Acadia Pharmaceuticals’ share price has more than doubled this year on news that its experimental antipsychotic pimavanserin reduced symptoms such as “hallucinations and delusions of jealousy” by more than a third compared to a reduction of 18.5% in patients receiving a placebo, improved the quality of nighttime sleep, and reduced the burden on caregivers, suggesting an “attractive commercial opportunity” according to a stock analyst. The company acknowledged that antipsychotics can increase the risk of death as well as side effects such as the loss of motor control, but that pimavanserin did not affect patients’ motor control.
Of further interest:
Acadia Pharma: progress with anti-psychotic drug (Marketwatch)
It all sounds pretty evil to me. At least they admit upfront that the benefit is to the stockholders and maybe caregivers and NOT the “consumer”!
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This is exactly what they said about the so called atypicals when they came out and most doctors still believe it. When it takes 20 years for doctors to even begin to acknowledge lies, pharmaceutical companies will find ways to lie.
Even if it does turn out that it doesn’t cause movement disorders, it’s bound to cause a whole bunch of other problems anyway. It’s also very doubtful that it could actually even work since the biological causes of these so called symptoms are still completely unknown. The odds of stumbling onto a corrective for an unknown malfunction in the most complicated organ there is? Probably no better than one in a quadrillion.
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