My Perspective

Antipsychotic drugs are an important treatment option for psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. Antipsychotic-induced weight gain is a frequently reported adverse drug reaction, particularly to second-generation antipsychotics. The mechanisms of antipsychotic-induced weight gain include genetic, biological and psychosocial factors that are not fully understood. Previous research shows that female gender and younger age are risk factors for developing antipsychotic-induced weight gain. While African Americans appear to have increased risk of antipsychotic-induced weight gain compared to individuals of European descent, East Asians who show reduced risk.  However, antipsychotics have an important role to play in alleviating psychotic symptoms. So the balance of its therapeutic benefit and its side effects needs to be weighed in by a medical professional before deciding on its discontinuation or lowering of dosage. References : [1] Wannasuphoprasit, Y., Andersen,...

To understand whether Polio vaccine can cause polio, we need to understand the different types of virus and the vaccines. Wild Polio exists in 3 types with type 2 being most efficient. So vaccines need to target all 3 types. There are two types of Polio vaccines which differ in their cost, efficiency, and mode of administration. 

Any medicine has two ways in which it can bring about therapeutic effect - these are pharmacological means and psychological means. Let us analyse how homeopathic medicine acts. Pharmacological means refers to the biological action of the active

There are two variants of pneumonia vaccination - Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV or PPSV) and Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). There are some key differences between them in terms of effectiveness, number of strains vaccinated against, apart from cost which I summarise below.

To celebrate their 50 years, BNA has a huge number of reviews covering 'past, present, future' of many topics in neuroscience. Here is the link to a webpage with list of all published reviews. Link:  https://journals.sagepub.com/bna/past-present-future There are three reviews on psychiatric drugs and disorders. I list them below

Johnson & Johnson marketed 'Risperdal' (tradename for Risperidone) using a strategy that downplayed the drug's side-effects, and provided kickback payments to nursing homes, but more importantly encouraged off-label use in children for behavioural disorders/autism and in elderly for dementia/sleeping against the explicit instructions from FDA. Ultimately, the fines for this conduct cost J&J $2.2 billion but they made $18 billion in profits from this drug alone and it enabled the then Risperidal sales manager, Alex Gorsky, to become current CEO of J&J but escaping individual culpability for devising such a strategy! Please watch the above (edited) video that covers Dr. John Rengen Virapen, Ex Director of Eli Lilly, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. This comes after his retirement, after working for 35 Years in that company. He now speaks out on the many crimes Big Pharma was and is responsible for (and he himself also participated ...