Neurological Disorders

As the COVID-19 Vaccination program is rampantly and progressively rolling out, increase in the number of adverse events become alarming and many rare complications have been notified. During the current period of COVID-19 vaccination, a high index of suspicion is required to identify thrombotic episodes following vaccination. However, it is important to remember that these side effects are rare and much less common than both cerebral venous thrombosis and ischemic stroke associated with COVID-19 infection itself. Neurological complications are potentially disabling AEFI (adverse event following immunization) that may range from facial palsy to stroke. The authors report the first case of lateral medullary infarct after administration of Moderna mRNA vaccine in Singapore.

Neurodegenerative Diseases (NDDs) occur when nerve cells in the brain or peripheral nervous system lose function over time and ultimately die. The risk of being affected by a neurodegenerative disease increases drastically with age. With increasing life expectancy neurodegenerative diseases have been on the rise. The absence of a cure for NDD implies a high burden to the individual patient but also a tremendous cost to society. This article advances some possible economic explanations for the absence of disease-modifying treatments for NDDs by exploring relevant non-medical hurdles in research and development. While the development of disease-modifying treatments for NDDs may present intrinsic hurdles existing economic research provides arguments why other explanations for the absence of causal therapies may play a role. Notably economic science can shed light on the incentives for developing causal treatments. In this article we analyse the innovation inhibiting effect of an already existing drug portfolio. Moreover we demonstrate that different regulatory mechanisms in essence price controls and health insurance as well as patent protection might distort companies’ incentives to innovate. This may tilt incentives towards research geared to smaller and lower incremental value innovations which could be an explanation for the lack of causal therapies in NDDs