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.
The most expensive drug in the U.S. is Soliris, from Alexion (ALXN). It costs $409,500 a year, and treats a rare disorder in which the immune system destroys red blood cells at night. Many of the most expensive drugs -- such as Soliris -- treat rare diseases that only a few hundred people suffer from. Those drugs aren't the real problem. Rather, it's the drugs in the $20,000 to $100,000 range, which mainly treat cancer and multiple sclerosis. Those diseases are very common in the elderly population.