Diarrheal disease is the world’s second leading cause of death among young children. It claims more than half a million lives of children under five years old each year, accounting for 9% of global child deaths. It is also a leading cause of morbidity in children, including chronic malnutrition. The original United Nations Millennium Development Goals included a target to reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two-thirds by 2015.

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The potential negative impact for human health of veterinary use of antimicrobials in prophylaxis, metaphylaxis and growth promotion in animal husbandry was first established in the 1960s and 1970s. Determination of the molecular structure of antimicrobial resistance plasmids at that time explained the ability of antimicrobial resistance genes to disseminate among bacterial populations and elucidated the reasons for the negative effects of antimicrobials used in food animals for human health. In this issue of Environmental Microbiology, Liu et al.

European Union law prohibits companies from marketing drugs off-label. In the United Kingdom—as in some other European countries, but unlike the United States—industry self-regulatory bodies are tasked with supervising compliance with marketing rules. The objectives of this study were to (1) characterize off-label promotion rulings in the UK compared to the whistleblower-initiated cases in the US and (2) shed light on the UK self-regulatory mechanism for detecting, deterring, and sanctioning off-label promotion.

I have posed 50 questions each to the founders of 50 young Indian biomedical firms that are less than 5 years old. The questions were on the following themes: the backgrounds of the founders and their employees, the area of work of the company, its location and incubation experience, its funding and expenditure, its IP and licensing, its clients, and its risks and challenges. Several are doing pioneering work and the overall picture is impressive. The country should become a source of appropriate, high quality and affordable biomedical products and services in a few year.