alt Hacker News> Seems like a wonder drug to me. The benefits just keep piling up.
That's a massive red flag. It's a common sign of snake oil when something claims to be the cure for a ton of completely unrelated conditions. While I do think these drugs are actually effective at some things, I also wonder how much they're being overprescribed already. It seems like there's a massive push to try to get insurance to cover the drug for just about anything and everything. I've never seen a drug advertised as aggressively either.
The drug is helping people and improving lives and that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how much of the attention on this drug is just a massive scheme by phrama companies to get sales and how careful doctors and patients are being.
Replies
> It's a common sign of snake oil when something claims to be the cure for a ton of completely unrelated conditions.
Except this is coming from the opposite direction. The drug is being noticed to seemingly cure unrelated conditions. The vendor is not selling it as that.
"unrelated"
Are they, or is it just our incomplete understanding?
We still keep finding new and new surprising relationships in our bodies. Caries bacteria in colorectal cancer. Schizophrenia cured by bone marrow transplant. ALS cases induced by consumption of mushrooms (false morels).
I wouldn't be surprised if, say, reduction of systemic inflammation caused all sorts of unexpected effects body-wide.