Health, personal care and medication recommendatons

Study: Kids also Vulnerable to Stress, Depression

Popular wisdom has long held that young children survive traumatic events better than adults do, in part because they suffer less. Being too young to understand fully the nature of what's happening around them - during war or natural disaster, for instance - they should bounce back with much more ...

Eisai say FDA approves higher dose Aricept

Eisai Co and Pfizer Inc said they won U.S. regulatory approval for a higher dose once-daily version of Aricept, a drug that treats Alzheimer disease. Eisai, Japan's No. 4 drugmaker, said in March it expected annual U.S. sales of the drug, its flagship product, to fall 60 percent to $800 million ...

Avastin Largely Safe for Patients With Type of Advanced Lung Cancer

The cancer drug Avastin, when used in combination with standard chemotherapy, is safe and can effectively treat an advanced form of one of the most common lung cancers, researchers report. Previously it had been thought that this combination might have serious adverse side effects, including life-threatening bleeding, for patients with non-squamous ...

Drug plus counseling boosts weight loss

An experimental obesity drug, taken along with formal counseling on lifestyle changes, may spur greater weight loss than counseling alone, a new study finds. The study of nearly 800 obese adults examined the effects of a drug called Contrave -- which combines the antidepressant bupropion (Wellbutrin) and naltrexone, a medication used ...

Experts urge limits for some drug safety trials

Clinical trials aimed at pinpointing emerging safety problems with drugs already on the market should only be conducted when other, less invasive research is not possible, a U.S. advisory group said on Friday. The Institute of Medicine's report, requested by U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials, comes ahead of a highly-anticipated ...

House votes to ban some drug patent settlements

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a ban on some patent agreements between brand name and generic drug companies, deals which a federal agency says slow the arrival of cheaper generic drugs to market. The House, voting late on Thursday, approved the measure as part of its approval of money ...

Diabetes drug risks reported ahead of FDA hearing

A new study led by a federal drug safety expert ties the controversial diabetes drug Avandia to a higher risk of heart problems, strokes and deaths in older adults, and says it is more dangerous than a rival drug Actos. The study, a huge review of Medicare records, comes two weeks ...

Pro-Eating Disorder Sites Abound on the Internet

They're out there on the Web: Sites that offer tips to successful purging or water-only fasts; others that list methods of hiding rapid weight loss from parents and doctors. If the proliferation of these pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia Web sites isn't bad enough, eating disorder experts say they now have to contend ...

‘Female Viagra’ falls short

A pink pill designed to boost sex drive in women — the latest attempt by the drug industry to find a female equivalent to Viagra — fell short in two studies, federal health regulators said Wednesday. The Food and Drug Administration is considering Boehringer Ingelheim's drug flibanserin for premenopausal women who ...

Novartis cancer drug wins wider U.S. approval

Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG won wider U.S. approval for its leukemia drug Tasigna to treat a rare form of the blood cancer at an earlier stage of the disease, the Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. Tasigna had previously been approved to treat adults with chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML, ...