Health & WellnessS


Heart - Black

Drug companies suppress trials

The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs' true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.

Red Flag

Flashback Quiet scientist no more: Scientist Turns FDA Whistleblower

Scientist, father, husband and scoutmaster David Graham recently added another job to his résumé. Unlike the others, though, it's one he never sought.

©Gerald Herbert/AP
Graham: "FDA made me into a whistle-blower. It wasn't my intention to be a whistle-blower."

Attention

FDA: Cold Medicines Too Risky for Tots

Washington - Parents may be left with only love and lots of liquid to give their sniffling babies and toddlers now that the government is declaring over-the-counter cough and cold medicines too risky for tots. The Food and Drug Administration was issuing that warning Thursday to parents of children under 2.

Attention

Calcium pills 'raise heart risk'

Calcium supplements may increase the risk of a heart attack in older women, New Zealand research suggests.

Syringe

Green light for hybrid research

Regulators have given scientists the green light to create human-animal embryos for research.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority granted permission after a consultation showed the public were "at ease" with the idea.

Pills

Popular Osteoporosis Drugs Triple Risk of Bone Necrosis

A University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute study has found that a popular class of osteoporosis drugs nearly triples the risk of developing bone necrosis, a condition that can lead to disfigurement and incapacitating pain.

The research is the largest study of bone necrosis and bisphosphonates, a class of drugs used by millions of women worldwide to help prevent bone fractures due to osteoporosis. It is also the first study to explore the link between bone necrosis and specific brands of bisphosphonates, such as Actonel, Didrocal and Fosamax. Researchers found that all three brands had similar outcomes.

Info

Mothers' stress may increase children's asthma

Children whose mothers are chronically stressed during their early years have a higher asthma rate than their peers, regardless of their income, gender or other known asthma risk factors.

"It is increasingly clear that traditional environmental risk factors do not fully explain the origins of asthma," said lead investigator, Anita Kozyrskyj, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba, Canada. "Evidence is emerging that exposure to maternal distress in early life plays a causal role in the development of childhood asthma. In a cohort of children born in 1995, we found that maternal distress which persists beyond the postpartum period is associated with an increased risk of asthma at school-age."

Bulb

Nature and Nurture are both to blame for depression, study says

Depression is one of the most common forms of psychopathology. According to diathesis "stress theories of depression, genetic liability interacts with negative life experiences to cause depression. Traditionally, most studies testing these theories have focused on only one component of the diathesis "stress model: either genetics or environment, but not their interaction.

However, because of recent advances in genetics and genomics, researchers have begun using a new design that allows them to test the interaction of genetic and environmental liabilities -- the G x E design.

Health

Monkey malaria widespread in humans and potentially fatal

A potentially fatal species of malaria is being commonly misdiagnosed as a more benign form of the disease, thereby putting lives at risk, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust and the University Malaysia Sarawak.

Researchers in Malaysia studied more than 1,000 samples from malaria patients across the country. Using DNA-based technology they found that more than one in four patients in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, were infected with Plasmodium knowlesi, a malaria parasite of macaque monkeys, and that the disease was more widespread in Malaysia than previously thought. Infections were most often misdiagnosed as the normally uncomplicated human malaria caused by P. malariae.

Malaria, which kills more than one million people each year, is caused when Plasmodium parasites are passed into the bloodstream from the salivary glands of mosquitoes. Some types, such as P. falciparum, found most commonly in Africa, are more deadly than others. P. malariae, found in tropical and sub-tropical regions across the globe, is often known as "benign malaria" as its symptoms are usually less serious than other types of malaria.

Sherlock

A Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds

The voice on the phone spoke with the confidence of authority: he had called to say that the people of Libby, Montana, were being screwed over once again. The culprit, however, was not the W.R. Grace & Co., whose asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mine had been the source of death and disease for these folks for most of the 20th century. This time, the anonymous caller asserted, the Environmental Protection Agency was to blame.