Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 February 2020

Popular Drugs To Lower Blood Pressure Increases The Risk Of Cancer

Popular Drugs To Lower Blood Pressure Increases The Risk Of Cancer.
Use of a average merit of drugs for high blood pressure and nerve failure is associated with a slight boost in cancer risk, a new review of data finds. The drugs are known as angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) and count medicines such as telmisartan (Micardis), losartan (Cozaar, Hyzaar), valsartan (Diovan) and candesartan (Atacand). Overall, the researchers looked at trials involving over 223000 patients. When they concentrated on five trials involving over 60000 patients, in which cancer was a pre-specified endpoint, "patients assigned to these ARBs had about a 10 percent rise in cancer" germane to those not on the medications, said Dr Ilke Sipahi, aide professor of remedy at Case Western Reserve University, result in author of a report in the June 14 online copy of The Lancet Oncology.

The incidence of cancer in people taking an ARB was 7,2 percent, compared to a 6 percent degree in those taking a placebo, the analysis found. The increase in concrete tumors was concentrated in lung cancers, whose incidence was 25 percent higher in those taking an ARB. Despite the lifted in risk, the researchers noted that there was only a slight increase in deaths from cancer among ARB users - 1,8 percent for those taking ARBs, 1,6 percent for those taking placebo, a change that was not statistically significant.

Most of the masses in the trials - 85,7 percent - were taking the ARB telmisartan (Micardis), while the residuum took other ARBs such as losartan, valsartan and candesartan. The drugs work by blocking chamber receptors for angiotensin II, a hormone that plays an important role in regulating blood pressure. Another distinction of drugs that are used for the same purposes are the ACE inhibitors, which prevent the establishment of the active form of angiotensin. "Experimental studies using cancer cell lines and animal models have implicated the angiotensin procedure in the proliferation of cells and also tumors. Evidence from animal studies show that blockage of angiotensin receptors can inspirit tumor growth by promoting new blood vessel forming in tumors".

But the evidence that ARBs can play a real role in cancer growth remains unclear and these findings only show an association, not cause-and-effect. "Before we rift to that conclusion, I feel we need more analysis".

Tuesday 18 February 2020

Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease Should Reduce The Dose Of Medication For Anemia

Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease Should Reduce The Dose Of Medication For Anemia.
Doctors should use the anemia drugs Procrit, Epogen and Aranesp more cautiously in patients with long-lived kidney disease, US vigorousness officials said Friday. The redone notification comes in response to data showing that patients on these drugs encounter a higher risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart attack, heart failure, stroke, blood clots and death, the US Food and Drug Administration said. "FDA is recommending new, more temperate dosing recommendations for erythropoiesis-stimulating agents ESAs for patients with continuing kidney disease," Dr Robert C Kane, acting envoy director for safety in the division of hematology products, said during a story conference Friday.

These recommendations are being added to the drug label's shameful box warning and sections of the package inserts. This is not the first time health risks have been linked to these anemia drugs. They have also been tied to increased tumor excrescence in cancer patients and may cause some patients to want sooner.

Also, cancer patients have an increased risk of blood clots, mettle attack, heart failure and stroke, according to the FDA. Procrit, Epogen and Aranesp are synthetic versions of a sympathetic protein known as erythropoietin that prods bone marrow to produce red blood cells.

The drugs are typically cast-off to treat anemia in cancer patients and to reduce the need for numerous blood transfusions. Anemia also occurs in patients with chronic kidney disease. Anemia results from the body's incapability to produce enough red blood cells, which contain the hemoglobin needed to carry o a continue oxygen to the cells.

Currently, labels on these drugs say ESAs should be used to achieve and maintain hemoglobin levels within 10 to 12 grams per deciliter of blood in patients with persistent kidney disease. These aim levels will no longer be given on the label, the agency added. Hemoglobin levels greater than 11 grams per deciliter of blood increases the hazard of stroke, sincerity attack, heart failure and blood clots and haven't been proven to provide any additional forward to patients, according to the FDA.

Sunday 16 February 2020

Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer

Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer.
New investigate suggests that beta blockers, medications that are employed to control blood put the screws on and heart rhythms, may also help lung cancer patients live longer. The researchers found that patients with non-small-cell lung cancer being treated with emission lived 22 percent longer if they were also taking these drugs. "These findings were the first, to our knowledge, demonstrating a survival advance associated with the use of beta blockers and diffusion therapy for lung cancer," said lead researcher Dr Daniel Gomez, an aide professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

So "The results mean that there may be another mechanism, largely unexplored, that could potentially drop the rates of tumor spread in patients with this very aggressive disease". The story was published Jan 9, 2013 in the Annals of Oncology. For the study, Gomez's body compared the outcomes of more than 700 patients undergoing radiation therapy for lung cancer.

The investigators found that the 155 patients taking beta blockers for focus problems lived an average of almost two years, compared with an usual of 18,6 months for patients not taking these drugs. The findings held even after adjusting for other factors such as age, originate of the disease, whether or not chemotherapy was given at the same time, presence of chronic obstructive pulmonary infection and aspirin use, the researchers noted. Beta blockers also improved survival without the disease spreading to other parts of the body and survival without the disorder recurring.

Monday 20 January 2020

Using Non-Recommended Drugs For The Treatment Of Diabetes

Using Non-Recommended Drugs For The Treatment Of Diabetes.
Using the doubtful diabetes stupefy Avandia as an example, new research finds that doctors' prescribing patterns reshape across the country in response to warnings about medications from the US Food and Drug Administration. The denouement is that patients may be exposed to different levels of risk depending on where they live, the researchers said. "We were looking at the results black-box warnings for drugs have at a national level, and, more specifically, at a geographical level, and how these warnings are incorporated into practice," said office guide researcher Nilay D Shah, an assistant professor of health services research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

In 2007, the FDA required that Avandia come with a "black-box warning" - the strongest foretoken admissible - alerting consumers that the drug was associated with an increased imperil of heart attack. Before the warning, Avandia was widely prescribed throughout the United States, although regional differences existed. "There was about a two-fold inequality in use before the warning - around 15,5 percent use in Oklahoma versus about 8 percent in North Dakota".

Right after the warning, the use of Avandia dropped dramatically, from a nationwide leading of 1,3 million monthly prescriptions in January 2007 to cruelly 317000 monthly prescriptions in June 2009. "There was a monumental decrease in use across the country. But there was absolutely a bit of residual use".

After the FDA warning, the researchers still found as much as a three-fold difference in use across the nation. In Oklahoma, Avandia use dropped to about 5,6 percent, but in North Dakota it tumbled to 1,9 percent. The reasons for the differences aren't clear. Some factors might take in how doctors are made apprised of FDA warnings and how they react.

Another piece could be the policy of state health guaranty plans, including Medicaid, in terms of covering drugs. Also, prominent doctors in given areas can pressurize the choice of drugs other doctors make. And drug-company marketing may play a role. "At this unit we don't have good insight into these differences".

Thursday 16 January 2020

Contrave, A New Weight Loss Pill Combines Anti-Addiction Medication And An Antidepressant

Contrave, A New Weight Loss Pill Combines Anti-Addiction Medication And An Antidepressant.
An dexterous monitory panel recommended on Tuesday that Contrave, a unknown weight-loss pill that combines an antidepressant with an anti-addiction medication, be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The 13-7 preference in favor of Contrave came amid agency concerns that the numb might raise blood pressure in some patients and increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes centre of some users, according to the Associated Press. But panelists voted 11-8 earlier in the heyday that those potential health risks could be studied after Contrave was approved.

The FDA does not have to follow the advice of its advisory committees, but it typically does. The mechanism is expected to make a decision on Contrave by Jan 31, 2011, the wire utilization reported. Contrave is manufactured by Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. In October, the FDA voted against approving two other weight-loss drugs, Arena Pharmaceuticals' lorcaserin and Vivus' Qnexa, because of cover concerns, according to the AP. Last July, a muse about funded by Orexigen and published in The Lancet found that Contrave helped users pour pounds when taken along with a well diet and exercise.

People who took the drug for more than a year lost an average of 5 percent or more of body weight, depending on the dosage used, the team said. However, the regimen did come with side effects, and about half of scan participants dropped out before completing a year of treatment. Contrave is combination of two familiar drugs, naltrexone (Revia, used to fight addictions) and the antidepressant bupropion (known by a host of names, including Wellbutrin).

The drug appears to boost weight loss by changing the workings of the body's essential nervous system, the researchers said. The study enrolled men (15 percent) and women (85 percent) from around the country, ranging in epoch from 18 to 65. They were all either pudgy or overweightm, with high blood fat levels or high blood pressure.

Wednesday 15 January 2020

Some Medicines Purchased Via The Internet Can Be Dangerous

Some Medicines Purchased Via The Internet Can Be Dangerous.
Internet-based companies buy and sell them, men persist in to buy them and experts continue to apprise of the dangers of counterfeit drugs for erectile dysfunction. A new study, conducted in South Korea and slated for giving Monday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Francisco, finds that not only can these duplication drugs be contaminated, they may contain too much of the active ingredient or none at all. The drugs could especially be menacing for men with hypertension or heart disease, the study found.

The message? Stay away from non-prescription erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs, the experts say. "There are lots of rip-offs," said Dr John Morley, cicerone of geriatrics and acting chief of endocrinology at Saint Louis University. "There's still a lot of deposition that many of the things you buy off the Internet without going through a regular dispensary might appear cheaper or better but they're usually not and they usually don't work".

Drugs known as phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5Is) are worn widely by men with erectile dysfunction - and sometimes by those without the condition. Perhaps the best known of the caste are sildenafil (Viagra) and tadalafil (Cialis). Since it was developed in 1998, the demand for these and similar products - legitimate or not - has mushroomed.

Wednesday 8 January 2020

Rheumatoid Arthritis And Shingles

Rheumatoid Arthritis And Shingles.
The newest medications old to scrutinize autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis don't appear to raise the risk of developing shingles, experimental research indicates. There has been concern that these medications, called anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) drugs, might prolong the chances of a shingles infection (also known as herpes zoster) because they create by suppressing a part of the immune system that causes the autoimmune attack. "These are commonly in use drugs for people with rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, and the issue was whether or not they increased the risk of shingles.

We found there is no increased hazard when using these drugs, which was reassuring," said study author Dr Kevin Winthrop, friend professor of infectious disease and public health and preventive medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Results of the contemplate are published in the March 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Shingles is a paramount concern for people with autoimmune conditions, particularly occupy who are older and more at risk for developing shingles in general. Shingles is caused when the same virus that causes chickenpox is reactivated. The symptoms of shingles, however, are often far more genuine than chickenpox. It typically starts with a ardent or tingling pain, which is followed by the appearance of fluid-filled blisters, according to the US National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Shingles soreness can vary from mild to so severe that even the lightest touch causes excessive pain. People who have rheumatoid arthritis already have an increased risk of shingles, although Winthrop said it's not specifically clear why. It may be due to older age, or it may have something to do with the disease itself. Rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions are treated with many unlike medications that help dampen the immune set and, hopefully, the autoimmune attack.

Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV

Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV.
A babe born two-and-a-half years ago in Mississippi with HIV is the basic casing of a so-called "functional cure" of the infection, researchers announced Sunday. Standard tests can no longer spot any traces of the AIDS-causing virus even though the child has discontinued HIV medication. "We allow this is the first well-documented case of a functional cure," said look lead author Dr Deborah Persaud, associate professor of pediatrics in the class of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore. The finding was presented Sunday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, in Atlanta.

The lass was not part of a study but, instead, the beneficiary of an unexpected and partly unplanned cycle of events that - once confirmed and replicated in a strict study - might help more children who are born with HIV or who at risk of contracting HIV from their parent eradicate the virus from their body. Normally, mothers infected with HIV take antiretroviral drugs that can almost murder the odds of the virus being transferred to the baby. If a mother doesn't be familiar with her HIV status or hasn't been treated for other reasons, the baby is given "prophylactic" drugs at birth while awaiting the results of tests to infer his or her HIV status.

This can take four to six weeks to complete. If the tests are positive, the child starts HIV drug treatment. The fuss over of the baby born in Mississippi didn't know she was HIV-positive until the time of delivery.

But in this case, both the primary and confirmatory tests on the baby were able to be completed within one day, allowing the baby to be started on HIV medicine treatment within the first 30 hours of life. "Most of our kids don't get picked up that early". As expected, the baby's "viral load" - detectable levels of HIV - decreased progressively until it was no longer detectable at 29 days of age.

Theoretically, this young gentleman (doctors aren't disclosing the gender) would have bewitched the medications for the lay of his or her life, said the researchers, who included doctors from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Instead, the toddler stayed on the regimen for only 18 months before dropping out of the medical combination and discontinuing the drugs.

Ten months after stopping treatment, however, the youth was again seen by doctors who were surprised to find no HIV virus or HIV antibodies with customary tests. Ultrasensitive tests did detect infinitesimal traces of viral DNA and RNA in the blood. But the virus was not replicating - a influentially unusual occurrence given that drugs were no longer being administered, the researchers said.

Thursday 26 December 2019

Omnitarg And Herceptin Could Save Women Without Chemotherapy From Breast Cancer

Omnitarg And Herceptin Could Save Women Without Chemotherapy From Breast Cancer.
Combinations of targeted therapies for an especially martial strain of breast cancer could potentially usher the best part of affected patients into remission, researchers at a major breast cancer meeting said Friday. Presenting results from three trials at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, scientists explained that administering two or more drugs designed to use HER2-positive tumors resulted in much higher forgiveness rates than doses of any one treat or standard chemotherapy alone. Given to patients several weeks before cancer surgery, with or without chemotherapy, the medications often shrank tumors dramatically or eradicated them altogether, the researchers said.

HER2-positive cancer is quick to a protein called sympathetic epidermal expansion factor receptor 2, which promotes the growth of malignant cells. Drugs that specifically quarry HER2 cells - including Herceptin, Tykerb and Omnitarg - have been proven efficacious on these types of tumors, which tend to be more aggressive than other breast cancers. "I think it's a very rousing era, because we've gone from a very lethal era - to a point where we might be able to cure this disease," said Dr Neil Spector, a professor of prescription at Duke University Medical Center, who moderated the symposium session.

Using Tykerb and Herceptin combined with chemotherapy before surgery, researchers followed 2,500 women with originally core cancer at 85 facilities throughout Germany. About half of these patients achieved deliverance before surgery, said Dr Michael Untch, head of the multidisciplinary breast cancer sphere of influence at Helios Clinic in Berlin. "In a majority of these patients, we could do breast-conserving surgery where previously they were candidates for mastectomy".

The rig will continue following the patients to see if remission at surgery affects their outcome. Another cram showed the combination of Omnitarg and Herceptin, when given with the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, eradicated 46 percent of tumors, 50 percent more than the results achieved without Omnitarg. Also, 17 percent of tumors were eradicated by combining the two targeted drugs and skipping chemotherapy, the researchers said.

Saturday 21 December 2019

Newer Blood Thinner Brilinta Exceeds Plavix For Cardiac Bypass Surgery Patients

Newer Blood Thinner Brilinta Exceeds Plavix For Cardiac Bypass Surgery Patients.
In a examination comparing two anti-clotting drugs, patients given Brilinta before cardiac get round surgery were less qualified to die than those given Plavix, researchers found. Both drugs restrain platelets from clumping and forming clots, but Plavix, the more popular drug, has been linked to potentially treacherous side effects in cancer patients.

In addition, some people don't metabolize it well, making it less effective. "We did perceive about a 50 percent reduction in mortality in these patients, who took Brilinta, but without any further in bleeding complications," Dr Claes Held, an associate professor of cardiology at the Uppsala Clinical Research Center at Uppsala University in Sweden and the study's clue researcher, said during an afternoon cleave to conference Tuesday.

So "Ticagrelor (Brilinta) in this setting, with acute coronary syndrome patients with the likely need for bypass surgery, is more effective than clopidogrel (Plavix) in preventing cardiovascular and thorough mortality without increasing the risk of bleeding". A danger with any anti-platelet hypnotic is the risk of uncontrolled bleeding, which is why these drugs are stopped before patients undergo surgery.

Held was scheduled to acquaint with the results Tuesday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Atlanta. For the study, Held and colleagues looked at a subgroup of 1261 patients in the Platelet Inhibition and Patient Outcomes (PLATO) trial. The researchers found that 10,5 percent of the patients given Brilinta with an increment of aspirin before surgery had a heartlessness attack, work or died from heart disease within a week after surgery. Among patients given Plavix profit aspirin, 12,6 percent had the same adverse outcomes.

Patients taking Brilinta had a unqualified death rate of 4,6 percent, compared with 9,2 percent for patients taking Plavix. In addition, the cardiovascular extirpation rates were 4 percent among patients taking Brilinta and 7,5 percent amidst those taking Plavix. When Held's team looked at each group individually, they found no statistically significant characteristic for heart attack and stroke and no significant difference in major bleeding from the bypass operation itself. The two drugs farm in different ways.

Tuesday 17 December 2019

The Danger Of Herbal Supplements In The Mixture With Warfarin (Coumadin)

The Danger Of Herbal Supplements In The Mixture With Warfarin (Coumadin).
People taking the drug blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) may up their jeopardize for strength complications if they also take herbal or non-herbal supplements, new research reveals. In fact, eight out of the 10 most sought-after supplements in the United States could spark safety concerns with element to warfarin, while also impacting the drug's effectiveness. "I specifically looked at warfarin use, but the legal issue is that even though herbal supplements fall under the category of food, and they're not regulated like instruction drugs, they still have the effects of a drug in the body," cautioned study author Jennifer L Strohecker, a clinical druggist at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

So "Warfarin is a very high-risk medication, which can be associated with autocratic consequences when it's not managed properly. However, warfarin is derived from a plant, wonderful clover. In fact, many of our prescription drugs came from plants. So, it's very significant for patients to recognize that just because an herb is marketed not like a prescription drug that doesn't disobliging it doesn't have similar effects in the body".

Strohecker and her colleagues are slated to present their findings Thursday at the Heart Rhythm Society annual encounter in Denver. The authors note that almost 20 percent of Americans currently clutch some type of herbal or non-herbal supplement. To gauge how these products might interact with warfarin, the researchers ranked the 20 most well-received herbals and 20 most popular non-herbal supplements based on 2008 sales data, and then looked at how their use specious both clotting tendency and bleeding.

More than half of the herbal and non-herbal supplements were found to have either an ancillary or direct impact on warfarin. Nearly two-thirds of all the supplements were found to inflate the risk for bleeding among patients taking the blood thinner, while more than one-third hampered the effectiveness of the medication. An rise in bleeding risk was specifically linked to the use of cranberry, garlic, ginkgo and dictum palmetto supplements, the team said.

Tuesday 10 December 2019

Some Antiepileptic Drugs During Pregnancy Can Have A Negative Impact On The Development Of The CNS Of The Teens

Some Antiepileptic Drugs During Pregnancy Can Have A Negative Impact On The Development Of The CNS Of The Teens.
Teens born to women who took two or more epilepsy drugs while club fared worse in sect than peers with no prenatal outlook to those medications, a extensive Swedish study has found. Also, teens born to epileptic mothers in inclusive tended to score lower in several subjects, including math and English. The findings stand by earlier research that linked prenatal endangerment to epilepsy drugs, particularly valproic acid (brand names include Depakene and Depakote), to anti effects on a child's ability to process information, solve problems and make decisions.

And "Our results suggest that imperilment to several anti-epileptic drugs in utero may have a negative effect on a child's neurodevelopment," said about author Dr Lisa Forsberg of Karolinska University Hospital. The mug up was published online Nov 4, 2010 in Epilepsia.

The study was retrospective, substance that it looked backwards in time. Using national medical records and a study conducted by a resident hospital, Forsberg and her team identified women with epilepsy who gave birth between 1973 and 1986, as well as those who cast-off anti-epileptic drugs during pregnancy. The team then obtained records of children's school play from a registry that provides grades for all students leaving school at 16, the age that mandatory schooling ends in Sweden.

The researchers identified 1,235 children born to epileptic mothers. Of those, 641 children were exposed to one anti-epileptic sedative and 429 to two or more; 165 children had no known peril to the medications. The researchers then compared those children's school doing to that of all other children born in Sweden (more than 1,3 million) during that 13-year period.

The teens exposed to more than one anti-epileptic medicament in the womb were less likely to get a final grade than those in the general population, said Forsberg. Not receiving a ultimate grade generally means not attending general school because of mental deficits.

Thursday 5 December 2019

New Treatments Hyperactivity Teenagers

New Treatments Hyperactivity Teenagers.
A newer MRI methodology can feel low iron levels in the brains of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The practice could help doctors and parents make better informed decisions about medication, a new study says. Psychostimulant drugs hand-me-down to treat ADHD affect levels of the brain chemical dopamine. Because iron is required to answer dopamine, using MRI to assess iron levels in the leader may provide a noninvasive, indirect measure of the chemical, explained study author Vitria Adisetiyo, a postdoctoral investigate fellow at the Medical University of South Carolina.

If these findings are confirmed in larger studies, this skill might help improve ADHD diagnosis and treatment, according to Adisetiyo. The route might allow researchers to measure dopamine levels without injecting the patient with a substance that enhances imaging. ADHD symptoms subsume hyperactivity and difficulty staying focused, paying attention and controlling behavior.

Tuesday 3 December 2019

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV.
Scientists are reporting ancient but optimistic results from a new drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade considerate cells. The approach differs from most current antiretroviral therapy, which tries to restrain the virus only after it has gained entry to cells. The medication, called VIR-576 for now, is still in the primeval phases of development.

But researchers say that if it is successful, it might also circumvent the drug resistance that can subvert standard therapy, according to a report published Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine. The experimental approach is an attractive one for a number of reasons, said Dr Michael Horberg, head of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. "Theoretically it should have fewer lesser effects and indeed had minimal adverse events in this study and there's probably less of a chance of changing in developing resistance to medication," said Horberg, who was not involved in the study.

Viruses replicate inside cells and scientists have extensive known that this is when they tend to mutate - potentially developing new ways to stand up drugs. "It's generally accepted that it's harder for a virus to mutate surface cell walls".

The new drug focuses on HIV at this pre-invasion stage. "VIR-576 targets a neighbourhood of the virus that is different from that targeted by all other HIV-1 inhibitors," explained study co-author Frank Kirchhoff, a professor at the Institute of Molecular Virology, University Hospital of Ulm in Ulm, Germany, who, along with several other researchers, holds a evident on the unfamiliar medication. The target is the gp41 fusion peptide of HIV, the "sticky" end of the virus's outer membrane, which "shoots get off on a 'harpoon'" into the body's cells, the authors said.

Experimental Diet Pill Contrave Brought A Small Weight Loss

Experimental Diet Pill Contrave Brought A Small Weight Loss.
Contrave, an experiential moment loss drug that combines an antidepressant with an anti-addiction medication, appears to assistant users shed pounds when taken along with a healthy diet and exercise, researchers report. People who took the numb for more than a year lost an average of 5 percent or more of body weight, depending on the dosage used, the team said. However, the regimen did come with side effects, and about half of weigh participants dropped out before completing a year of treatment.

Contrave is combination of two well-known drugs, naltrexone (Revia, cast-off to fight addictions) and the antidepressant bupropion (known by a number of names, including Wellbutrin). The drug, which is up for US Food and Drug Administration re-examination this December, appears to increase weight loss by changing the workings of the body's central nervous system, the researchers report.

The researchers, who write-up their findings online July 29, 2010 in The Lancet, enrolled men (15 percent) and women (85 percent) from around the country, ranging in length of existence from 18 to 65. They were all either pot-bellied or overweight with high blood fat levels or spacy blood pressure. The participants were told to eat less and exercise, and they were randomly assigned to gobble up a twice-daily placebo or a combination of the two drugs with naltrexone at one of two levels.

Thursday 28 November 2019

In Some Regions Of The US Patients Spend On Medicine Is Much More

In Some Regions Of The US Patients Spend On Medicine Is Much More.
Medicare patients in some regions of the United States allot significantly more on drugs than older folks abroad in the country, a reborn report finds. But higher downer spending doesn't mean they spend less on doctor visits or hospitalizations, the researchers say. "Our findings support the importance of understanding the drivers of geographic variation, since increases in medical spending or pharmaceutical spending do not appear to be associated with offsetting savings in the other realms," said potential researcher Yuting Zhang, an aide-de-camp professor of health economics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

So "Spending on pharmaceuticals itself is unsteady and thus warrants scrutiny similar to that given to medical spending in rule to glean lessons about optimal prescribing, insurance characteristics, and resource allocation". The boom is published online June 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Zhang's yoke looked at spending on drugs and other medical services among Medicare patients in 2007 at 306 hospital-referral regions across the country. "Widespread geographic variations exist, with some regions spending almost twice as much as others".

As party of their calculations, the researchers considered factors such as differences in costs, cover and overall robustness in the different geographic areas. Overall, drugs accounted for more than 20 percent of unconditional medical costs, but the researchers found substantial regional variations in drug spending.

Manhattan, in New York City, had the highest Medicare spending on drugs at $2973 per sufferer a year, while Hudson, Fla, had the lowest at $1854, the investigators found. Los Angeles, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii were other areas of heinous treatment spending by Medicare beneficiaries, while regions of down spending include parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Maine, according to the report.

Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics

Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics.
Two inexperienced studies suggest that Medicare patients who clutch opioid painkillers such as codeine, Vicodin or Oxycontin audacity higher health risks, including death, marrow problems or fractures, compared to those taking non-opioid analgesics. However, it's not clear if the painkillers are in a responsible for the differences in risk and other factors could play a role. And one pain specialist who's frequent with the findings said they don't reflect the experiences of doctors who've prescribed the drugs.

In one study, researchers examined a database of Medicare recipients in two states who were prescribed one of five kinds of opiod painkillers from 1996-2005. They looked at almost 6,300 patients who took one of these five painkillers: codeine phosphate, hydrocodone bitartrate (best known in its Vicodin form), oxycodone hydrochloride (Oxycontin), propoxyphene hydrochloride (Darvon), and tramadol hydrochloride (Ultram). Those who took codeine were 1,6 times more appropriate to have suffered from cardiovascular problems after 180 days, while patients on hydrocodone seemed to be at higher chance of fractures than those who took tramadol and propoxyphene.

After 30 days, those who took oxycodone were 2,4 times more proper to hanker than those taking hydrocodone, and codeine users were twice as fitting to die, although the add of deaths was small. The on authors caveat that their findings are surprising in some ways and needfulness to be confirmed by further research. Commenting on the study, Dr Russell K Portenoy, chairman of the section of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, said that the findings are of circumscribed value because many other factors could spell out the differences between the drugs, such as how fast physicians ramped up the doses of patients.

Tuesday 26 November 2019

Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children

Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children.
Babies born to women who took a standard division of heartburn drugs while they were club did not appear to have any heightened risk of birth defects, a large Danish investigation finds. This class of drugs, known as proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), include blockbusters such as Prilosec (omeprazole), Prevacid (lansoprazole) and Nexium (esomeprazole). All were ready by prescription-only during most of the work period (1996-2008), but Prilosec and Prevacid are now sold over-the-counter.

While the authors and an editorialist, publishing in the Nov 25, 2010 delivery of the New England Journal of Medicine, called the results "reassuring," experts still guide using drugs as little as possible during pregnancy. "In general, these are probably out of harm's way but it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposures before you see some of the abnormalities that might exist," explained Dr Eva Pressman, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and big cheese of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "My recommendations are always to circumvent medication exposure if at all possible.

There are very few life-threatening disorders that require these PPIs. There are other ways to get the same effect," added Pressman, who was not active in the study. "Most pregnant women have heartburn but most of it is somewhat easy to treat with simple antacids such as Tums and Maalox and Mylanta, all of which are locally acting and absorbed, and don't ask any risk to the fetus".

Even propping yourself up so you're in a semi-vertical position, as opposed to fibbing flat, can help, said Dr Michael Katz, senior iniquity president for research and global programs at the March of Dimes. The research was funded by the Danish Medical Research Council and the Lundbeck Foundation.

The authors of the recent study used linked databases to glean message on almost 841000 babies born in Denmark from 1996 through 2008, as well as on the babies' mothers' use of PPIs during pregnancy. PPI use by hopeful women was the highest between 2005 and 2008, when about 2 percent of fetuses were exposed, but risk during the critical first trimester was less than 1 percent.

Wednesday 20 November 2019

Certain Medications Is Not Enough In The US

Certain Medications Is Not Enough In The US.
Four out of five doctors who examine cancer were powerless to prescribe their medication of choice at least once during a six-month while because of a drug shortage, according to a new survey. The survey also found that more than 75 percent of oncologists were calculated to make a major change in patient treatment. These changes included altering the regimen of chemotherapy drugs initially prescribed and substituting one of the drugs in a nice chemotherapy regimen. Such changes might not be well studied, and it might not be unquestioned if the substitutions will work as well or be as safe as what the doctor wanted to prescribe, experts say.

And "The drugs we're conjunctio in view of in shortages are for colon cancer, bosom cancer and leukemia," said Dr Keerthi Gogineni, an oncologist who led the team conducting the survey. "These are drugs for forward but curable cancers. These are our bread-and-butter drugs for trite cancers, and they don't necessarily have substitutes. When we asked people how they adapted to the shortages, they either switched combinations of drugs or switched one medicament within a regimen," said Gogineni, of the Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

So "They're making the best of a nit-picking situation, but, truly, we don't have a pick up of how these substitutions might affect survival outcomes". Results of the survey were published as a inscribe in the Dec 19, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The scrutiny included more than 200 physicians who routinely prescribe cancer drugs. When substitutions have to be made, it's often a generic cure-all that's unavailable. Sixty percent of doctors surveyed reported having to prefer a more expensive brand-name drug to continue treatment in the face of a shortage.

The remainder in cost can be staggering, however. When a generic drug called fluorouracil was unavailable, substituting the brand-name anaesthetize Xeloda was 140 times more expensive than the desired drug, according to the survey. Another choice is to delay treatment, but again it's not clear what effect waiting might have on an individual patient's cancer. Forty-three percent of oncologists delayed curing during a drug shortage, according to the survey.

Complicating matters for doctors is that there are no conventional guidelines for making substitutions. Almost 70 percent of the oncologists surveyed said their cancer center or vocation had no formal guidelines to aid in their decision-making. Generic chemotherapy drugs have been at jeopardy of shortages since 2006, according to background information accompanying the survey results. As many as 70 percent of opiate shortages occur due to a breakdown in production, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.

Saturday 16 November 2019

American Students Receive Antipsychotics Now More Often Than Before

American Students Receive Antipsychotics Now More Often Than Before.
Use of antipsychotic drugs mid Medicaid-insured children increased cuttingly from 1997 to 2006, according to a green study. These drugs were prescribed for children covered by Medicaid five times more often than for children with restricted insurance. Researchers said this disparity should be examined more closely, particularly because these drugs were often prescribed for a designated off-label use, which is when a drug is used in a different way than has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. "Many of the children were diagnosed with behavioral rather than nutter conditions for which these drugs have FDA-approved labeling," scrutinize author Julie Zito, a professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, said in a university scandal release.

And "These are often children with serious socioeconomic and parentage life problems. We need more information on the benefits and risks of using antipsychotics for behavioral conditions, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity upheaval ADHD, in community-treated populations".