Prescription Drugs

The DEA is enabling—even encouraging—a generation of opiate addicts, while the FDA tries to quash safe and helpful supplements like DHEA. Goodness, the legal drug-makers have been busy! This week the Associated Press revealed that in 2010, US pharmacies dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone (used as ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet, and Percodan) and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone (used in Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab). That’s enough to give forty 5-milligram Percocets and twenty-four 5-milligram Vicodins to every single person in the United States.

Use of opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone soaring, researchers say. Overdoses from prescription painkillers are increasing in the United States, a new study shows. Researchers examined pharmacy files on 9,940 adults who took opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone for at least three...

In a review study, researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine zero in on the controversial, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals and fish farming as a cause of antibiotic resistance. They report that the preponderance of evidence argues for stricter regulation of the practice. Stuart Levy, an expert in antibiotic resistance, notes that a guiding tenet of public health, the precautionary principle, requires that steps be taken to avoid harm.

Poisoning is now the second leading cause of unintentional injury death in the U.S. While several recent high-profile Hollywood celebrity cases have brought the problem to public attention, the rates of unintentional poisoning deaths have been on the rise for more than 15 years, and in fact, unintentional poisoning has surpassed motor vehicle crashes...

Manufacturers who put tainted or undeclared ingredients into dietary supplements were warned Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration that they can no longer market them as such. The FDA has received reports on well over 100 products over the last few years, a number of them detailed serious injuries, even deaths. In fact, since 2007 the agency has sent out consumer alerts about 300 adulterated products.

Scientists are calling for more research on the possibility that some supposedly healthful plant-based antioxidants -- including those renowned for their apparent ability to prevent cancer -- may actually aggravate or even cause cancer in some individuals.

Headache? Back pain? At the first sign of pain, you might reach for a pain-relieving medicine to sooth your bodily woes. Analgesics are the most frequently used medications in the United States and are commonly used to treat a variety of medical conditions.

Despite previous studies suggesting the contrary, statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) may not prevent blood clots (venous thrombo-embolism) in adults, according to a large analysis by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

The versatile cannabis plant may have a new use: it could be used to control epileptic seizures with fewer side effects than currently prescribed anti-convulsants. Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, and colleagues worked with GW Pharmaceuticals in Wiltshire, UK, to investigate the anti-convulsant properties of cannabidivarin (CBDV), a little-studied chemical found in cannabis and some other plants.

Doctors frequently misuse antibiotics when treating patients hospitalized with respiratory tract infections (RTIs), according to a study to be published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Scientists are reporting a possible explanation for the symptoms of anxiety and depression that occur in some patients taking the popular statin family of anti-cholesterol drugs, and reported by some individuals on low-cholesterol diets.

Complementary medicines (CAM) can be dangerous for children and can even prove fatal, if substituted for conventional medicine, indicates an audit of kids' CAM treatment published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. But parents often misguidedly think CAM treatments are better for their children because they are "natural" and therefore less likely to have harmful side effects, say the authors.