Category: News Archive

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a possible link between tumour necrosis factor (TNF) blockers (sold as Remicade, Enbrel, Humira and Cimzia) and lymphoma and other cancers in children and young adults. TNF blockers are used to treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA, formerly called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis), Crohn's disease and other conditions. […]

A new Swedish study found that breastfeeding for more than a year halves a woman's risk of rheumatoid arthritis, while taking the contraceptive pill didn't lower the risk, even though the pill was expected to protect against it because it contains hormones that rise in pregnancy. In the study at Malmö University Hospital, women who […]

A report in the journal Hypertension shows that ACE inhibitors (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors) cause angioedema, a sudden swelling of the face, lips, tongue or throat, about three times as often as other blood pressure drugs. Dr Miller and colleagues looked at ACE inhibitors prescribed between 1999 and 2000, mainly lisinopril, fosinopril and captopril. Angioedema occurred […]

Bacteria may play an important role in treating cancer. Records going back 150 years show bacteria acting against cancer: the German doctors W. Busch and F. Fehleisen separately noticed that certain cancers shrank after patients in hospital caught infections such as Streptococcus pyogenes (erysipelas). In America, William Coley saw a patient with cancer of the […]

The cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) can damage the kidneys. It was the first of a family of drugs designed to starve cancers by cutting off their blood supply, blocking vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which drives the growth of blood vessels. One side effect of Avastin is protein in the urine, a sign of kidney […]

Plants make lectins as part of their defence against insects, and some of these lectins are toxic enough to kill animal cells by stopping them making proteins. They could be used to build targeted cancer drugs by attaching them to monoclonal antibodies that seek out specific cells. The plant protein ricin is the leading toxin […]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that many patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have been swallowing capsules meant to be inhaled, instead of using the inhaler device to breathe in the powder inside them. The FDA and the National Poison Control Center stress that swallowing the capsules does […]

A study has shown that zinc reduces the severity and length of acute and persistent diarrhoea in children, and so the number of stools, though it isn't clear exactly how zinc works against diarrhoea. The drawback is that it can make children vomit, and zinc gluconate seemed to cause more problems than zinc sulphate or […]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a fixed-dose combination of extended-release niacin (Niaspan) and simvastatin for patients with complex lipid disorders who haven't responded to a statin or niacin alone. The new medicine, Simcor (Abbott), lowers total and LDL cholesterol and raises HDL ("good") cholesterol. It was well tolerated, and the most […]

Cutting children's salt intake reduces how many sugary soft drinks they drink, and so may help prevent obesity, high blood pressure and other health risks, according to a study published in Hypertension. We know that the amount of salt we eat affects how much we drink, but few of us know that this applies to […]

Bayer has announced that it has stopped a trial of Nexavar (sorafenib) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, because the drug didn't improve survival. The company said the drug's safety profile was the same as in earlier studies, but deaths were higher in one group of patients. Bayer and its partner Onyx Pharmaceuticals are […]

Lidocaine ear drops, together with pain relief by mouth, may relieve pain faster in many children with acute middle ear infection (acute otitis media), according to a report in Archives of Disease in Childhood. Acute otitis media is common and usually gets better without antibiotics. A study comparing lidocaine drops with saline (salt water) drops […]