Free Republic

Dr. Anna Wolfson says she sees dangerous misuse of the allergy medication diphenhydramine in her clinic every day. “If someone has an allergic reaction to a food, people will say, ‘Don’t worry, I have diphenhydramine in my purse,’ and I would say, ‘Really, epinephrine is the first-line treatment for food allergies,’” said Wolfson, an allergist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Diphenhydramine can be harmful if people take it after having an allergic reaction to food, she said, because the drug – best known by the brand name Benadryl – makes them drowsy and can cause them to miss signs that their...

Results from a randomized, phase 2 clinical trial show that adding high-dose, intravenous (IV) vitamin C to chemotherapy doubles the overall survival of patients with late-stage metastatic pancreatic cancer from eight months to 16 months. "The results were so strong in showing the benefit of this therapy for patient survival that we were able to stop the trial early." In the study, 34 patients with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer were randomized to receive either standard chemotherapy (gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel), or chemotherapy plus infusions of high-dose vitamin C. The results showed that average overall survival was 16 months for the...

A decade after scientists identified an over-the-counter antihistamine as a treatment for multiple sclerosis, researchers have developed an approach to measure the drug's effectiveness in repairing the brain. The researchers, led by Ari Green, used MRI scans to study the drug's impact on the brain of 50 participants in a clinical study. In MS, patients lose myelin, the protective insulation around nerve fibers. This myelin loss triggers delays in nerve signals, leading to weakness and spasticity, and other symptoms. In the brain, water trapped between the thin layers of myelin that wrap nerve fibers cannot move as freely as water...