The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 19 new drugs during 2007, the fewest since 1983.
Should we be concerned about this data or not?
Two main reasons have been proposed for this fall in the approval of new drugs. First is the shift of emphasis by many pharmaceutical companies to look at the use of current drugs for the treatment of other conditions. Second, the companies themselves point to a raising of the standards for approvals by the FDA, although the agency denies this.
Is this trend going to continue? The companies themselves deny this. They are returning to their core activity of developing new compounds and have begun to go for the root cause of many diseases, a process which takes time and results in many failures, but will result in much more effective treatments in the long run.
Let's hope so!
