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(See: "Lilly Buys Out Cialis Partner".)While most of Lilly's brand drug sales increased slightly from a year ago, its depression fighter Cymbalta was booming.

Sales in the first quarter were $441.8 million, up 89.4%, or $233.3 million, from a year ago.

The company began enjoying a boost in prescriptions midway last year after it re-launched the brand with a new direct-to-consumer advertising campaign.

(See: "Lilly Shares Discount Rebound For Zyprexa, Cymbalta".) On top of higher consumer awareness, the company has benefited from a growing preference by physicians.

Doctors have started to differentiate the drug from other anti-depressants because of its ability to treat pain.

(See: "Lilly's Cymbalta Could See Market Share Gains".)James Kelly, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said the earnings announced Monday also helped dull criticism that the company couldn't grow sales.

"Management delivered on revenues, which has been a key criticism from the bears on the stock," he wrote in a client note.More On This Topic The Mystery Of Pfizer's Toxic Pill Companies: LLY -% String xsl=(String) application.getAttribute(com.forbes.cms.Constants.XSL_REP_KEY)+"/story_body_html_trans.xsl"; final TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); final Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xsl)); final ByteArrayOutputStream bao = new Byt...

We decided to increase the dose to the maximum used to treat acute mountain sickness, which was 16 mg/d (8 mg twice daily) on the basis of previous trials that used 4 mg four times daily.

On the basis of our participants' clinical background, applying this dosage on only 4 consecutive days seemed safe, an assumption that was confirmed in our study.

Dr.

Basnyat noticed that we did not comment on possible dangerous mental side effect of dexamethasone.

During our study, we assessed the mental status of all participants daily and did not observe any symptoms of inappropriate euphoria or mental disorientation.

Moreover, to our knowledge, no studies indicate that dexamethasone impairs cognitive functions at high altitude.

Conversely, 2 studies on mountaineers at altitudes higher than 4000 meters, who received 8 to 16 mg of dexamethasone daily, showed an improvement of reaction times and mood status but no effects on personality in cognitive and psychomotor tests (4, 5).

Thus, these results suggest that the use of dexamethasone at high altitude might even improve a mountaineer's awareness while climbing exposed ridges or trekking paths.

However, we cannot generally recommend ...