Sunday, September 17, 2006

Drug use falls, except among older adults

Youngsters are using fewer illegal
drugs but a spike in use has been seen among older adults,
perhaps because a few aging baby boomers have clung to their
rebellious ways, according a U.S. substance abuse report
published on Thursday.

Just 6.8 percent of teenagers aged 12 to 17 said they used
marijuana in 2005, down from 8.2 percent in 2002, according to
the annual survey done by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration.


Overall illicit drug use also fell, from 11.6 percent in
2002 who said they had used drugs in the past month to 9.9
percent in 2005, the report said.


"Something important is happening with American teens,"
said John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy.


"They are getting the message that using drugs limits their
futures, and they are turning away from the destructive
patterns and cruelly misinformed perceptions about substance
abuse that have so damaged previous generations," he said.


But baby boomers, now entering their 50s and 60s, are
apparently not all tuning in to the message.


The rate of current illicit drug use increased from 2.7
percent among adults aged 50 to 59 in 2002 to 4.4 percent in
2005.


"Could kids be rejecting drugs because it's some lame thing
that old people do?," asked Tom Riley, a spokesman for the
White House National Office of Drug Control Policy.


"To what extent is boomer 'recreational' use now more
accurately understood as 'dependency'?"


The illegal use of alcohol fell among teens, with 16.5
percent of 12- to 17-year-olds saying they were drinkers and
9.9 percent reporting binge drinking -- defined as having five
or more drinks in a row. Both are down more than a full
percentage point from 2004.


FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT IN TEEN DRUG USE


"The news today is there is a fundamental shift in drug use
among young people in America," said Assistant Surgeon General
Eric Broderick, who is SAMHSA Acting Deputy Administrator.


"We first saw this shift toward healthier decisions when
rates of tobacco use among young people began to go down. Now,
we see a sustained drop in rates of drug use. We will see if
the decline in drinking among 12-to 17-year-olds becomes a
continued pattern as well," he said.


But certain dangerous patterns of alcohol use did not
change -- nearly 23 percent of all people aged 12 and older
admitted to binge drinking.


"This translates as about 55 million people, comparable to
the 2004 estimate," SAMHSA said in a statement. "The binge
drinking rate among young adults ages 18-25 was 41.9 percent,
and the heavy drinking rate was 15.3 percent."


Close to 89 percent of people who said they had tasted
alcohol for the first time were under the legal drinking age of
21, the survey found.


About 6 percent of people said they had smoked or eaten
marijuana in the past month, and 2.6 percent said they had
abused prescription drugs.


About 4 percent of people surveyed said they had used
methamphetamine. Just about 1 percent said they had used
cocaine, about the same as in past years, while about 0.1
percent used heroin, also not much of a change.


The survey found that 71.5 million Americans ages 12 and
older used tobacco. Just over 29 percent of people said they
had smoked or chewed tobacco in the past month.


Among children aged 12 to 17 tobacco use fell to 10.8
percent in 2005 from 13 percent in 2002.




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Taking preventive medications curbs diabetes risk

Individuals at risk for
developing type 2 diabetes who are prescribed the drug
metformin should stick with it, doctors say. In a large study,
individuals who adhered to a metformin-based diabetes
preventive strategy had a reduced risk of developing diabetes,
they report.

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) investigated the
value of intensive lifestyle intervention (diet and exercise)
or metformin in delaying or preventing type 2 diabetes in
high-risk individuals with impaired glucose tolerance, a
precursor to full-blown diabetes.


Dr. Elizabeth A. Walker, of George Washington University,
Rockville, Maryland, and colleagues examined medication
adherence and health outcomes in the metformin and placebo arms
of the DPP.


A total of 2155 subjects who were randomly assigned to
either the metformin or placebo treatment arms were included in
the analysis.


The overall adherence rates -- that is, the proportion of
patients taking at least 80 percent of the prescribed dose --
were 71 percent in the metformin group and 77 percent in the
placebo group.


Compared to patients who were adherent to placebo, those
adherent to metformin had a 38.2 percent reduced risk of
developing diabetes, the investigators report. In this study,
"the level of medication adherence predicted the primary
outcome of diabetes," they write in the journal Diabetes Care.


Among patients taking metformin, older subjects were more
adherent than younger subjects.


Walker's team reports that the most commonly reported
barriers to taking the medication as prescribed were forgetting
to take doses (22 percent), adverse effects (8 percent), and
disruption of routines (8 percent). Overall, 15 percent of
women and 10 percent of men reported adverse effects in the
metformin group.


These results, the team concludes, "lend support for future
development and evaluation of brief, practical medication
adherence interventions for primary care settings."


SOURCE: Diabetes Care, September 2006.




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Study: Impact of drugs on kids confusing

Finding out how prescription drugs affect children isn't easy, even for pediatricians, a new study says.

That's because very little research on children and drugs is
published in medical journals that help guide doctors on treatment. The
result is that some prescribe the wrong dose or use drugs that could be
harmful to kids.


"Ironically, some of the times when drugs do work (in children),
they're still not getting published," said Dr. Danny Benjamin, an
associate professor at Duke University who led the study and also works
for the U.S.










Food and Drug Administration.


He said an FDA program meant to encourage drug companies to test how
drugs affect children has led to hundreds of studies. The problem is
that about half the time, the results don't get published in
peer-reviewed medical journals, mainly because researchers and sponsors
don't submit them for publication, Benjamin said.


Drug companies that conduct or sponsor pediatric research are
motivated mostly to get their products on the market, "not to tend to
the public health concerns," Benjamin said.


Also, parents often are reluctant to let their children participate
in studies. So the research often involves many institutions with a few
children at each location, which complicates compiling data and
submitting them for publication, Benjamin said.


Examples the authors cited include unpublished data suggesting that
an anesthesia drug might increase children's risk of death when used
for sedation. Also, unpublished data has suggested that some steroid
creams used for skin rashes in adults could cause a hormone imbalance
in children.


"People slather this on children, particularly babies," said study
co-author Dr. Dianne Murphy, director of the FDA's office of pediatric
therapeutics.


In both cases, precautions are listed on the drug label but not in
much detail. They also appear on the FDA's Web site, but that's not
where doctors usually look for such information, the researchers said.


"We've just got to get the data out to people who are caring for children," Benjamin said.


His study appears in Wednesday's










Journal of the American Medical Association.


JAMA is among the top peer-reviewed journals but editor-in-chief Dr.
Catherine DeAngelis said few studies submitted to JAMA involve the
effects of medication on children.


The researchers studied the impact of 1997 legislation authorizing a
measure that grants drug companies longer patent protection when they
agree to study a medication's effects in children.


Between 1998 and 2004, 253 pediatric studies were submitted to the
FDA under this program but only 45 percent were published in
peer-reviewed journals, the researchers found.


Dr. Peter Lurie of the watchdog organization Public Citizen's Health
Research Group said drug companies and academics need to push harder to
publish.


"It really is like the tree falling in the woods. The study is of no
use whatsoever if it never reaches the practicing physician," Lurie
said.


Scott Lassman of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America, an industry trade group, said drug companies shouldn't be
faulted.


While he agreed publication in a peer-reviewed journal is "the gold
standard for getting information out," Lassman said companies often
present data at medical conferences and or post them in an online
industry database, http://www.clinicalstudyresults.org.




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Marijuana helps patients stay on medication

Recovering drug addicts who are
infected with hepatitis C virus may stick to their medications
better if they are allowed to use marijuana, U.S. researchers
reported on Wednesday.

Smoking or eating cannabis may help them tolerate the side
effects of the antivirals, which can clear the virus but often
cause fevers, chills, and muscle and joint aches, the
researchers said.


Diana Sylvestre and colleagues at the University of
California, San Francisco tested 71 recovering substance users
given interferon and ribavirin to treat their hepatitis C --
which is common among injecting drug users.


About a third of the patients also used marijuana.


Half of the marijuana users were successfully treated with
the antivirals, versus 18 percent of those who did not use
cannabis, the researchers reported in the European Journal of
Gastroenterology and Hepatology.


And just 14 percent of the cannabis users relapsed,
compared to 61 percent of non-smokers.


"It may in fact be an ironical truth that those persons who
contracted hepatitis C virus through a form of illicit drug use
may be aided in ridding themselves of this potentially fatal
virus by the use of another drug in addition to their HCV
therapy," Benedikt Fischer of the Center for Addictions
Research of British Columbia in Canada wrote in a commentary.


The hepatitis C virus damages the liver and can kill people
if not treated. A combination of interferon, to boost immune
response, and ribavirin, to attack the virus, can help clear it
from the liver, but it can take months.


"The majority of patients develop significant
treatment-related side effects, with almost 80 percent
experiencing an initial flulike syndrome that includes fevers,
chills, and muscle and joint aches," the researchers wrote.


They are often given a range of drugs to treat the side
effects, including medications to stop vomiting, analgesics,
antihistamines and sleeping pills.



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Report highlights Britons' drug abuse

The extent of Britain's drug problem was laid bare in a survey which
highlighted increasing steroid abuse among young men and the rise of a
potentially deadly heroin/crack cocaine cocktail known as speedballing.


The comprehensive annual study, from the DrugScope charity, found that
use of anabolic steroids among professionals, construction workers and
students aged 16 to 25 was spiralling as they strive for physical
perfection.



"The rise in the number of young men misusing steroids is extremely
worrying and seems to be in response to a growing obsession with the
ideal body image," Drugscope chief executive Martin Barnes said.



Barnes added that many do not consider themselves drug users and called
on gyms and health services to provide more information on the problem,
found in 11 out of 20 areas where some 80 drug action teams and police
forces were surveyed in July and August.



The research says that most people are introduced to steroids, a human
growth hormone which in Britain it is illegal to supply but not to
possess, at gyms and buy them there or over the internet.



Alex Georgijev, a gym owner in south Wales, said that young men are
pressured into believing they need "a six pack and a good set of arms
hanging out of their shirt" by media images.



"People come in and ask how much it is to train -- the next sentence is
how much are steroids: it's their first consideration rather than their
last," he told Drugscope's magazine, Druglink.



Increasing numbers of young Asian men, particularly of Pakistani and
Kashmiri origin, are also being pulled into steroid use, the magazine
added.



Meanwhile the use of speedballs, known as "curry and rice" because of
the colour of the drugs involved, was reported as a growing problem in
eight cities.



Although it is not a new phenomenon -- Blues Brothers star John Belushi
died from a speedball overdose in Los Angeles in 1982 aged 33 -- the
report expresses concern over its increased popularity.



The average speedball, made by crumbling crack into heated, liquid
heroin which is then injected, costs 20 pounds (29 euros, 37 dollars).



A separate, previously unpublished study by Dr. Russell Newcombe, of
drugs charity Lifeline, found that speedballing was the main method of
drug-taking for 80 per cent of 100 addicts questioned, compared to 25
percent a decade ago.



This survey added that speedballers spent 500 pounds a week on average
on the drugs, compared to 110 pounds for heroin-only users.



The findings on steroids and speedballing add a new dimension to
Britain's reputation as one of Europe's heaviest drug consumers -- last
year, it was named the continent's top cocaine user by the Observatoire
europeen des drogues et des toxicomanies (OEDT).



The situation is linked to the consistently low price of drugs in
Britain, where an Ecstasy pill often costs the same as a pint of beer
and a gram of cocaine, enough for up to 20 lines, can be as cheap as 30
pounds.



The British media's fascination with the tempestuous relationship
between supermodel Kate Moss, photographed snorting cocaine last year,
and Babyshambles pop star Pete Doherty, regularly in court on drug
charges, hints at many, particularly young, peoples' ambivalent
attitude to drug use.




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Latest clinical trials, courtesy of Thomson CenterWatch:

Psychosis


This research study will test a new medication to treat opiate
withdrawal. You may be eligible if you are physically dependent on
opioids (i.e. Oxycodone, Lortab or Vicodin), 18 years and older, and
willing to undergo detoxification in the hospital for up to eight days.
Participation in the study is free and will include medical screenings,
meals, and snacks.


The research site is in Lexington, Ky.


More information


Please see http://www.centerwatch.com/patient/studies/cat448.html.


-----


Ulcerative Colitis


Volunteers 18 or older with a history of mild-to-moderate active
ulcerative colitis and symptoms of acute flare within the past four
weeks may be eligible for this clinical trial. People may not
participate if they have had bowel surgery,










HIV,
Hepatitis C or B, cancer within the past five years, unstable
cardiovascular history, or renal disease. There is a stipend of up to
$400.


The research site is in DeLand, Fla.


More information


Please see http://www.centerwatch.com/patient/studies/cat152.html.


-----


Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer


This is a randomized trial of Paclitaxel, Carboplatin and
Bevacizumab with or without the study drug for people with advanced
nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer. Candidates with
histologically/cytologically-confirmed NSCLC except squamous cell may be included. Additional criteria apply.


The research site is in Beech Grove, Ind.


More information


Please see http://www.centerwatch.com/patient/studies/cat683.html.



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Health Tip: Prevent Yeast Infections

Vaginal yeast infections are caused by a fungus that thrives when a woman's body changes because of a period, pregnancy or medication she may be taking.

Here are suggestions to prevent these infections, courtesy of the American Academy of Family Physicians:

  • Avoid underwear and pants that are made of synthetic fibers. Stick to all-cotton underwear.
  • Wear loose-fitting clothing.
  • Avoid wearing pantyhose daily.
  • Remove wet swimsuits, clothing, or underwear immediately.
  • Avoid artificially fragranced or colored products such as sprays, tampons, pads, douches, or bubble baths, as they can affect the area's acid balance, which can promote symptoms of a yeast infection.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

herbal medicine




























Herbal
Knowledgebase

Listing
of 2000+ herbs from
around the world.
Herbal Remedies
and Tonics / Herbal Combinations


Herbal combinations for various illnesses.
Introduction
to Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine is
the oldest form of healthcare known to mankind. A concise introduction to this fascinating
field.
Interaction
Between Herbs, Foods and  Drugs

Use
this in addition to the safety issues listed under individual herbs
Standardized vs. Whole Herb

More and more
manufacturers are supplying standardized herb extracts. What are they? How are they
different from whole herbs?
Forms of Herbs

Herbs can be
prepared in a variety of forms depending on their purpose. Learn about such techniques.

Herbal Medicine for Healing
Diseases/Conditions


Detailed coverage of herbs for treating various diseases/conditions.

Glossary of Properties of
Herbs

What
does terms like abortifacient, alterative,
anthelmintic, etc. mean?

Look it in our glossary of terms.
Drug
Regulation

In the United
States, herbal products can be marketed only as food supplements. An herb manufacturer or
distributor can make no specific health claims without FDA approval. The situation is
different another parts of the world...
European
Phytomedicines

European
phytomedicines are among the world’s best studied medicines. Learn more about it..