Elderly patients taking benzodiazepines or other similar anxiety or insomnia drugs are more likely to develop symptoms of dementia than those who avoid the drugs entirely. According to a WebMD.com report on a new study appearing in the journal, British Medical Journal, among a group of more than 1,000 patients in two French studies with more than 960 who were not taking benzodiazepines 32 percent who had taken the drugs for any period of time developed memory loss and other signs of dementia. This compares to just 23 percent of people who avoided benzodiazepines and other like drugs and still developed signs of dementia. Study participants were followed for 15 years and patients in it had taken or not taken benzodiazepines for varying periods of time. The prescription drugs identified in the study were Ambien, Halcion, Klonopin, Restoril, Valium, and Xanax. And even when researchers accounted for other factors that commonly lead to symptoms of dementia such as age, living arrangements, overall health, and bouts of depression, people taking benzodiazepines and other sleep inducers were more than 60 percent more likely to develop dementia-like symptoms than those who hadnt taken any of these drugs. This study stops short of linking … Continue reading →

28 September 2012 | last updated at 12:10AM Frequent reports about drug seizures and drug syndicates involving foreigners are of the utmost concern to Malaysians. For example, this month alone, several major drug hauls were reported. On Sept 4, the Criminal Investigation Department director announced the crippling of an African drug syndicate responsible for coordinating the import and export of drugs in Malaysia. On Sept 11, the Johor police uncovered a drug laboratory in Muar and seized drugs worth tens of millions of ringgit. On Sept 15, police found 13 barrels containing a mixture of sand and an undisclosed amount of syabu in Puchong, Selangor. On Sept 25, it was again reported that the police busted another two syndicates that had been using Malaysia as a transit point, with the seizure of drugs amounting to RM11 million. From the frequent drug hauls by both the police and Customs, it would appear that Malaysia is increasingly being used as a transit point and that the drug problem within the country is urgent enough to warrant more action by the relevant authorities. Given the fact that Malaysia aims, in line with the Asean vision of creating a drug-free region, to make the … Continue reading →

It goes without saying that the drugs you take for a headache, or high blood pressure, or even depression should work better than a Tic-Tac. Thats what drug trials are for: researchers give a group of subjects either the drug under investigation or a placebo to check that the medicine is significantly more effective than a sugar pill. Plus, the trials can reveal any potentially harmful side effects. In theory, this is a great way to weed out useless or actively harmful drugs. But it fails when drug manufacturers cherry-pick their data, publishing papers on the positive trials and sweeping the unsuccessful ones under the rug. And this behavior is completely legal. Science writer and medical doctorBen Goldacre wrote a book, with a long excerptpublished at theGuardian, about how this process leads to approval for drugs that dont actually work. And as he explains, when widely used drugssuch as the diabetes medication rosiglitazonehave harmful side effects, they sometimes remain in common use. In 2003 the Uppsala drug monitoring group of the World Health Organisation contacted [pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline] about an unusually large number of spontaneous reports associatingrosiglitazone with heart problems. GSK conducted two internal meta-analyses of its own data on … Continue reading →