If youâre using B vitamins to help prevent hot flashes, be sure to use the form of niacin called niacinamide. Other forms of niacin dilate the blood vessels, which can cause flushing and worsen hot flashes, rather than relieve them. Folic acid helps the body manufacture and use estrogen.
And the title of âMost Expensive Drug in the Entire Worldâ goes to Glybera, a drug so far not approved in the U.S. but recently approved in the European Union. Glybera is a gene therapy used to treat a condition called familial lipoprotein lipase deficiency, a disease affecting only about one in 1 million people.
(ImClone, the biotechnology company founded by her friend Sam Waksal, made the drug.) But recently Eribitux has acquired a new, and perhaps more ominous, distinction. At $17,000 a month, Erbitux is one of the most expensive cancer drugs ever made. For the record, it is not the most expensive. That distinction is currently held by Zevalin, a $24,000-a-month treatment for a relatively rare type of lymphoma. But the prevalence of colon cancerâthe disease strikes 106,000 Americans a yearâmakes the price of Erbitux especially troubling.