The maker of the antifungal cream Ertaczo (sertaconazole nitrate) received a violation letter from the FDA last week regarding misleading advertisements for the prescription medication, which is used primarily to treat interdigital tinea pedis — more commonly known as athlete’s foot.

While Johnson & Johnson claims the cream eliminates the infection that causes athlete’s foot, clinical trials have shown it to be only modestly effective against tinea. The ads included claims such as “Tinea Stops Here” and “Crush. Kill. Destroy.”

So, what exactly is athlete’s foot — and what medication is your best choice for treating it?

Athlete’s foot is a fungal infection that can lead to intense itching, cracked skin, scaling and redness. It can occur on wet skin especially between the toes, or on dry skin around the heels and rest of the foot.

Your best treatment option depends on the condition’s type and severity. In many cases, athlete’s foot can be treated effectively by over-the-counter topical medications like Lamisil AT, Micatin, Lotrimin AF or Tinactin.

For more severe cases or those that don’t respond to OTC remedies, prescription topicals are the next option. These include Naftin, Mentax, Monistat Derm, Lotrimin and Ertaczo.

When your athlete’s foot doesn’t respond to topical medications, your doctor may prescribe oral antifungal pills, such as Lamisil, Sporanox, and Diflucan.

Which treatment is best for you? There are a large number of antifungal medications on the market, with different active ingredients, so the options are many. One study did find that so-called allylamines (such as Lamisil and Naftin) cured more athlete’s foot infections than azoles (such as Ertaczo and Lotrimin).

As always, however, your best option is to consult with your doctor based on your individual symptoms.

Source

What if millions of spam e-mails were sent out every day with your name — or your company’s name — on them? What do you think that would do to your reputation?

Unfortunately, this is a nightmare that many legitimate Canadian pharmacies are living today.

As ITBusiness.ca reports:

“To most people, ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ means just another spam e-mail message promising cheap Viagra pills that is deleted in microseconds – but to David Zimmer, it’s a reputation nightmare for his business.

“Zimmer is the owner of Winnipeg-based The Canadian Pharmacy, a small company that legitimately sells pharmaceuticals over the Internet to American customers…

“But when his company is confused with the almost identically-named spammer group, his reputation takes a drubbing. ‘It’s a big pain for us,’ he says. He says he gets inundated with complaints from angry victims of these spammers who haven’t received their medication.”

The most frustrating part is, these spam operations aren’t based in Canada at all. The biggest, in fact, is the Russian-based organization that calls itself “Canadian Pharmacy.” It sends as many as 60 billion spam e-mails per day. It has been known to ship counterfeit and adulterated medications to unwitting consumers who order from its many sites.

Says Zimmer:

“I’ve considered changing our brand,” he says. “When people confuse us with Canadian Pharmacy, that hurts our ability to market ourselves by word of mouth.”

It doesn’t help matters that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has taken advantage of the confusion and tried to tar legitimate pharmacies with the same brush as rogue spammers — a dishonest but effective PR ploy that has duped more than a few members of the U.S. news media.

You would think the problem of e-mail spam from so-called Canadian pharmacies (which are actually fronts for criminal organizations in Russia and elsewhere) couldn’t get worse.

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

According to the latest data from McAfee and MX Logic:

Both security firms see “pharmaceutical spam,” at almost 90% of all spam, as the single largest type of spam in terms of content, with one in particular, known as Canadian Pharmacy, the undisputed dominant force.

Criminals sending spam rely on hijacked “zombie” machines that have been taken over by malware, and the number of zombies around the world is said to be rising by an estimated 150,000 every day. “In the U.S. alone, there are 2.1 million new zombies, up 33% from the last period,” the McAfee report states. McAfee estimates there are a total 14 million computers “enslaved by cybercriminal botnets.”

Researchers also said that more than 90 percent of all e-mail can be classified as spam — which would suggest that more than 80 percent of ALL e-mails are pharmacy spam.