Medications and treatments Archive

Most drugs remain potent after their expiration dates. You may want to move it to the refrigerator, though, because drugs stored in cool temperatures usually remain potent longer.

Forgoing drugs that slow bone loss to avoid rare side effects can be the wrong decision for your hips and spine.

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A front-page article in the June 1, 2016, edition of The New York Times carried this headline: "Fearing drugs' rare side effects, millions take their chances with osteoporosis." The article described a situation all too familiar to doctors. Women are declining prescriptions of bisphosphonates—drugs that slow the rate at which the body breaks down bone—or discontinuing the medications far earlier than recommended. In fact, according to a 2015 report in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, the rate of bisphosphonate use fell by half between 2008 and 2012. That article documented a wave of media coverage of scientific studies that reported two rare side effects—osteonecrosis (bone death) of the jaw and atypical fractures near the top of the femur (thigh-bone)—and suggested that the reports had kindled fears that had led women to abandon bisphosphonates.

"The perception of risk is so much greater than the actual risk," says Dr. Meryl LeBoff, director of the skeletal health and osteoporosis center at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. Compared with many other common diseases, we are fortunate that we have good therapies to reduce the risk of osteoporotic fractures by 70% at the spine and 40 to 50% at the hip. She points to statistics referenced in the New York Times article: for every 100,000 women taking a bisphosphonate, fewer than three will have osteonecrosis of the jaw and one will have an atypical femur fracture, but 2,000 will have avoided an osteoporotic fracture.

Long-term doses of certain medications may rob you of calcium, folic acid, and crucial B vitamins.

Short-term medication use will not lead to nutrient deficiency. But long-term use may interfere with your body's ability to absorb nutrients or produce them.
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Medications are well known for causing side effects such as nausea or drowsiness. These are the kinds of side effects you notice and can do something about. But sometimes a lesser known side effect happens without giving you any warning: nutrient deficiency.

The FDA is warning that over-the-counter antacids with aspirin in them can cause stomach bleeding in rare cases. 

A daily aspirin may help defend against heart disease, but it should still be used with caution.

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Aspirin tablets have been a staple of home medicine cabinets and first-aid kits for nearly 100 years. Long before that, people chewed willow tree bark, which contains aspirin-like compounds, to treat a variety of ailments. On top of being an excellent painkiller and fever reducer at its standard dosage, aspirin dramatically reduces the risks for a second heart attack and certain types of stroke when taken daily at a low (81-mg) dose. Research also suggests that aspirin might help limit the growth of colorectal cancer and possibly inhibit other cancers as well, but more research in this area is needed.

These benefits, coupled with the fact that aspirin is both cheap and relatively safe, have led the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to recommend that even some healthy people take a daily aspirin to ward off future disease. But figuring out exactly who is likely to benefit most from this therapy is a more complex calculation, says Dr. Michael Gaziano, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

More prescription medications now come in generic versions. But do you ever choose savings over quality?

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Medication can be an unpredictable and costly expense. Whether it is short-term treatment or multiple drugs you take indefinitely, prescriptions can have a serious impact on your wallet.

Nowadays there are many generic versions of brand-name drugs that are often significantly less expensive. There are generic drugs to treat most common ailments, such as pain, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and depression.

Opioid painkillers are commonly prescribed for chronic low back pain. However, a new study suggests that the drugs offer only modest, short-term relief, and should probably be used in conjunction with nondrug therapies or different drugs. 

People with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) who took anti-VEGF injections were able to maintain their vision enough to legally drive or read small print, like the classified ads in newspapers, for five or more years.

A study found that the drug ticagrelor (Brilinta) was no better than aspirin at preventing stroke among people who had a mild stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which mimics stroke-like symptoms. However, ongoing research may show benefits in using the drug in combination with aspirin.

This old standby may not be your first choice for pain relief, but it still has an important role in disease prevention and first aid.

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We have a lot to thank aspirin for. It's cheap and plentiful. It does a good job of relieving pain and bringing down fevers. It has also been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and colon cancer. It can even stop heart attacks and strokes in their tracks. In fact, if you're in your 50s or 60s, you may want to think about taking a low-dose aspirin every day.

After evaluating the results of scores of studies, in April 2016 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that women and men ages 50 through 69 who have a 10% risk of a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years take 81 milligrams (mg) of aspirin daily. Under the previous recommendations—which, were different for men and women—daily low-dose aspirin was advised for women ages 60 through 79 who were at increased risk for cardiovascular events. The recommendation was revised to reflect a new method of calculating the risk of heart attack and stroke and of increased risk of bleeding in older people.