Medications

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the drugs they prescribe and the ones they cannot get: prior authorization and step therapy, opioid prescribing and the tapers that followed the CDC guideline, the GLP-1 drugs from Ozempic to oral Wegovy and what happens when patients stop them, shortages, compounded versions, and what a prescription costs the patient. Three maintained records draw on this archive: Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words, Prior authorization: what physicians say, in their own words, and GLP-1 drugs: what physicians say about Ozempic and its successors, in their own words.

BPC-157 safety remains uncertain without human evidence

Francisco M. Torres, MD

Medications

August 14, 2026

This patient had done everything right. Six months earlier, he had come into my office barely able to lift his arm above shoulder height, the result of a rotator cuff injury that had quietly worsened over a year of ignoring it. We treated it with the art of clinical approach: an image-guided intra-articular injection to calm the inflammation, followed by a disciplined course of physical therapy. He showed up for …

Why medical cannabis for seniors is surging

Peter Grinspoon, MD

Medications

August 14, 2026

Seniors are increasingly turning to cannabis to find relief from the suffering and medical indignities of aging. I see this every day in my primary care clinic. Whether it is the grinding discomfort of chronic pain, the anxiety associated with losing friends and abilities, or the soul-crushing misery of insomnia, older adults are discovering that medical marijuana can often do what many of our standard prescriptions cannot. They are finding …

What to expect on weight-loss medication, beyond the scale

Patience C. Ennis

Medications

August 13, 2026

I have been a registered nurse for more than thirty years. I am also a bariatric surgery patient and a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) user.

I thought that combination would put me in a good position when I started treatment. I understood medications and adverse effects. I knew hydration, nutrition, and maintaining strength mattered, and that success could not be measured only by the scale. Even so, I found myself working things …

Prescription drug suicide risk is still being hidden

Martha Rosenberg

Medications

August 12, 2026

What if you were an MD/researcher at a top 10 medical school who came face-to-face with a lethal side effect to a popular drug? But, when you tried to reveal it, you were engulfed by a legal and professional character assassination campaign that included threats against your academic position and journal publishing history, physical surveillance by private investigators, and even a home break-in?

That is the basic plot of the newly …

3 realms every drug development leader must bridge

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

Medications

August 11, 2026

Pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) has never lacked scientific ambition. The more challenging issue is transforming good science into programs that operate efficiently, address the right questions, and ultimately enhance patient care. This necessitates a different type of R&D leader.

Traditional research leadership often emphasizes depth in a scientific discipline. While that expertise is crucial, modern drug development is no longer a series of isolated scientific tasks; it is a comprehensive …

BPC-157 is promising but unproven, a surgeon warns

Marc Arginteanu, MD

Medications

August 11, 2026

Decades in the operating room have taught me that the brain is akin to a spiderweb: fragile, interconnected pathways. When trauma or disease hits neural tissue, our toughest battle is protecting blood flow, controlling swelling, and keeping cells alive under extreme stress. That’s probably why researchers are captivated by BPC-157, or Body Protection Compound 157.

This synthetic 15-amino-acid peptide mimics a tough protective protein found naturally in human gastric juice. Unlike …

GLP-1 weight rebound: We have seen this before

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Medications

August 4, 2026

We are living through a massive, rapid shift in how we approach human health, and as I watch the excitement surrounding the new generation of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists, I can’t help but see a familiar ghost in the room. It feels exactly like the early days of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) revolution, a time when we were all so eager for a solution that we sometimes overlooked …

Direct-to-consumer drug ads turn doctors into speed bumps

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Medications

August 4, 2026

While recuperating from my shoulder replacement (and after signing the usual stack of preoperative forms absolving the surgeon, the hospital, the anesthesiologist, and possibly the parking attendant of every imaginable complication, including dying on the table), I had a lot of time to watch television. Daytime television. The kind with a steady rotation of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads.

If you ever want to understand the state of American medicine, don’t read policy …

Why drug advertising is not the public service it claims

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

Medications

August 3, 2026

I have authored previous articles on pharmaceutical advertisements. I noted that they used glitz to sell their products, which was not helpful to patients, especially as many new products had potentially more severe side effects than older ones and were not necessarily more effective. The only significant difference may be that newer products are more expensive.

Safety is a greater concern at present, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has …

Semaglutide and cravings: what the 2026 trial changed

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Medications

July 31, 2026

Patients start glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs expecting to think less about food. They did not expect to think less about alcohol. The nightly drink became easier to skip. Cigarettes felt less urgent. Cannabis, gambling, or compulsive shopping sometimes lost their pull. As “food noise” quieted, another possibility emerged: Perhaps these drugs were turning down craving itself.

At first, these reports might have seemed like coincidences. Instead, they sparked new research. Scientists …

Compounded GLP-1 drugs are not the same as approved ones

The Obesity Society

Medications

July 22, 2026

For millions of people living with obesity, FDA-approved GLP-1 medications have created new opportunities to improve health, reduce the burden of related chronic diseases, and receive evidence-based treatment for a condition that has too often been dismissed as a matter of willpower. At the same time, extraordinary demand for these therapies has fueled the rapid growth of compounded alternatives that are often marketed as less expensive, personalized, or equivalent substitutes. …

Why the fear of drugs in pregnancy can do its own harm

Martha Rosenberg

Medications

July 18, 2026

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Division of Psychiatry until 2024.

Martha Rosenberg: Recent news items about Tylenol and SSRIs in pregnancy can bring up memories of thalidomide and DES scares. Can you offer perspective?

Marc Stone: The thalidomide crisis was horrifying and so graphic, but the drug was never approved in the U.S., and there were only a few …

Testosterone replacement therapy isn’t a military fix

Tom Peteet, MD, MPH, MEd

Medications

July 17, 2026

Testosterone is having a moment. From patients requesting testosterone testing, to morning sports radio urging me to “get my T checked,” to Pete Hegseth’s recent recommendation to screen military personnel, testosterone just won’t go away. The renewed interest in testosterone is as much cultural as it is medical. Culturally, prominent male podcasters and proponents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement equate muscles and testosterone with masculinity. So, after …

GLP-1 coverage cuts hit disabled patients hardest

Tom Peteet, MD, MPH, MEd

Medications

July 8, 2026

As a physician, telling my patients “no” never gets easier. In some cases, I have good reason, such as declining to increase opioids because of the risk of side effects. In other cases, I can only gently tell patients, “The health care system doesn’t want to pay.” In the coming months, I will be saying “no” a lot more often. As of July 1, MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, Read more…

GLP-1 coverage cuts hit disabled patients hardest

A former FDA official on antidepressants and suicide risk

Martha Rosenberg

Medications

July 6, 2026

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Division of Psychiatry until 2024.

Martha Rosenberg: Recently, in the Cato Institute journal Regulation you and co-authors Andrew Mosholder, MD and Tarek Hammad, MD wrote that the FDA’s antidepressant warning did not kill American children through discouraging prescriptions as alleged in an earlier story. What did yours and Dr. Hammad’s earlier research on …

What is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program?

American Medical Women's Association & Eliza Lo Chin, MD, MPH

Medications

July 2, 2026

As our understanding of obesity as a chronic disease has evolved, one paradox has been the ongoing barriers to accessing effective therapeutics for this condition, an approach vastly different from the way we treat other chronic diseases like heart disease, hypertension, or cerebrovascular disease.

Thankfully, that era has ended, and in July of this year, Medicare will begin covering access to GLP-1s for the treatment of obesity.

Why is this important for …

The hidden costs of anabolic steroid side effects

Shiv K. Goel, MD

Medications

June 24, 2026

He sat down and said, “Doc, I just want to sleep again.”

Marc, name and details changed, was 54. He hadn’t touched a needle in two years. His cardiologist was still watching his blood pressure. His body had not caught up with his decision to stop.

His labs told the story his competition photos never did. Elevated red blood cell count consistent with secondary polycythemia. Suppressed LH and FSH. Low testosterone. …

3 pharma conflicts of interest hiding in plain sight

Martha Rosenberg

Medications

June 22, 2026

1. Medical journals are going the way of newspapers, as in “extinct”

Who remembers newspapers? Pre-smartphone compendiums of world and local events on paper that required reporters to investigate and inform?

When newspapers lost their classified ads, their financial fulcrum, to Craigslist, they lost their readers and reporters. No one could pay staff or printing or distribution without readers and advertisers, and the business model is otiose, especially because of the printing …

AMA kratom policy needs regulation, not a 7-OH ban

Bryon Adinoff, MD

Medications

June 19, 2026

An American Medical Association (AMA) policy from June 9, 2026, calls for prohibiting the sale, distribution, and marketing of concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) products while supporting surveillance, additional research, and other public health measures for kratom, according to the AMA press release and the AMA House of Delegates report. This policy raises an uncomfortable question: Was the AMA duped on 7-OH?

The question is particularly relevant …

Is anticoagulation bleeding risk worse in the real world?

David K. Cundiff, MD

Medications

June 6, 2026

For decades, the medical community has accepted a foundational principle of cardiovascular care: patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AFib) require aggressive, lifelong stroke prophylaxis. When a patient also presents with stable coronary artery disease (CAD), standard practice has historically gone a step further, layering an antiplatelet such as aspirin on top of an oral anticoagulant such as warfarin or a modern direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC). To frontline hospitalists and patients, …

Medications

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts