Search results below include Worst Pills, Best Pills Newsletter Articles where your
selected drug is a secondary subject of discussion.
December 2023
Learn about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a condition in which excess fat accumulates in the liver, and the form of this disease known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitits (NASH), which is associated with inflammation of the liver and in some instances can lead to fibrosis, cirrhosis and liver failure. At present, there are no medications that have been approved by the FDA to treat either condition.
September 2023
Learn about sofosbuvir, a highly effective antiviral medication that is used for chronic hepatitis C infection, alone or in combination with other antivirals.
March 2018
Meclizine is a drug that is commonly used to treat symptoms of motion sickness. Find out why we have designated this drug as Do Not Use.
July 2014
In 2007, the FDA enthusiastically suggested that newly available genetic tests would help doctors select the best dose of warfarin — one of the oldest and most widely prescribed blood thinners (anticoagulants) — for individual patients. Find out why the FDA’s enthusiasm about the promise of genetic testing in the management of warfarin dosing was premature and overstated.
December 2011
Find out about 12 drugs that can interact with widely prescribed quetiapine -- 12 million prescriptions sold in 2010 -- to cause serious, sometimes fatal, heart arrhythmias.
June 2011
This article lists 355 drugs with names that are often confused with similar-sounding drug names. Find out what you can do to prevent getting the wrong drug.
March 2009
The article lists 57 different drugs that can cause dementia if used. This can be even more problematic if more than one of these drugs is being taken. These drugs are only one class of drugs that can cause mental deterioration and next month's issue will discuss additional drugs that can also impair thinking.
September 2008
A nationwide study published in spring 2008 in the Journal of Hospital Medicine showed that nearly half (49 percent) of almost 500,000 hospital patients older than 65 have been prescribed one or more of 92 drugs known to be unnecessarily unsafe for older patients. 10,000 of these patients had four or more of these inappropriate medicines prescribed during their hospitalization.
Among the most common categories of adverse drug reactions these inappropriately prescribed drugs can cause are excessive sedation, abnormally low blood pressure and bleeding. We list the 92 drugs in the article and give further details about the kinds of side effects these drugs can cause.
June 2008
Codeine is routinely converted to morphine in the body in order for it to be an effective painkiller. The metabolism of codeine to morphine takes place through the actions of an enzyme in the liver. The article explains how various drugs and or a person's genetic makeup can greatly influence the conversion of codeine to morphine, making its pain-relieving properties too week if not enough conversion occurs and resulting in what amounts to an overdose at the recommended dose if the conversion to morphine is too rapid. Fourteen drugs that inhibit the conversion to morphine are listed in the article.
December 2007
This article explains how to understand the International Normalized Ratio (INR), a test applied to a sample of a patient’s blood to determine how “thin” it is when you are using the blood thinner COUMADIN (warfarin). In addition, the article lists more than 50 drugs or dietary supplements that can interact harmfully with COUMADIN to cause the blood to be too thin (abnormal bleeding) or not thin enough which could result in lessening the effect of COUMADIN in stopping blood clot formation.
May 2003
Stronger warnings have been added to the professional product label, or “package insert,” for the fluoroquinolone antibiotic gatifloxacin (TEQUIN) about possible heart rhythm disturbances and problems with blood sugar control. This drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October 2001 and its marketing brought to nine the number of fluoroquinolone antibiotics on the market.
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