All Stories Tagged With: "drugs"
More Deaths from Pharmaceutical Painkillers than Cocaine and Heroin Combined
More Americans died in 2008 from pharmaceutical painkiller overdose than fatalities from illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin combined. Responsible for nearly 15,000 deaths in 2008, prescription painkillers have become wildly among Americans.
FDA Warns Over Pregnancy Drug Risks
The Food and Drug Administration is now issuing stronger warnings over the popular pregnancy drug terbutaline, which prevents premature birth.
Feds May Allow Unregulated Pharmaceuticals in Water Supply
Federal regulators in charge of monitoring and controlling pharmaceutical drugs in your drinking water may allow the contaminants to go unregulated. Unsure “which pharmaceuticals pose human health risks,” the regulators are standing idle.
Kids in Hospitals Given Up to 35 Medications a Week
The number of drugs given to children in hospitals is sky high, with hospitalized kids receiving as much as 35 drugs a week. Children younger than 1 at the 90th percentile of daily medication use are given 11 drugs while children 1 year or older are given 13 drugs.
Antibiotics Prescriptions Declining – But Not Enough
The concern over antibiotics being over-prescribed has been going on for years. Now it looks like the push for less prescriptions has finally paid off. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there is a 10 percent drop in antibiotic prescription rates for kids 14 and younger since the early 90′s.
Big Pharma to Charge 115,200 Dollars Per Patient Each Year for New Lung Cancer Drug
Pfizer plans on coming out with a new drug to treat a rare form of lung cancer. Today that therapy is called Xalkori. Pfizer plans on charging each patient $115,200/year for the treatment.
Antibiotic Overuse a Serious Problem
The overuse of antibiotics has become a serious problem. Mainstream doctors are now warning against the excessive overuse of antibiotics due to the permanent negative alterations in digestive flora.
Foods Beat Cholesterol Drugs in Effectiveness Without Nasty Side Effects
A new study has found that nutrition, not pharmaceutical cholesterol drugs, are the most effective means of lowering “bad” cholesterol levels. While it has been established that cholesterol is not always a powerful indicator of heart health.
Facebook, Google as Addictive as Drugs Finds Study
Facebook, Twitter, and Google may be in the same category as mind-altering drugs when it comes to their addictive properties, according to new research.
How Big Pharma Got Americans Hooked on Anti-Psychotic Drugs
Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses.
What Could be Lurking in Your Milk?
A glass of milk can contain a cocktail of up to 20 painkillers, antibiotics and growth hormones, scientists have shown. Using a highly sensitive test, they found a host of chemicals used to treat illnesses in animals and people in samples of cow, goat and human breast milk. The doses of drugs were far too small to have an effect on anyone drinking them, but the results highlight how man-made chemicals are now found throughout the food chain.
Prescription Drug Bottles Lack Proper Safety Warnings
Drugstores are not providing adequate safety information to consumers when they pick up their prescription medications, according an investigation from Consumer Reports. The report reveals that drug labels sometimes lack key safety warnings, and some pharmacies fail to include the medication guides required by the federal government. The report was based on a “spot check” of drugstores in Yonkers, N.Y., belong to five chains.
The Power of Placebo — When Believing is Healing
A placebo is a sham medical treatment that contains no active ingredients — but your belief in it alone may still be beneficial to your health. The placebo effect works best on conditions that are emotional and subjective. A recent study suggests that the placebo effect may be at work in many headache treatments. The placebo effect can change your heartbeat, blood pressure, digestion and many other factors that you don’t control.
18 U.S. Veterans Commit Suicide Daily; Largely Due to Psychiatric Drugs
“If mentally incapacitated troops are being drugged with dangerous, mind-altering drugs and deployed to battle against their will, how can we say that we have a volunteer army?” asked Alliance for Human Research Protection, the national network dedicated to advancing responsible and ethical medical research practices.
Drug Labels Contain 70 Negative Side Effects on Average
Have you ever counted the number of side-effects you might hear in a prescription drug commercial? Although the number may seem like, and definitely IS a lot, there’s a good chance that what you’re hearing is only a partial list of damaging effects. New research shows that the average drug label contains an astonishing 70 possible negative side-effects! What’s more, the researchers found that the drugs prescribed on a very regular basis averaged around 100 side-effects each, with some reaching sky high for 525 negative reactions.
The Power of Placebos
A recent survey, led by McGill Psychiatry Professor and Senior Lady Davis Institute Researcher Amir Raz, reports that one in five respondents – physicians and psychiatrists in Canadian medical schools – have administered or prescribed a placebo. Moreover, an even higher proportion of psychiatrists (more than 35 per cent) reported prescribing subtherapeutic doses of medication (that is, doses that are below, sometimes considerably below, the minimal recommended therapeutic level) to treat their patients.
New Drugs Often Marketed Ahead of Crucial Data
Data that could save money and help doctors make smarter treatment decisions are often unavailable at the time new medicines hit the market, according to U.S. researchers. In a study out Tuesday, they found nearly a third of new drug approvals from the Food and Drug Administration included no data on how well the medications compare with existing alternatives. “Even when these things are accessible, it’s hugely time-consuming to go through it,” said Joshua Gagne, a pharmacist at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
