2011 November

Here’s a bizarre tale that ends with a dirty little revelation about manipulation of doctors by drug companies. It starts with a Merck drug rep named David Turkheimer who was prescribed Ambien CR to help him sleep. He was also using Prednisone — a powerful corticosteroid.

The next time you’re in a crowded space — at the mall filled with holiday shoppers, at a football game, in a busy restaurant — take a look around and consider this: In the people you’re observing, about one in every four has a disease called NAFLD. Even more disturbing — most of them have no idea they have it because they have no symptoms. In fact, most of them have probably never even heard of it.

If you’re a hospital patient, telling a nurse how to do her job probably won’t win you any fans among the nursing staff. But it might save you from considerable pain. A new report in the Journal of Advanced Nursing indicates that most nurses are not giving intramuscular injections correctly.

Here’s how FDA officials warn you that you might be risking a coma, or fatal kidney damage, or some other horrendous adverse event linked to the drug you’re about to take: They take a fine-line marker and draw a box around the warning… that’s what the FDA considers a “black box warning.” And whenever the agency requires a drug to include one of these warnings, media reports always inform us that it’s the most serious warning required by the FDA.

Multivitamin users — we’re a wild and crazy bunch! Recent research from Taiwan shows that multivitamin use may result in a false sense of invulnerability.