In the last couple of years, the class of medications known as statins has gotten a lot of attention, most recently this month when NPR reported concern over the popularity of prescribing statins for the elderly. Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs with “statin” somewhere in the generic name; brand names include Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor. People with….
Continue ReadingArchives for September 2015
Quantifying the Health Threats of Job Stress
The body’s stress response is good for you when you’re running from a bear in the wilderness, but bad for you at other times when the pounding heart and other physiological components of the stress response portend nothing you can really do anything constructive about. Often, that occurs on the job. According to a new….
Continue ReadingDiagnostic Errors: Overlooked and Critically Important
People make mistakes in any line of work, and diagnosing a medical problem is no exception. But new research shows that diagnostic errors not only aren’t rare, they’re disturbingly common. Almost all U.S. residents will be the victim of a diagnosis that is wrong, or late. The study, by the venerable Institute of Medicine (IOM),….
Continue ReadingDirty Instruments Pose Threat to Outpatients, Too
Earlier this year, both patients and providers were shocked when a rash of hospital patients got seriously ill or died after medical devices used to examine their gastrointestinal tracts infected them because they were not sufficiently cleaned after previous use. Now, it seems, inpatients aren’t the only ones who need to worry about contaminated medical….
Continue ReadingSuggested Reading: Promoting, Profiting and Covering Up the Harms of Risperdal
Legal eagle Steven Brill’s deeply reported investigation of how consumer giant Johnson & Johnson developed, illegally promoted and hid the side effects of the powerful drug Risperdal is another enlightening indictment of everything that’s wrong with the medical-industrial complex in general, and with the pharmaceutical industry in particular. You might remember Brill’s cover story in….
Continue ReadingPaxil Study on Drug’s Safety for Teens Is Discredited
The antidepressant drug Paxil was deemed safe for teenagers after its manufacturer, SmithKline Beecham (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), published a study in 2001 supporting its use for adolescents. Since then, the antidepressant has been the subject of much controversy over its safety, particularly in light of some patients who took it with disastrous like suicide….
Continue ReadingPain Survey Points to Widespread Need for Relief
Last month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released the results of one of the largest population studies ever about pain. About 40 million U.S. residents experience severe pain, and more than 25 million are in pain every day. It’s hardly a surprise that the study, published in The Journal of Pain, concluded that people….
Continue ReadingTylenol’s Dangers Are Back in the News
This is an old story, but a new one too. Tylenol and store-brand versions of acetaminophen (Tylenol’s active ingredient) are the leading cause of acute liver failure, leading to death or transplant, in the United States. That’s been known for a decade, thanks to pioneering work by Dr. William Lee of University of Texas-Southwestern Medical….
Continue ReadingAging Eyes: What’s Normal, What’s Not
Like every other body part, our eyes change as we age. Mostly, the changes are unwelcome, but some are more annoying than threatening. But some changes, as explained in Healthbeat, a publication from the Harvard Medical School, are serious and require immediate attention. Normal age-related changes include increasing difficulty focusing on close objects — many….
Continue ReadingSuggested Reading: The Trendy Therapy That’s Growing Faster than Safety Allows
Although the potential for using stem cells to treat various disorders is exciting, the science is in its infancy and the therapy is far from a standard response for managing and curing disease, much less using it in more questionable contexts. But that hasn’t stopped some practitioners and patients from “early adapting” this complex science….
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