INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES

NEW YORK — Retail industry sales are expected to rise, albeit not at the same pace as 2011, according to the National Retail Federation.

Retail industry sales will rise 3.4% to $2.53 trillion, NRF said, compared with a pace of 4.7% in the year-ago period. The expected slowdown in consumer spending, NRF said, will be influenced by a number of factors, including stalled unemployment rate and lack of newly-created jobs. But despite the lower projection, the industry is expected to garner stronger numbers than other industries, NRF said.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — That one of the latest attempts to require prescriptions for cough-cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine appears headed for failure isn't just good news for the retailers that sell those products and the people who need them, it also may encourage those trying to curb the manufacture and use of methamphetamine to focus their efforts on methods that already work, such as the National Precursor Log Exchange, also known as NPLEx, a real-time, industry-funded electronic system that tracks sales of PSE products and is

ARMONK, N.Y. — On Tuesday, IBM released its final benchmark announcement for the 2011 holiday season, detailing a continued strong performance for mobile, as well as an overall increase in online spending for December 2011.

According to the report, the U.S. online retail sector delivered 7.5% growth in December 2011, compared with the same period last year. This followed a strong November where both Black Friday 2011 and Cyber Monday 2011 delivered double-digit growth over 2010.

Other key findings of the IBM report included:

BOSTON — Nicotine replacement therapies designed to help people stop smoking, specifically nicotine patches and nicotine gum, do not appear to be effective in helping smokers quit long-term, even when combined with smoking-cessation counseling, according to a new survey by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Massachusetts Boston posted in an advance online edition of Tobacco Control Monday.

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Generic drug maker Hospira has enrolled the first patient in a late-stage clinical trial of a biosimilar drug for treating kidney disease.

The company said the phase-3 trial of biosimilar EPO (erythropoietin) would compare its product with Amgen's Epogen in patients with kidney dysfunction who have anemia. The trial, which will enroll about 1,000 patients who already have taken Epogen, follows a phase-1 trial that ended last year, and results of the late-stage trial are expected next year.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — A CVS Caremark study found that the company's integrated pharmacy-based program — Pharmacy Advisor — increased medication adherence rates and physician initiation of prescriptions for concomitant medications, improving care for diabetes patients and resulting in savings for health plans, the company announced on Monday.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Many patients that are at risk of Type 2 diabetes don't believe they require lifestyle counseling to help them curb their chance of developing the disease, according to new research published in the journal Diabetes Care.

DALLAS — Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to depression, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center psychiatrists working with the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study in a release issued Thursday.

This new study — published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings — helps clarify a debate that erupted after smaller studies produced conflicting results about the relationship between vitamin D and depression. Major depressive disorder affects nearly 1-in-10 adults in the United States.