment of depression with many individuals who screen positive for the mental health disorder not receiving treatment, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Previous research has suggested many adults with depression are not treated for their symptoms. Screening for depression has received increased attention with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommending that adults be screened for depression and that follow-up services for treatment be provided.

A one-step solution to make nitrogen-laden molecular precursors for the preparation of drugs and other bioactive molecules has been discovered by researchers at Rice University, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSWMC) and Brigham Young University. Research announced this month in Science will simplify the process and cut the cost of creating key nitrogen-containing functional groups for pharmaceuticals, said László Kürti, a synthetic chemist at Rice who developed the technique with his colleague at UTSWMC, John Falck.

In a novel controlled clinical trial, participants in a six-day Ayurvedic-based well-being program that featured a vegetarian diet, meditation, yoga and massages experienced measurable decreases in a set of blood-based metabolites associated with inflammation, cardiovascular disease risk and cholesterol regulation. The findings, published in the September 9 issue of Scientific Reports, represent a rare attempt to use metabolic biomarkers to assess the reported health benefits of integrative medicine and holistic practices.

Edible ginger-derived nano-lipids created from a specific population of ginger nanoparticles show promise for effectively targeting and delivering chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat colon cancer, according to a study by researchers at the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Wenzhou Medical University and Southwest University in China.

Researchers at the University of Adelaide have shown how a complex mix of plant compounds derived from ancient clinical practice in China - a Traditional Chinese Medicine - works to kill cancer cells. Compound kushen injection (CKI) is approved for use in China to treat various cancer tumours, usually as an adjunct to western chemotherapy - but how it works has not been known.