This is an Associated Press article by Lauran Neergaard. It looks at the problems of liver damage associated with acetaminophen which is used in Tylenol and over 200 generic over the counter products. For the full text of the article click here.
The following link is to an article published by Reuters Health and relates to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association 2002;288:835-840. (JAMA). The article refers to a study in which the authors question the benefits of gingko biloba. For the full Reuters article click here.
The following is a recent UK article by Charles Begley reporting about a new health bill being introduced in the UK.
"Parents of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) will face jail under proposals in the new Mental Health Bill if they refuse to drug their children, a psychiatrist has warned.
Dr Bob Johnson, who is at the forefront of a campaign against the increasing reliance on drugs to treat hyperactive children, said the wide-ranging powers of the Bill would over-rule the wishes of parents." For the rest of the article click here.
By Lauran Neergaard (Full Article)f1
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) - The popular over-the-counter painkiller acetaminophen may soon bear warning labels that taking too much can cause serious liver damage.
Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration backed calls for the warning labels last Thursday after the government found evidence that thousands of Americans may unwittingly take toxic doses.
"You cannot allow more innocent men, women and children to suffer," Kate Trunk, whose 23-year-old son Marcus died after an unintentional acetaminophen overdose, told the panel. "Death is not an acceptable side effect."
Some 100 million people a year take acetaminophen, and serious liver damage is very rare, manufacturers insist. Although best known by the Tylenol brand, acetaminophen is in almost 200 different branded and generic products, from headache relievers to cold-and-cough remedies. While mostly sold without a prescription, it's also in a few prescription painkillers such as Percocet and Vicodin.
Acetaminophen bottles currently recommend taking no more than 4 grams a day, or eight extra-strength pills, and to seek help for overdoses.
People often attempt suicide by swallowing handfuls of acetaminophen. That got to be such a problem in Britain that it now restricts how many tablets are sold at once.
But unintentional overdoses also can destroy the liver. Consumers often swallow a few extra pills in hopes of faster pain relief, falsely thinking that over-the-counter medications are safe enough to push the dose. Because acetaminophen is in so many products -- often listed merely in the fine print -- taking a few different remedies the same day can mean unknowingly ingesting potentially toxic amounts.
An FDA review found more than 56,000 emergency room visits a year due to acetaminophen overdoses. About a quarter of them were unintentional overdoses -- and about 100 of those people die each year, the FDA estimated.
That probably understates deaths because many hospitals don't report unintentional poisonings, said University of Pennsylvania pharmacist Sarah Erush.
Acetaminophen appears to be the leading single cause of acute liver failure, the most severe type of liver damage, contends Dr. William Lee of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. His database of 395 patients linked 40 percent to the painkiller, more than any other liver-harming medication or disease.
Acetaminophen is safe, but "people misuse these products," acknowledged Dr. Anthony Temple, vice president of McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, Tylenol's maker. McNeil is about to place new warnings on all its acetaminophen products to say that "taking an overdose may cause liver damage." Even multi-ingredient products, like Tylenol Cold, will now display acetaminophen as an ingredient in large type on the box front.
FDA's advisers urged further changes, including an advisory that "taking more than the recommended dose may cause liver damage" and a warning not to use other products that contain acetaminophen at the same time.
Packages currently mention liver damage only in connection with alcohol use. The panel stressed that the new warnings should make clear that overdosing is risky for nondrinkers, too.
They also called for consumer education about the risk -- but cautioned against making the warnings too scary. "We don't want to make Tylenol look like a dangerous drug," said FDA adviser Dr. Nathaniel Katz of New Rochelle, N.Y.
Associated Press (c) iSyndicate.
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Study Suggests Ginkgo Ineffective Memory Enhancer (Full Article)f2
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Hoping to give your memory or mental abilities a boost with ginkgo biloba? You may be disappointed by the results of a study released Tuesday, which found no apparent memory-enhancing benefit for healthy people over 60.
"These data suggest that when taken following the manufacturer's instructions ginkgo provides no measurable benefit in memory or related cognitive function to adults with healthy cognitive function," according to the report in the August 21st issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Ginkgo biloba is widely advertised to be helpful for a variety of conditions including memory loss and dementia. As a result many healthy people and those with mental decline have turned to the unregulated dietary supplement with the hopes of improving or maintaining their mental abilities.
In the study, Dr. Paul R. Solomon of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and colleagues studied the effects of ginkgo on 98 men and 132 women over age 60. For 6 weeks, half the group took the manufacturer's recommended dose of the supplement and the other half took an inactive placebo.
All of the participants underwent a battery of tests designed to assess their mental abilities including memory before, during, and after the study period. Solomon's team also interviewed a close companion about the mental abilities of each of the men and women enrolled in the study.
Overall, 88% of the people completed the study, and the researchers found that "ginkgo did not facilitate performance on standard neuropsychological tests of learning, memory, attention, and concentration or naming and verbal fluency in elderly adults without cognitive impairment."
The study findings may not apply to different types of consumers taking other doses, the authors note.
"It is certainly possible that higher doses or longer periods of exposure than used in this study are necessary to detect changes; however, we administered the compound following the manufacturer's instructions," Solomon's team writes.
The dose used in the study was 120 milligrams per day, the same dose suggested by the German Commission E. More than 5 million prescriptions are written for ginkgo in Germany each year, mostly to treat dementia.
The researchers also did not measure the quality of the product, but note that the manufacturer says the product is "processed under strict guidelines...ensured through extensive quality control."
The authors note that ginkgo sales reached $240 million in the US in 1997, despite "the paucity of well-controlled" studies on its efficacy.
"In summary, this study does not support the manufacturer's claims of the benefits of ginkgo on learning and memory," they conclude.
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association 2002;288:835-840.
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Parents may face jail over compulsory drug orders (Full Article)f3
By Charles Begley,
29 September 2002
Parents of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) will face jail under proposals in the new Mental Health Bill if they refuse to drug their children, a psychiatrist has warned.
Dr Bob Johnson, who is at the forefront of a campaign against the increasing reliance on drugs to treat hyperactive children, said the wide-ranging powers of the Bill would over-rule the wishes of parents.
"The Bill is so punitive it dispenses with all civil and human rights. Parents who have reservations about pumping their children full of drugs to control them would be classed as denying their children treatment," he said. "It's only a matter of time before parents find themselves in breach of such orders which are fully backed by the courts."
Dr Johnson, a clinical psychiatrist for 40 years, said the huge rise in the use of drugs was worrying. The number of prescriptions of the most popular ADHD drug, Ritalin, stood at 208,000 last year, up from just 2,000 a decade earlier.
Some parents say they have little choice but to use drugs for their children. Andrea Bilbow, who runs the Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service (Addiss), has given her 15-year-old son Ritalin for nearly a decade. "If there was another way I would take it, but at the moment it's the only treatment which gives him any quality of life," she said.
The Department of Health dismissed claims that new legislation would lead to parents being jailed, but admitted the proposals would extend compulsory treatment orders.
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