Word: pills
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...modern age than jet lag? Dislocated and deadened, the sleep-starved traveler wanders through meetings or tourist sites in a somnambulant haze. Now an experimental drug promises to reset the body's internal clock and banish jet lag zombies for good - and, surprise, it comes in a pill...
...Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that the new drug restored near normal sleep the first night it was used. In one arm of the study, participants taking a high dose of the drug actually fell asleep more quickly than usual. In another part of the study, pill-takers' sleep efficiency - the percentage of bed-time spent sleeping - remained unchanged after experiencing jet lag, while their counterparts who received placebos slept 19% less. (See TIME's photos of the history of land speed record...
Melatonin, which is available over the counter in pill form, is a known treatment for jet lag, but the substance can't be patented, leading drug companies like Vanda Pharmaceuticals, the maker of tasimelteon, to rush to develop drugs that imitate it. Dr. Irshaad Ebrahim, medical director of the London Sleep Centre, says the recent study, published Dec. 2 in the journal The Lancet, confirms what experts already know. "I'm not sure this adds anything. Melatonin itself can be quite effective on its own. So, of course, something that mimics melatonin would show promising results," he says...
...interim, Dr. Ebrahim says, sleep experts have developed more reliable - albeit more complicated than popping a pill - methods of altering the body's natural melatonin production, which may help some of the 100 million people who take international flights from the U.S. each year, and the millions more who live in a perpetual state of jet lag due to night-shift work. One strategy is to use light-dark exposure, which helps cue the body's circadian rhythm. British Airways, for example, offers a "jet-lag calculator" that applies research into bright-light therapy to advise passengers when...
...patents expire, the Commission said. The most common tactic allegedly involves filing multiple patent applications for the same medicine - so-called patent clusters - that stake out an extremely broad claim for a drug's intended use and physical form (for instance, whether as a liquid, a capsule or a pill). In one case, the E.U. found 1,300 patents for a single medicine. Other tactics condemned by the Commission include launching litigation that lasts nearly three years on average, and lobbying national authorities against giving generic companies regulatory approvals...