Impotence drugs need stronger warning
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Drugs to treat erectile dysfunction need stronger warnings on their packaging about the risk of blindness, U.S. consumer group Public Citizen said on Thursday in a petition filed with health regulators.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should “immediately add a black box warning regarding the risks of drug-induced blindness for the three phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors that are prescribed for the treatment of erectile dysfunction,” Public Citizen’s Health Research Group wrote.
Debate Over Wider Use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis
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Preimplantation genetic diagnosis—first used in assisted reproduction 15 years ago—is becoming more and more widely used. But whether it should be employed universally drew heated debate here.
Researchers here say that data show preimplantation genetic diagnosis is becoming accurate to the point that in some settings it can dramatically improve the rate of successful pregnancies by winnowing out all but the completely normal embryos.
Incidence of Acute Lung Injury Higher Than Previously Thought
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There may be a lot more cases of acute lung injury in the United States than previous estimates suggested—perhaps 2.5 to five times as much.
An estimated 190,600 cases of acute lung injury occur each year that result in 3.6 million hospital stays and 74,500 deaths, Gordon D. Rubenfeld, M.D., and colleagues of the University of Washington here reported in the Oct. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Abused Boys Prone to Psychiatric Ailments and Future Violence
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Boys who are physically abused, often by their mothers, have a heightened risk of psychiatric illnesses, legal troubles, violent behavior, and doing prison time as adults, researchers here reported.
A random telephone survey of 197 men here found a history of childhood physical abuse to be significantly associated with depression (P=0.003), post-traumatic stress disorder (P<0.001), the number of lifetime sexual partners (P=0.035), legal troubles (P=0.002), and incarceration (P=0.007), investigators reported in the Oct. 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
HIV Patients Perceive Discrimination by Physicians
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Many doctors don’t gladly welcome HIV patients—or so the patients perceive.
One in four HIV-infected adults reported that they had experienced discrimination by a healthcare provider, with more than half citing their physicians as offenders, according to a large nationally representative study.
Serve more food and they will eat it
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If you eat too much fattening food one day, don’t count on yourself to be good the next day and eat less.
People offered large meals will eat them day after day, according to a study released on Wednesday at a conference of North American obesity researchers in Vancouver.
Most airlines agree to regular water monitoring
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Most U.S. airlines have agreed to regularly monitor water on their planes after some samples taken from commercial aircraft last year were not safe to drink, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday.
It said 11 major airlines and 13 smaller ones reached agreement with the agency to routinely analyze on-board water supplies for bacteria and other contaminants and disinfect aircraft water systems serving galleys and bathrooms.
Herceptin very effective in HER2+ breast cancer
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Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine show that treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin; Roche) can dramatically improve outcomes in women with breast cancers that are HER2-positive.
HER2 overexpression occurs in approximately 15 percent to 25 percent of breast cancers and is associated with a worse prognosis than HER2-negative tumors.
Ambulatory Management of Childhood Obesity
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Objective: Childhood obesity is one of the most challenging issues facing healthcare providers today. The aims of this study were to describe the ambulatory management of childhood obesity by pediatricians (PDs) and family physicians (FPs) and to evaluate knowledge of and adherence to published recommendations.
Research Methods and Procedures: A 42-item, self-administered questionnaire was mailed to 1207 randomly selected primary care physicians (PDs = 700, FPs = 507) between September 2001 and January 2002.
Cognitive Change in Obese Adolescents Losing Weight
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Objectives: To investigate how obese adolescents think about themselves in terms of exercise, eating, and appearance and whether these cognitions change over the course of a residential weight loss camp.
Research Methods and Procedures: Obese adolescents [N = 61; age, 14.1 (±0.2) years; BMI, 33.9 (±0.7) kg/m2] completed assessments of body weight and height and self-esteem and a sentence-completion test eliciting thoughts and beliefs about exercise, eating, and appearance at the start and end of the camp (mean stay, 26 days). They were compared with a single assessment of 20 normal-weight adolescents [age, 15.4 (±0.2) years; BMI, 21.8 (±0.5) kg/m2].
UK plans mass vaccination against pandemic flu
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Britain plans to buy enough vaccine to protect the entire population in case a deadly bird flu virus develops into a pandemic strain capable of killing millions of people, the government said on Wednesday.
Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said vaccine manufacturers are being invited to tender contracts to supply 120 million doses, enough for two shots per person, once the pandemic strain is known.
Many young children don’t get enough sleep
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A survey being released on Wednesday shows what millions of groggy parents already know: Many babies and toddlers do not get enough sleep.
Twenty-six percent of parents of children up to four years old said in a recent survey that their child gets less than enough sleep. The survey was commissioned by Pampers and conducted with the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation (NSF).
Cardiologist says Vioxx plaintiff had risk factors
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A postal worker who blames Merck & Co Inc.‘s Vioxx painkiller for his heart attack was under work-related stress just prior to the 2001 attack, a cardiologist testifying for the drug company said on Tuesday.
Dr. Theodore Tyberg told jurors in the second Vioxx product liability trial that stress and pre-existing factors such as age, weight and a sedentary lifestyle—not Vioxx—likely led to Frederick “Mike” Humeston’s non-fatal heart attack.
Heart drug therapy complex, costly for elderly
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Because elderly patients with heart failure are faced with ever more complex and expensive medication regimens, more effort should go into optimizing their treatment, according to a new report.
“Physicians should be aware of the drug regimens they are expecting their patients to take,” Dr. Frederick A. Masoudi from Denver Health Medical Center, Colorado told Reuters Health. “They should consider the number of drugs they prescribe, the complexity of these regimens, and what their patients must pay to obtain them.”
Rapid surgery not needed for prostate cancer
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After a positive biopsy result for prostate cancer, surgical removal of the prostate (radical prostatectomy) does not need to be performed immediately, at least as far as the risk of recurrence is concerned, according to a report in the urology journal BJU International.
“Most surgeons prefer to wait a minimum of 2 months after the biopsy before surgery to allow the post-biopsy inflammation to resolve,” Dr. James A. Eastham from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York told Reuters Health. “Such a wait does not influence outcomes and is not concerning.”
