Pharmasset, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRUS) has received fast track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for PSI-7977 for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. PSI-7977 is an oral uridine nucleotide analog polymerase inhibitor of HCV. Pharmasset recently completed dosing in a 28 day Phase 2a trial to evaluate PSI-7977 in combination with Pegasys (pegylated interferon) plus Copegus (ribavirin) in treatment-naive patients chronically infected with HCV genotype 1. Pharmasset expects to initiate a 12-week Phase 2b study of PSI-7977 in the fourth quarter of 2010...

A study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that a next-generation, high-speed DNA-decoding technology called high-throughput sequencing can detect the earliest signs of potential relapse in nearly twice the number of leukemia patients as compared to flow cytometry, the current gold standard for detecting minimal ...

"This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world's most powerful tool in the fight against the three pandemics," Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, Inc., writes in this post in the Huffington Post Blog.

iPhones and other smartphones can be a huge help to the visually impaired, but few vision doctors are recommending them to patients, according to a study co-authored by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine ophthalmologist.

Clinical trials are underway to test an azithromycin-based combination treatment for pregnant women, "which could tackle some of the leading preventable causes of death for babies in sub-Saharan Africa," according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who published a report on Wednesday in the ...

A new study suggests that head impacts experienced during contact sports such as football and hockey may worsen some college athletes' ability to acquire new information. The research is published in the May 16, 2012, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In this Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Jay Winsten, associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Trish Stroman, a principal at the Boston Consulting Group, examine "the emergence in Southeast Asia of malarial parasites resistant to artemisinin -- the current gold-standard drug for treating the disease," writing ...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current "field guide" form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the May 17 issue of the New England Journal of ...