Medical Discount Blog

The recent finding that the risk of developing ovarian cancer declines the longer a woman takes oral contraceptives is “worthiness celebrating, partly because soundness claims about the pill are often much harder to parse,” Slate columnist Amanda Schaffer writes in an opinion piece (Schaffer, Slate, 1/29).

For the study steady ovarian cancer, published Friday in the Lancet, Valerie Beral of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University and colleagues analyzed data from more than 45 studies conducted in 21 countries worldwide. (Read the full post about ‘Finding That Oral Contraceptive Use Reduces Ovarian Cancer ‘Worth Celebrating,’ Opinion Piece Says’…)

More than 4,000 people during the last three weeks have taken part in a Patients and Professionals for Customized Care letter-writing campaign that urges members of Congress to protect the right of pharmacies to sell custom-made hormone products to treat symptoms associated with menopause, a spokesperson for the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists recently said, CongressDaily reports. According to CongressDaily, the campaign was launched in answer to FDA’s orders that required seven pharmacies to stop making false and misleading claims about the compounds’ benefits and to stop selling hormone mixtures containing the ingredient estriol, which has not received agency approval (Edney, CongressDaily, 1/29).

FDA sent letters to seven pharmacies earlier this month. (Read the full post about ‘Group Launches Letter-Writing Campaign To Protect Custom-Made Hormones For Menopause’…)

For rabid fans of the New York Giants and New England Patriots, this Sunday’s Super Bowl won’t be just a game. It may be a health hazard.

Heart attacks and other cardiac emergencies doubled in Munich, Germany, when that nation’s soccer team played in World Cup matches, a new study reports.

While history suggests European soccer fans can get a bit more worked up than the average American football fan, doctors think there are some valid warnings to be shared.

“I know a little bit about the Super Bowl,” cogitation author Dr. Gerhard Steinbeck of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich said in a telephone interview. (Read the full post about ‘Study: Watching Sports May Up Heart Woes’…)

Doctors can cut the risk of cerebral palsy in half for very premature babies by giving their mothers magnesium sulfate even-handed before they give birth, new research shows.

The mineral compound, also known as Epsom salts, is already used to treat pregnancy-related high blood pressure and to stop early labor. Doctors should consider giving it to women about to deliver an extremely preterm infant, said one of the researchers, Dr. (Read the full post about ‘Epsom Salts May Cut Cerebral Palsy Risk’…)

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• hydroxyzine Index
• Glossary

Pharmacy Author: Omudhome Ogbru, PharmD
Medical and Pharmacy Editor: Jay W. Marks, MD

GENERIC NAME: hydroxyzine

BRAND NAMES: atarax; Vistaril

DRUG CLASS AND MECHANISM: Hydroxyzine is an antihistamine with anticholinergic (drying) and sedative properties that is used to treat allergic reactions.

(Read the full post about ‘hydroxyzine, Vistaril, Atarax’…)

Ever tend hitherward out of a London Underground station and not known where you were? Then you spot a familiar landmark like the Tower of London and suddenly you have your bearings”

New research from the University of Bristol shows for the first time that global positioning systems technology (GPS) can be used to show how children taken in the character of young as three find their way around. GPS, the technology used in sat-navs, is a navigation system based on satellites that allows a user with a receiver to determine precise coordinates for their location on the earth’s surface.

Using things around us to regain our bearings is known as reorientation and the process has been widely learned in non-human animal species. (Read the full post about ‘GPS Used To Study How Children Find Their Way Around’…)

Osteopaths from around the world will gather today in London to mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of the UK Statutory Register for Osteopaths at a reception held in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales.

Hosted by the General Osteopathic Council, the body responsible for regulating osteopathic practice in the UK, this occasion will formally launch ‘Advancing Osteopathy 2008′ - a three-day series of international conferences at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Centre, attracting over 1,300 osteopaths and other clinical specialists from more than 20 countries.

The focus here on international research, education and practice reflects osteopathy’s rapidly expanding role in modern primary care. (Read the full post about ‘Osteopathy Celebrates 10 Years Of Regulated Practice, UK’…)

February’s issue of Pediatrics offers another reason to rethink blaming the spike in autism diagnoses on thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative routinely used in several childhood vaccines until the late ’90s.

New research from the University of Rochester suggests that infants’ bodies expel the thimerosal mercury much faster than originally thought - thereby leaving little chance for a progressive fabric up of the toxic metal. This debunks the great myth, believed through both parents and some pediatricians, that the gauntlet of thimerosal-containing shots many infants received in the 1990s - when the average number of vaccines kids received increased sharply - had put them at risk for developmental disorders. (Read the full post about ‘Controversial Preservative In Vaccines Excreted By Babies Quicker Than Originally Thought’…)

According to a pooled analysis of 18 anterior studies, sex hormones in the bloodstream appear not to be linked to prostate cancer risk. The researchers found no association between circulating levels of different forms of testosterone or estrogen and prostate cancer risk.

The analysis is published in a new study in the 29th January issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and was conducted by Dr Andrew Roddam of the University of Oxford, England, UK and colleagues at the Endogenous Hormones and Prostate Cancer Collaborative Group.

There have been nearly two dozen studies on the link between circulating levels of androgens or sex hormones, and the risk of prostate cancer, no more than on the whole the results are inconsistent, said the researchers.

Roddam and colleagues analyzed pooled results from 18 studies that between them covered existing worldwide epidemiologic data about the relationship between serum (blood) levels of sex hormones and prostate cancer. (Read the full post about ‘Prostate Cancer Not Linked To Sex Hormones’…)

The number of older Americans diagnosed with diabetes every year went up by 23 per cent in the decade governing up to 2003-2004, according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine carried out by researchers at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Increasing numbers and percentages of Americans older than 65 having diagnosed diabetes is growing fast, which together with reducing death rates and lack of improvement in treating side effects, is contributing significantly to the growing burden of paying for and providing their medical care.

Dr Frank A Sloan, of Duke University Medical Center and colleagues wrote that the global prevalence of diabetes mellitus is growing, partly because the population is getting older, but also because it is rising in younger people. (Read the full post about ‘Diabetes In Older Americans Rising’…)