The public furor with Big Pharma’s relentless skyward ratcheting of drug prices may be focusing soon on another set of medications, this time powerful anti-inflammatories, and the rising role played by middlemen in the dispensing process. The battle over Humira and Enbrel, taken for painful rheumatoid arthritis (RA), may expose even more the conflicting interests of patients,….
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FDA warns against prescribing of opioids with anti-anxiety pills
The federal government has issued one of its toughest warnings against the dual prescribing and use of opioid painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone with benzodiazepines. Benzos are muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety meds more commonly known by brand names like Valium and Xanax. The Food and Drug Administration said tandem prescriptions of these medications soared 41 percent….
Continue ReadingOlympians pique interest in whether alternative treatments are golden
With fans around the world fixated on the U.S. gold medal-winning Olympic swimming team, curious minds wanted to know: Just what were those circular, purple marks covering the much-bared bodies of athletes like Michael Phelps? To anyone who has spent time in East Asia or who lives in a metropolis (like Washington, D.C.) with sizable….
Continue ReadingKnee-pain surgery, performed 400,000 times a year, deemed ‘useless’
Surgeons’ propensity to perform a common procedure may transfer patients’ knee discomfort to their wallets. The New York Times, in its Upshot column, pulls together a growing body of research that indicates that surgeries for meniscus tears are “useless.” The arthroscopic procedure, however, is popular with the middle-aged and older when afflicted with knee pain,….
Continue ReadingWhere are regulators as hundreds offer so-called ‘stem cell’ care?
Beneficial therapies can topple over to medical nightmares in a blink, especially when regulators seem to have looked askance or even shut their eyes and slumbered. The Food and Drug Administration may need to look into what is going on with the burgeoning business of so-called stem cell treatments. Two academics took to the Internet….
Continue ReadingNew advice for protecting our vision and hearing in the digital age
Experts have new cautions about protecting your vision while using computer screens, while others have some new thoughts on how to improve the access and affordability of hearing care. Millions around the world may suffer headache, eye strain, double vision, dry eyes, eye fatigue and other symptoms of eye strain due to long periods spent in….
Continue ReadingBig Pharma flooded West Virginia with millions of addictive pain-killing pills
Big Pharma should hang its head in shame over recent revelations of its nasty role in inundating rural West Virginia with tens of millions of prescription painkillers. So many pills were shipped in that every man, woman, and child in the small, poor state could have swallowed two dozen doses of hydrocodone and more than….
Continue ReadingPrescriptions for opioid painkillers fall for the first time in 20 years
Too many Americans have died for the message to sink in—28,000 in 2014 alone. But doctors finally seem to be getting a clue that they need to slash their prescribing of powerful, addictive opioid pain-killing medications. The number of prescriptions for these drugs has fallen in each of the last three years (2013, 2014, and….
Continue ReadingCongress acts on opioid drug epidemic as judge unseals OxyContin files
Here are some developments worth watching in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of opioid drug misuse that killed 28,000 Americans in 2014 alone: CONGRESS ACTS: Congressional negotiators now must confer to determine which parts of House and Senate measures to combat opioid drug abuse will go forward. The House just passed a package….
Continue ReadingDid drug maker fuel abuse by insisting that OxyContin works for 12 hours?
OxyContin in two decades not only has become a highly profitable, exceedingly popular prescription, it also has become one of the nation’s most abused painkillers─for a crucial reason, the Los Angeles Times says. The paper investigated and found that the drug’s maker wrongly has promoted the medication as having a 12-hour effectiveness─twice that of generic….
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