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WASHINGTON -- A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses -- from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest -- has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment. "It's just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient's life and we find out there isn't any," says Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians. The problem of scarce supplies or even completely unavailable medications isn't a new one but it's getting markedly worse. The number listed in short supply...

WASHINGTON -- The number of prescription drugs in short supply has more than tripled since 2005 and shortages are now more frequent than ever, [] Premier Healthcare Alliance -- a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals -- surveyed 311 pharmacy experts at hospitals and other facilities, such as surgery centers and long-term care facilities, about shortages during a six month period in 2010. The survey found that 89% had experienced shortages that may have caused a medication safety issue or error in patient care. Eight out of 10 times a shortage occurred, the patient's care was delayed...

Argentina's relations with the U.S. worsened sharply Monday as the South American country continued to hold military equipment it confiscated last week from a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane sent as part of a training course for local police. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, called on Argentina to return the property without delay. "It's absolutely necessary that they immediately return that material. It makes no sense for it to have been confiscated this way. This material was intended for a joint exercise in training people to rescue hostages," Mr. Valenzuela Monday said on...

Here's just one statistic that Danbury school psychologist Charles Manos worries about: 42 percent of all kids in foster care are taking three or more mood-altering drugs. "All kids in foster care have some story of trauma, like abuse or neglect, so we need to ask the question `How are we dealing with trauma?'" Manos asked. Overall, children are receiving more prescriptions than ever before to treat medical, emotional and psychological problems, according to a May report from Medco Health Solutions. More than one in four children with health insurance in the U.S., and nearly 30 percent of all children...

Freudian Falloff by: Bethany Stotts, August 07, 2008 Are Freudian analyses of the human mind becoming a thing of the past? A new study released this month finds that psychiatric practices are increasingly opting for medical therapies over the traditional “couch talks” that once symbolized this mental health profession. Those consumers continuing to seek counseling are increasingly moving away from the psychiatry for counseling, preferring more non-medical approaches—partially because “managed care” such as HMO’s reimburse psychiatrists more for a 15 minute prescription session than for 45 minutes of psychotherapy. Two researchers from Columbia University and Beth Israel Medical Center found...

Drug for deadly prostate cancer Aggressive prostate cancer has a poor prognosis Scientists are hailing a new drug to treat aggressive prostate cancer as potentially the most significant advance in the field for 70 years. Abiraterone could potentially treat up to 80% of patients with a deadly form of the disease resistant to currently available chemotherapy, they say. The drug works by blocking the hormones which fuel the cancer. The Institute of Cancer Research hopes a simple pill form will be available in two to three years. We believe we have made a major step forward in the treatment...

A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators. [excerpt - click here to read the whole article]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Elderly people who took commonly prescribed drugs for incontinence, allergy or high blood pressure walked more slowly and were less able to take care of themselves than others not taking the drugs, U.S. researchers said on Saturday. They said people who took drugs that block acetylcholine -- a chemical messenger in the nervous system critical for memory -- functioned less well than their peers. "These results were true even in older adults who have normal memory and thinking abilities," said Dr. Kaycee Sink of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, who led the study...

The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common? I am thinking of the Medicated Americans, those 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants. It is Sunday night. The Medicated American—let’s call her Julie, and let’s place her in Winterset, Iowa—is getting ready for bed. Monday morning and its attendant pressures—the rush to get out of the house, the long commute, the bustle of the office—loom. She opens the...

...The trial results were a major breakthrough in neuroscience, says Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. For 50 years, all medicines for the disease had worked the same way — until Dr. Schoepp and other scientists took a different path. “This drug really looks like it’s quite a different animal,” Dr. Insel says. “This is actually pretty innovative.” Dr. Schoepp and other scientists had focused their attention on the way that glutamate, a powerful neurotransmitter, tied together the brain’s most complex circuits. Every other schizophrenia drug now on the market aims at a different...

Today the Supreme Court will consider a petition to hear a case raising profound issues regarding the right of individuals to make their own health-care decisions. The case is Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach. The suit claims that FDA violates the due process rights of terminally-ill patients, who have exhausted all approved options and are unable to enter a clinical trial, by prohibiting access to promising investigational drugs. Consider the plight of such patients. They search for clinical trials of new drugs that might extend their lives. Nearly all are ineligible. Of the few...

ADHD Breakthrough by: Amanda Busse, January 09, 2008 A new study suggests that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children may be a matter of maturity. According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ADHD in children is caused when portions of the brain mature at a slower pace than normal. For many, the condition eventually normalizes and nearly 80 percent of children grow out of the disorder, the researchers found. Researchers used a new image-analysis technique to measure the thickening and thinning of thousands of cortex sites in 223 children with ADHD and...

MONDAY, Sept. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly 9 percent of American children have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but only 32 percent of them are getting the medication they need. That's the sobering conclusion of a landmark new study, the first of its kind based on what doctors consider the "gold standard" of diagnostic criteria -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. "There is a perception that ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated," said lead researcher Dr. Tanya E. Froehlich, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center. "But our study shows that for those who meet the criteria...

Is it safe? Nobody knows.More and more, parents at wit's end are begging doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful antipsychotic drugs. In the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs. Even children as young as 3 years old. Last year, 1,100 Medicaid children under 6 were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice so risky that state regulators say it should be used only...

I'm in a business that I hate, working on the front line between patients and upper management, and I'm considered to be damned good at what I do. I'm a senior customer service representative for a pharmacy benefits manager. I'm praying though, that the job interview I have this morning will get me out of the job I'm currently in, and back into the fairly sterile world of IT. It's not my job to deny benefits, no matter what the patients might think. My job is to explain the denials, explain how the benefits plan works, and to help the...

Virginia Tech Tragedy is a Wake-Up Call to Parents (Ventura, CA) - Researcher and bestselling author George Barna says the current public debate about the implications of the Virginia Tech tragedy is missing the point. "The animated conversations about gun control, campus security, counseling standards, campus communications, drug abuse and mental health funding do not address the core issue raised by this event. This situation is not primarily a challenge to politicians, educators or police. It’s a dramatic wake-up call to parents." Barna indicated that he was sympathetic toward the parents of the college student who murdered 31 classmates and...

I've always been interested in the topic of prescription drug laws because -- even more than laws which prohibit adults from using recreational drugs -- it seems absolutely unjustifiable for the government to prevent adult citizens from deciding for themselves which pharmaceutical products they want to use. Put another way, it seems unfathomable that competent adults are first required to obtain the "permission" of a doctor before being "allowed" to obtain and consume the medications they think they need -- and that they are committing crimes if they do not first obtain that permission (or, worse, if they try to...

After success in a long fight against forced medication, a schizophrenic man gained freedom. But now he is accused of killing his roommate.

In response to Russia's recent anti-Georgian policies, the Russian newspaper Vlast analytical weekly has taken it upon themselves to prepare an important guide of how to deal with Russia's "ring of malice" (referring to countries that border Russia) and methods of combating them to avoid possible treachery, Kommersant daily reports. "In recent weeks, Russians have learned much about the negative role that Georgia and Georgians play in their lives," Kommersant quotes the guide as saying, "Georgians are the backbone of the Russian criminal world and they control the big casinos where Russians are stripped bare and poisoned with poor quality...

I have been treating, educating and caring for children for more than 30 years, half of that time as a child psychiatrist, and the changes I have seen in the practice of child psychiatry are shocking. Psychiatrists are now misdiagnosing and overmedicating children for ordinary defiance and misbehavior. The temper tantrums of belligerent children are increasingly being characterized as psychiatric illnesses. Using such diagnoses as bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Asperger's, doctors are justifying the sedation of difficult kids with powerful psychiatric drugs that may have serious, permanent or even lethal side effects.