The ICI Experience:

First, I apologize to my readers who subscribe to this blog via email, for the blog post from May of 2009 that went out to them on Saturday morning. To the best of my knowledge I didn't do anything to make that happen. I'll be checking in with FeedBurner on that. Here's today's post on Savella. Brand new and fresh content, I promise. You may have already heard that a Petition to Ban Fibromyalgia Drug Milnacipran (Savella) was filed with the FDA on January 20, 2010 by a group called Public Citizen. This petition was immediately picked up by the Associated Press. Word gets around (and around) when an article gets picked up by the AP. More on that later. My first reaction was, who the hell is Public Citizen??? "Public Citizen is a non-partisan, politically left-of-center, non-profit public interest advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., with a branch in Austin, Texas. Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971.http://en.wikipedia.org/w...

From Medical News Today, FDA Approves Fibromyalgia Drug - Savella(TM) (milnacipran HCl), A Selective Serotonin and Norepinephrine Dual Reuptake Inhibitor "Although the exact mechanism by which Savella improves the symptoms of fibromyalgia is unknown, some researchers believe that abnormalities in certain brain neurotransmitters may be central to fibromyalgia. Savella blocks the reuptake of both norepinephrine and serotonin, with greater selectivity for the inhibition of norepinephrine reuptake in vitro (does anyone know what the term in vitro means in this context? Emphasis added by me.) . This may be the mechanism by which Savella acts to improve the symptoms of fibromyalgia." and "The efficacy of Savella was established in two US pivotal Phase III clinical trials involving 2,084 treated patients (1,460 Savella; 624 placebo), which showed that Savella demonstrated clinically significant improvements compared to placebo in treating fibromyalgia. The first study was 6 mo...