Archive for June, 2010
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Main Street
By Althea Chang
June 8, 2010
Antidepressant use could be linked to blindness in older adults, a recent study suggests.
Drugs that treat depression known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, caused an increased risk of developing cataracts in patients aged 65 or older, according to a study published in the journal Ophthalmology in June.
Researchers said cataracts may be more likely to develop in patients using this specific type of depression medication because serotonin receptors are found in the lens of the eye, according to MedPage Today.
Cataracts occur when the ocular lens gets cloudy and causes vision loss and even blindness. According to the World Health Organization, cataracts are responsible for 48% of age-related blindness cases worldwide.
While the elderly are generally more prone to developing cataracts than the population as a whole, researchers said they adjusted their study results to consider blood pressure, use of other medications and gender among the 200,000 people involved.
Read entire article: http://www.mainstreet.com/article/family/family-health/antidepressants-linked-blindness
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Tags: antidepressants, blindness, blood pressure, cataracts, depression, elderly, elderly patients, medication, older adults, Ophthalmology, patients aged 65 or older, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, SSRIs, vision loss, World Health Organization
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Monday, June 7th, 2010
NewsTimes.com
By Eileen FitzGerald
June 7, 2010
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 from 10 to 19, take at least one prescription to treat a chronic condition. The most substantial increases over the past nine years have been in antipsychotic, diabetes and asthma drugs, according to the Medco report.
In some cases, students take medications at home. In many cases, school nurses dispense it.
For instance, Danbury schools health coordinator Sue Levasseur said 80 middle school students receive asthma medication each day at school and another 14 to 15 children receive a psychotropic drug at school.
Part of the school system’s job is to educate parents, said Manos, who has worked in local schools for more than 30 years and also has a private practice.
“I think we have become a society that says it’s OK to medicate the symptoms of kids. Medication is easier. I think as a society we are quick to change behavior rather than understand it,” Manos said.
Behavior medications can be destructive if used improperly, he said.
“Say there is abuse or trauma, and we don’t do an adequate analysis. Then we silence the symptoms through the medications,” Manos said.
“The fact is that medication does not treat a disorder, it treats the symptoms of the manifestation, and people don’t understand that. I think there is a myth that medication treats the disorder.”
Read entire article: http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Growing-numbers-of-children-on-medication-514614.php
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Tags: antipsychotic, Behavior, Behavior medications, Charles Manos, child drugging, diabetes, foster care, Foster children, foster kids, Medco Health Solutions, Medicaid, medications, mood-altering drugs, prescriptions, psychological problems, psychotropic drugs, symptoms
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Monday, June 7th, 2010
Air Force Times
By Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry
June 6, 2010
Prescription drug cocktails have lead to at least 32 accidental overdoses among Marines and soldiers since 2007, bringing military medical practices for treating physical and psychiatric problems under scrutiny.
At least 30 soldiers and two Marines overdosed while under the care of Army Warrior Transition Units or the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment, created three years ago to tightly focus care and attention on troops suffering from injuries as a result of combat.
Most of the troops had been prescribed “drug cocktails,” combinations of drugs including painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, interviews and records show. In all cases, suicide was ruled out.
Army officials say the deaths are often complicated by troops mixing medications with alcohol, taking their own medications incorrectly or without a prescription.
It is unclear how many troops across the entire military have died from drug toxicity. Pentagon officials have not provided information about accidental drug deaths across the military despite a Military Times Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly two months ago. Data on military deaths is compiled by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and maintained at the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center.
The Army deaths have shocked that service’s medical community and prompted an internal review. But despite a “safety stand down” in January 2009, the number of fatalities continued to rise last year — to 15 in 2009, up from 11 the year before. Meanwhile the total number of soldiers assigned to the 29 WTUs nationwide dropped from about 12,000 to about 9,000.
The internal review found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy. According to an Army analysis from June 2009, about 9 percent of WTU patients — 800 soldiers — were prescribed a combination of drugs that included pain, psychiatric and sleep medications.
As a result, the Army medical community has begun to question the widespread practice of polypharmacy and has quietly overhauled the way it prescribes, distributes and monitors the riskiest drugs.
Read entire article: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/06/military_drug_deaths_060710w/
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Tags: accidental drug deaths, accidental overdoses, Andrew Tilghman, anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants, army, Brendan McGarry, deaths, drug toxicity, drugged soldiers, Freedom of Information Act, Marines, military, military deaths, military suicides, Military Times, overdosed, painkillers, Pentagon, polypharmacy, prescription drugs, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric problems, sleeping pills, soldiers
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
U.S. News & World Report
By Steven Reinberg
June 3, 2010
One in five high school students in the United States has taken a prescription medication that was not prescribed for them, a new survey shows.
Conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the survey covers a variety of risky behaviors among American youth.
“We are very concerned that 20 percent of high school students are reporting this behavior,” said survey author Danice K. Eaton, a research scientist at the CDC. “It can be dangerous to take a prescription drug that hasn’t been prescribed to you.”
Studies have shown that taking non-prescribed prescription drugs can lead to overdose, addiction and death, Eaton explained. “Taking a prescription drug that hasn’t been prescribed to you is a health risk behavior,” she said.
In the survey, 16,460 high school students were asked if they had ever taken prescription drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, Ritalin or Xanax, without a doctor’s prescription.
The abuse of prescription drugs was widest among whites at 23 percent, followed by Hispanics at 17 percent, and black students at 12 percent.
In addition, the abuse of prescription drugs was most common among 12th graders (26 percent) and lowest among ninth graders (15 percent), the researchers found. But, prescription drug abuse was the same for boys and girls, at 20 percent.
Read entire article: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcare/articles/2010/06/03/20-of-us-high-schoolers-abuse-prescription-drugs.html
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Tags: Adderall, addiction, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cocaine, death, ecstasy, methamphetamine, overdose, prescription drug use, prescription medication, Ritalin, Xanax
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Lawyers & Settlements
By LucyC
June 2, 2010
A new study out yesterday—June 1, 2010—has revealed a higher rate of miscarriages in women who were taking antidepressants during pregnancy. How much higher? Sixty-eight percent—yes —that’s 68%—higher. Frankly, that is nothing short of shocking.
Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the study was done in Canada through the University of Montreal. FYI—This was no small study either—the investigators used data from 5,124 women who are part of a large, population-based study of pregnant women who had clinically verified miscarriages, and a large sample of women from the same registry who did not have a miscarriage. Among the women who miscarried, 284 or 5.5 percent, had taken antidepressants during their pregnancy.
In fact the findings are so robust that the physicians who did the study are suggesting that this is a class effect—in other words the effect could be attributed to all selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—or SSRIs. Here’s what’s being reported in the press:
“These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied,” the study’s senior author, Dr. Anick Berard, said in a statement. (UPI.com)
The antidepressants that showed a particular association with miscarriage in the study were paroxetine (trade names: Seroxat and Paxil) and venlafaxine (trade names: Effexor, Efexor, Alventa, Argofan, Trevilor). The investigators also found that the risk of miscarriage doubled with a combination of different antidepressants.
Just for the record, the antidepressants “investigated” in the University of Montreal study are serotonin reuptake inhibitors (citalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxa-mine, paroxetine and sertraline); tricyclic antidepressants (ami-triptyline, clomipramine, desipramine, doxepin, imipramine, nortriptyline, trimipramine), serotonin– norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (venlafaxine) and “other antidepressants” (serotonin modulators, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, tetracyclic piperazino-azepines, and dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors).
This study is just the latest to show an association between, well, for lack of a better term let’s say “serious adverse events” and SSRIs and SNRIs in particular.
Read entire article: http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/blog/mom-alert-would-you-want-a-68-higher-risk-of-miscarriage-03819.html
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Tags: Alventa, ami-triptyline, antidepressants, Argofan, Canadian Medical Association Journal, citalopram, clomipramine, depression, desipramine, dopamine, doxepin, effexor, expectant mothers, Fetus, fluoxetine, fluvoxa-mine, imipramine, increased risk, miscarriage, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, mothers, norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, nortriptyline, paroxetine, Paxil, Pregnancy, pregnant women, prescriptions, psychiatric drugs, risks, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, serious adverse events, serotonin modulators, Seroxat, sertraline, SSRIs, tetracyclic piperazino-azepines, Trevilor, tricyclic antidepressants, trimipramine, University of Montreal, venlafaxine
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Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog
By Levin & Perconti
Science Daily is reporting that a study shows that newly admitted elderly patients to nursing homes have a higher rate of being prescribed antipsychotic drugs than in previous years. This study found that in 2007, almost one-third of U.S. nursing home residents received antipsychotic drugs. The FDA has issued a warning that there is a great risk of death among older adults with dementia who are taking these agents to control behavioral symptoms. A recent clinical trial has concluded that the adverse effects of atypical antipsychotic drugs have outweighed the benefits of those with Alzheimer’s. This shows that many doctors are over prescribing these drugs, and it is having an adverse effect on patients.
The nursing home study found that about 30 percent of the residents in the study received at least one antipsychotic medication in 2006 and 32 percent of those did not have dementia or another indication that they needed to be on this medication. Some experts believe that the organizational culture of the nursing homes may encourage the prescribing of antipsychotic. Hopefully, the FDA warning and other studies will move the prescription statistics in the opposite direction. If not policies may have to target those nursing homes that have a high antipsychotic prescription rate so as to improve patient care. To read more about the nursing home study, please click the link.
Read entire article: http://blog.levinperconti.com/2010/05/antipsychotic_medications_are.html
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Tags: adults, antipsychotics, atypical antipsychotics, clinical trial, dementia, elderly patients, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, nursing home residents, older, prescribed, prescription rate, risk of death, Warnings
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Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Normality is an endangered species.
Psychology Today
By Allen Frances, Former Chairman, DSM-IV Task Force
June 2, 2010
Fads in psychiatric diagnosis come and go and have been with us as long as there has been a psychiatry. The fads meet a deeply felt need to explain, or at least to label, what would otherwise be unexplainable human suffering and deviance. In recent years the pace has picked up and false “epidemics” have come in bunches involving an ever increasing proportion of the population. We are now in the midst of at least three such epidemics- of autism, attention deficit, and childhood bipolar disorder. And unless it comes to its senses, DSM5 threatens to provoke several more (hypersexuality, binge eating, mixed anxiety depression, minor neurocognitive, and others).
Fads punctuate what has become a basic background of overdiagnosis. Normality is an endangered species. The NIMH estimates that, in any given year, twenty five percent of the population (that’s almost sixty million people) has a diagnosable mental disorder. A prospective study found that, by age thirty two, fifty percent of the general population had qualified for an anxiety disorder, forty percent for a depression, and thirty percent for alcohol abuse or dependence. Imagine what the rates will be like by the time these people hit fifty, or sixty five, or eighty. In this brave new world of psychiatric overdiagnosis, will anyone get through life without a mental disorder?
What accounts for the recent upsurge in diagnosis? I feel quite confident we can’t blame it on our brains. Human physiology and human nature change slowly if at all. Could it be that the surge in mental disorders is caused by our stressful society? I think not. There is no particular reason to believe that life is any harder now than it has always been-more likely we are the most pampered and protected generation ever to face its inevitable challenges. It is also tempting to find environmental (eg toxins) or iatrogenic causes(eg vaccinations), but there is no credible evidence supporting either of these. There is really only one viable environmental candidate to explain the growth of mental disorder – the widespread recreational use of psychotropic substances. But this cannot account for the extent of the “epidemics”, particularly since most have centered on children.
No. The “epidemics” in psychiatry are caused by changing diagnostic fashions – the people don’t change, the labels do. There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder. What is diagnosed as mental disorder is very sensitive to professional and social contextual forces. Rates of disorder rise easily because mental disorder has such fluid boundaries with normality.
Read entire article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201006/psychiatric-fads-and-overdiagnosis
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Tags: Allen Frances, binge eating, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, dsm, DSM5, epidemic, exam, hypersexuality, iatrogenic causes, laboratory, mental disorder, minor neurocognitive, mixed anxiety depression, National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, normality, objective tests, overdiagnosis, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric drugs, psychiatry, Psychology Today, psychotropic substances, X-ray
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Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Los Angeles Times
By Thomas H. Maugh II
May 31, 2010
Taking antidepressants during pregnancy increases the risk of spontaneous abortions by about two-thirds, Canadian researchers reported Monday. The increased risk was greatest with the family of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), especially paroxetine and venlafaxine, and when more than one family of drugs were used.
Depression in women is most common during the child-bearing years, and estimates suggest that as many as 15% of pregnant women suffer from it. Because of fears about the effects of drugs, particularly psychiatric drugs, during pregnancy, only about 3.7% of women use them during the first trimester. Most studies looking at the use of antidepressants during pregnancy have focused on their effects on the fetus. Small studies of their effects on abortion have produced inconsistent results. Expecting mothers cannot routinely stop using the drugs, however, because that also presents risks to both the mother and the fetus.
Producing a controlled clinical trial examining the effects of the drugs is virtually impossible because few women would be willing to participate, experts said. The only way to get at the data is to examine it retrospectively.
In the new study, Dr. Anick Berard, director of the University of Montreal’s Research Unit on Medications and Pregnancy at University Hospital Center Sainte-Justine used information from the Quebec Pregnancy Registry to identify 5,124 women who had a spontaneous abortions between 1998 and 2003 — before warnings about the risks of the drugs became more common — and compared them with about 10 times that many carefully matched women who did not have abortions. A separate database provided information about prescriptions the women had filled.
Read entire article: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/05/antidepressants-during-pregnancy-increase-risk-of-sponaneous-abortion-study-finds.html
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Tags: abortion, antidepressants, child-bearing years, depression, Doubles Risk of Miscarriage, Dr. Anick Berard, expectant mothers, Expecting mothers, Fetus, first trimester, increased risk, miscarriage, mothers, paroxetine, Pregnancy, pregnant women, prescriptions, psychiatric drugs, Research Unit on Medications and Pregnancy, risks, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, spontaneous abortions, SSRIs, University of Montreal, venlafaxine
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