Talk:Eflornithine

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DavidSzeto, Wzhao0, Lindur, Nicolenahigian. Peer reviewers: Ashleyjkim, RosaA, Wli18, Tu.Vo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:17, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Question
Which enantiomer of the molecule is present in the drug, or is it just a racemic mixture? GeeJo (t) (c) 17:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It is just a racemic mixture.--DavidSzeto (talk) 05:45, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Brand name for Article?
I find this confusing. I got to this page as a redirect from searching for Vaniqa, which I'm going to guess is a more common word to be searched by lay users. There is information about Vaniqa here but it's somewhat buried. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.244.62.131 (talk) 10:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Vaniqa is just a brandname used to market the topical form of Eflornithine. What you have to understand is there could be many different generics and brandnames using something such as Eflornithine, which would make more sense to use the name of the active ingredient for an article rather than to create seperate articles for each and every brand even though the pharmacological information would all be identical. However, if you want, you can create an article for the brand focusing on the logo, brand, marketing and business side of the cream. There are thousands of brands for Codeine based products, or Tramadol Hcl., which is the reason why encyclopedias and pharmacological directories tend to classify medicines by their active ingredient. However, I do agree with you that the dual faceted aspect of Eflornithine needs to be more clear, either by dividing this article into 2, or creating a different article focusing on the topical form of Eflornithine and this article focusing on its internal use. --78.86.159.199 (talk) 21:07, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
I believe there is conflict of interest in Tdaguy's edits here, and I invite everyone to carefully review and improve the content he added here (especially content that is either unsourced or based on pharmaceutical companies' sources). Please read below.

My last edits on this article included info on the stopping of the production of the sleeping sickness medicine on 1995. While preparing them, I found out that this info was present on earlier versions, and was deleted (while a lot of content on the hirsutism application and its commercial drug was added). In fact, in those earlier versions the article had much more content related to this drug's application to sleeping sickness (an endemic disease, and invariably lethal when not treated) than its application to hirsutism (i.e. hairiness in woman; not a disease, but a symptom of cosmetic concern, and therefore of lesser importance than sleeping sickness, which is an endemic and fatal disease).

Those changes happened in a block, and were all made by Tdaguy. A good example is this one, in which the heading "Production" was removed, leaving the reader to believe that the drug has always been available for sufferers of sleeping sickness. Also, a previous edit by the same user included information on Aventis' partnership with WHO (Aventis donated eflornithine-based sleeping sickness medicines), but without mentioning that this partnership only happened after public outcry (because of the launching of Varniqa — the version of the drug that only treats hirsutism — while the sleeping sickness formulation was out of production), as reported by Médecins Sans Frontières.

I believe this goes strongly against the neutral point of view Wikipedia policy. Now, let me explain why I believe there is also conflict of interest in this case.

The user in question, Tdaguy, edited 3 articles: this one, The Duffy Agency (which it created) and Niquitin (which it also created). If you google Varniqa + "Duffy Agency", the second link you get is for a weblog entry, by a webdesigner based in Malmö (the same city as The Duffy Agency's headquarters), in which we learn that an ad agency called The Duffy Agency was responsible for launching a new UK website for Varniqa. The post was made almost exactly a month before Tdaguy's edits on this article. The Duffy Agency's website also says that among the company's services are "social media campaigns" and "social media strategy".

Also, Tdaguy's username appears to be an acronym to "The Duffy Agency guy"; the same username also appears at this user profile elsewhere, which is directly linked to the company's official website and has its logo as an avatar. I believe this is reason enough to believe that Tdaguy is connected to The Duffy Agency, and that — because they have done marketing campaigns for Varniqa, and roughly during the same period as these edits — it has conflict of interest with this article.

Now, how should we proceed with this article? It seems that Tdaguy's edits added some content that was missing here (earlier articles only stated that Eflornithine had many uses, but didn't mention hirsutism explicitly), so it might not be the case to simply revert those edits. But it's also clear they shifted the article's focus to hirsutism (this edit of his is a good example), which is a less important issue than sleeping sickness; and made it non-NPOV, by simply removing the production section. I also have to admit that my knee-jerk reaction is to be distrustful of the content added, because of the conflict of interest mentioned.

Because of that, I believe the best option would be to carefully review all the content Tdaguy has introduced here, especially when unsourced, or when sources are the pharmaceutical companies producing Varniqa and similar medicines. What do you say? —Miguelito Vieira (talk) 12:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * (referred from WP:COIN). I think restoration of the removed content is appropriate. As for their new edits, if they can be sourced to independent reliable sources, then they would be appropriate as well. If it is truly an approved medication for hirsutism, it should be relatively easy to source that to medical journals, FDA, etc. The account itself has not edited in a few weeks now, and I see the COI warning has been given, so we'll see how they proceed, if at all. The account may be blockable under the username policy as well... I'll have a look at the sum of their edits and make a call there. Thanks to Miguelito for the leg work! Arakunem Talk 13:31, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Miguelito is correct, The Duffy Agency does work with Almirall, the company that produces Vaniqa. We made changes to the entry to reflect correct information on both African Sleeping sickness and unwanted facial hair. The original entry was factually incorrect in both areas. We have aggressively documented every fact for every point made anywhere in the article. The information about African Sleeping Sickness before was limited and missing. We added more details about the drugs use in that area, as well it's use in unwanted facial hair. I am very interested in discussing this further with Miquelito or anyone else. To my knowledge, none of the information about African Sleeping Sickness is missing from the previous entry. The information that Miquelito added was not there before.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tdaguy (talk • contribs) 11:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

No mention of DFMO in clinical cancer trials?
There is quite a growing body of evidence that DFMO is active against solid-tumor cancers (skin cancer, neuroblastoma, colon cancer, &c.). Clinical trials have been completed. Would the author mind if I updated the page to reflect the newly found activity of the drug, or would they like to do so themselves? Seems at least as remarkable as the treatment of hirsutism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herelephant (talk • contribs) 01:05, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Group 11 Proposed Edits/Review
DFMO in clinical cancer trials — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.218.42.171 (talk) 18:45, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Answer enantiomer question
 * 2) Answer brand name for article
 * 3) PK/PD details and explanation for IV dosage form
 * 4) Side effect profile update
 * 5) Review

WikiProject: Group 12's Peer Review (Fall 2016)
Student 1 - Does the draft submission reflect a neutral point of view? If not, specify…

The draft submission reflects an overall neutral point of view and no biases. Group 11 did a good job in presenting a wealth of unbiased information from different sources. --Ashleyjkim (talk) 21:29, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Student 2 - Yes, the points included are verifiable with cited secondary sources that are freely accessible. --Tu.Vo (talk) 21:27, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

STUDENT 3 - Are the edits formatted consistent with Wikipedia’s manual of style for medicine-related articles? Yes, the overall edits in this article are consistent with Wikipedia’s style. Group 11 ensured all sources had been added after the period and did not overuse capitalization. A few items that could be improved are the overuse of hyperlinks to “African Trypanosomiasis” throughout the article and formatting/ styling in the mechanism of action section.--RosaA (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Student 4- Is there any evidence of plagiarism or copyright violation? There are a few sections in which citations or sources are not included. Examples of sections without citation or sources include "Intravenous" under side effects, "description" and "active site" under mechanism of action. Perhaps adding in citation would help clarify where the information was obtained. --Wli19 (talk) 20:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 one external links on Eflornithine. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100215120040/http://www.ukmi.nhs.uk:80/NewMaterial/html/docs/EflornithineNMP0504b.pdf to http://www.ukmi.nhs.uk/NewMaterial/html/docs/EflornithineNMP0504b.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091205163254/http://emc.medicines.org.uk:80/medicine/21243/SPC/Vaniqa+11.5%25+cream/ to http://www.emc.medicines.org.uk/medicine/21243/SPC/Vaniqa+11.5%+cream
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110607070234/http://www.drugs.com/mmx/ornidyl.html to http://www.drugs.com/mmx/ornidyl.html
 * Added tag to http://www.who.int/tdrold/publications/tdrnews/news64/eflornithine.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060829033157/http://www.ifpma.org:80/Health/other_infect/health_sleep.aspx to http://www.ifpma.org/Health/other_infect/health_sleep.aspx

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 05:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)