Medical treatments have long been criticized for being too rudimentary in their nature. For years, we have had a continuous struggle on our hands as many of the questions posed by our body remained unanswered by the medical world. However, we certainly turned a corner when technology was given an entry into the core of healthcare sector. What followed was an enormous piece of improvement that literally changed the way this particular industry worked. As a result of this technological revolution, we were able to hold productive discussions about medical problems that had stayed under the radar for a long time. This is what precisely made the new era of healthcare so unique. It is not like the industry had never went through any changes before, but it’s rather about how technology studied between the lines and brought often overlooked elements into the limelight. A few years ago many of our health-related complications would go largely unnoticed, however today we have an advanced setup at our disposal to pin down the cause of our discomfort and start its treatment almost instantly.
Now, to complement the speed of this process, we also had to develop certain treatments that could hit the ground running. This was made possible by huge investments in the pharmaceutical industry. The result was worldwide availability of medications that could treat the most grievous diseases with just a handful of doses. There has recently been a new entry to this list, and it really brings the focus to a somewhat unattended area of our health.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals has finally bagged FDA’s approval for its idiopathic hypersomnia treatment (IH), officially making it the first ever treatment that focuses on this disorder. Xywav, Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ answer for excessive sleepiness problem, had initially been approved for treating cataplexy. However, following extensive trials, the company was able to deliver enough evidence to get FDA’s approval for foraying into idiopathic hypersomnia, a disease that makes you feel excessively sleepy during the day even when you had a proper night sleep.
In a bid to test the waters first, Jazz Pharmaceuticals commissioned a double-blind randomized-withdrawal study that recruited 154 adults ranging between19-75 in terms of age. The idea was to get the applicants to randomly switch from Xywav to placebo and see how their body reacted. As per observations made by the researchers’ team, it was noted that the ones who switched to placebo experienced worsening of IH symptoms, something that the applicants staying on Xywav didn’t report.
