Natural health courses may be something you want to consider if you are interested in a natural health career. I was interest in attending a natural health college because I want to help people and I enjoy new and different approaches to healthcare. Some of the courses I read seemed to be very difficult so I might be in over my head here. I found out that some schools offer courses in Chinese natural health care. The Chinese seem to have the answers for all the ills with natural remedies.

There are many courses to choose from and take so I like the options and there is a great potential to succeed when and if I ever graduate. I will be a high school senior this coming year so I have time to decide what my college will be. I’m not sure what my career would be though I thought about becoming a massage therapist one day. When you see the course schedule it’s overwhelming because the amount of education involved.

I noticed the amount of people who are enrolled in those types of natural health schools isn’t that much so maybe I will have a better chance to land a job after I graduate. I might change my mind between now and when I graduate from high school but the chances are I will likely still be interested. Natural health courses seem as if they will be a challenge but I know if I am committed I can do it.

Many American’s are writing their health care out of their budget due to the uncertain economy. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll, which showed that 53 percent of participants said that they or someone in their family has cut back on health care because of the high costs associated with it. Especially for American’s who are out of work, not having coverage can send health care costs skyrocketing with bills piling up rather quickly. The poll also indicates that more people are turning to home remedies and over the counter drugs, as opposed to seeking the help of a physician. Lastly, more American’s are not filling prescriptions and/or avoiding medical tests or treatments in order to just get by.

A few things that will help you save money is to request your own records and do it well in advance of your doctors appointment, Take note of any changes you have had in the last six months and write everything down before your visit, so you don’t forget to ask any important questions. Essentially, get the most out of one appointment as possible. Ask your doctor for free samples of any prescriptions to help keep costs down and ask about cheaper generic alternatives to your current medications.

American’s do have an option to ask for financial help as many hospitals and clinics usually have financial assistance programs. Some doctors, like Feltheimer of New York Presbyterian, lowers his fees to $50.00 for patients’ who are out of work or uninsured. Many doctors will work out a payment schedules, so do not hesitate to ask what your physician’s policies are. People with chronic or debilitating disease such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, can access the Patient Advocate Foundation. They provide help negotiating with insurers and helps people get the most out of their health plan. There are no financial requirements to qualify, so call (800) 532-5274 to be assigned a case manager.

Where do the medicines we take from chemists come from? How do the doctors know which drug is good for which disease? How the medicines really are able to cure a particular ailment they have been prescribed for? Do these questions come to your mind, whenever you buy any medicine?

Come, let us today know about the medicine development from the beginning

The development of medicine is called a Clinical Research and has different Phases. Phases of the clinical research are the steps of experiments with a health intervention in an attempt to find enough evidence for a process which the scientists think would be helpful in medical treatment.

The pharmaceutical study starts its journey from a drug design and drug molecule discovery which further progresses into animal testing and then human studies to see the drug’s effectiveness.

Drug undergoes many trials- Preclinical, Phase 0, Phase I, II, III and IV. Sometimes combined trials also are undertaken to reduce the time of development, like Phase I/II and II/III.

Pre-Clinical Study

When the drug molecule is identified, it undergoes many in vitro (test tube or cell culture) and in vivo (animal) experiments. These experiments are conducted to know the preliminary efficacy, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics of the various doses of the drug. Many drug molecules are designed at a time and these pre-clinical studies let the pharmaceutical companies decide which molecule has a greater potential in further studies.

Design of the Studies:

Trials are always conducted by following the set of steps, called the protocol, developed by the researchers to find the specific questions related to the medical product. Information from the prior studies become the base for the researchers to develop research questionnaire and objectives:

• Participant selection
• Number of participants
• Duration of the study
• Controlled or not
• How and what dosage will be given
• What and when the data will be collected
• Review and analysis time

Phase 0 Study

It is also called micro-dosing trials, 10-15 human subjects are taken and single sub-therapeutic doses are administered to gather the pharmacokinetic (PK) data of the drug. This enables the company in deciding to go or no go for the further development of the drug, based on more relevant human data instead of animal data.

Such trials exceed the speed of promising drug development by establishing whether or not the drug acts on humans as expected in pre-clinical studies.

After the company decides to take the molecule of the drug forward in development, it will have to submit the data of its preliminary studies to the FDA called Investigation New Drug (IND) application filing.

Phase I Study

Also called First-in-man studies as these are the first stage of human testing studies. These are the studies which are designed to determine the maximum dose that can be administered without showing adverse effects.

Contract Research Organizations (CROs) conduct such studies in the clinical trial clinics where medical staff provides full-time attention to 2-100 healthy subjects enrolled for the study and collects the data.

These studies determine the safety (pharmacovigilance), tolerability, pharmacokinetics (PK)and pharmacodynamics (PD) of the drug. The design of Phase I studies is dose-ranging also called dose escalation studies conducted in controlled clinics called Central Pharmacological Units (CPUs).

Usually, healthy subjects are hired but sometimes terminally ill patients like of cancer and HIV and also those who have already tried and failed to improve on existing medications.

There are two divisions for Phase I study:

Phase Ia: Single ascending dose

Phase Ib: Multiple ascending dose

Phase II Study

More than 100 diseased subjects are enrolled for a longer period study, to know the benefits of the drug along with its safety which includes genetic testing. These studies are also called as “Proof of Concept or Pilot” studies.

This is the phase when the drug’s development can fail due to toxicity or less than expected results.

Two divisions of this phase are:

Phase IIa: Pilot study, to determine the clinical efficacy or the biological activity.

Phase IIb: Dose-finding study, to check the biological activity with minimal side-effects.

A combined trial determining the efficacy as well as toxicity are Phase I/II trials.

Phase III Study

These are pre-registration trials means the data of this study is submitted to the regulatory agency through New Drug Application (NDA) for its registration. Also called Pre-marketing or Pivotal trials.

Such studies are multi-central, randomized, in large diseased population (more than 500) with much longer duration of treatment and short follow up period, to determine the long-term safety and efficacy of the drug.

Even if the regulatory submission is pending, the drug is received by the patients in case it’s a lifesaving drug until the drug can be purchased.

‘Label expansion’ that is drug can treat an additional disease, other than the disease for which the drug is already approved, may also be the reason for running the Phase III trial.

It is said that for FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) and MHRA (United Kingdom’s Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency) needs at least two trials of successful trials data to register the drug.

After these trials, the drug is approved for market selling.

Phase IV Study

These are Post Market Safety Monitoring studies done after the drug is registered. Also called Late Phase or Confirmatory trials.

This kind of study determines the long-term adverse effects on the much larger population for a very long duration (at least 2 years). If harmful effects are detected in this study, then the drug is disapproved and the company has to retrieve the drug from the market as it can no longer be sold.

The entire journey of the drug from a molecule to a market selling product takes around 15-20 years.

With the development of science, traditional Sanger sequencing has failed to meet new requirements of low cost, high throughput and fast in speed.

Recent years, with the discovery and promotion of second-generation sequencing technology, the gene sequencing speed has increased greatly while achieving a substantial decline in costs, making large-scale application of genome sequencing possible. Now, the cost of personal whole genome sequencing is about 5,000$, and is expected to decreased to less than $ 1,000 in the next few years.

The rapid development of sequencing technology will promote the massive accumulation of DNA sequencing data, accompanied by the accumulation of the corresponding individual diseases, signs and other data at the same time. When we accumulate enough data, how to understand these data will be critical. On the micro level, generations of molecular biologists’ studying the effects of apparent biological traits genes exert on utilizing technologies like gene knockout have made breakthroughs in many crucial aspects. On the macro level, statistics and other data analysis techniques are introduced to study the relationship between gene sequences and biological phenotype. The accumulation of basic scientific research gradually brings breakthroughs in clinical applications.

There are now two types of clinical applications mainly, one aims at disease screening of ordinary people. It infers people’s future risks of getting cancer by measuring the known genes associated with a disease loci. The other aims at the diagnosis cancer and other deadly diseases. It finds in a series of drugs or plans the most effective one for certain patients by testing the loci of certain genes.

Data from BBC research shows that total global gene sequencing market increased from $ 7.941million in 2007 to $ 4.5 billion in 2013, and will reach $ 11.7 billion in the year of 2018 with the CAGR up to 21.2%.

Currently, the market of de novo sequence platform is mainly taken by several major manufacturers, including the Illumina, Ion Torrent / Life Technologies (was the acquisition of Thermo Fisher in 2014), 454 Life Sciences / Roche, etc.

Under such a circumstance, the next generation sequencing technology (second-generation sequencing) appears. As an emerging industry, the next-generation sequencing technology can be applied in clinical testing like antibody discovery, health industry, industrial and agricultural use of gene-oriented study as well as scientific research and development.

To stimulate the next generation sequencing market, we need to start by investing more small and medium size industry focusing on this field.