Month: October 2012

Epilepsy drug leads to weight loss, side effects

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A drug approved to prevent seizures may also help obese people lose a few pounds when it’s added to therapy and nutritional guidance, a new small trial suggests. But people who took zonisamide also reported more side effects, from nausea and vomiting to anxiety and depression. And two researchers not involved in the study questioned how much the drug would actually help people in the real world. Although zonisamide is only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for seizures, doctors can prescribe it “off-label” for non-approved purposes. …

Meningitis deaths rise to 19 as probe of firm intensifies

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Framingham police officers keep watch as federal agents search the New England Compounding Center company in Framingham, MassachusettsBOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of deaths from a meningitis outbreak linked to contaminated steroid medications rose to 19 on Wednesday, just hours after federal agents raided the offices of the company at the center of the scandal and took away documents. The Centers for Disease Control said states had confirmed four more deaths in the last 24 hours as the national outbreak grew. Two of the deaths were in Tennessee, the hardest hit state with eight deaths since the infection was discovered in late September. Virginia and Florida each reported one new fatality. …

U.S. House panel seeks FDA documents on meningitis-linked firm

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional committee that oversees drug safety issues asked the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday to provide documents on federal and state inspections of a Massachusetts pharmacy linked to a deadly meningitis outbreak that has killed 19 people. In a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee said it was requesting documents dating back to 2004 as part of a probe to determine what actions regulators took after they concluded that the pharmacy’s facilities posed potential risks to public …

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Some parents misunderstand kids’ cancer studies

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children with incurable cancer can take part in early trials of a new drug’s safety, but many parents may misunderstand the goals of those studies, new research finds. When researchers test new drugs on humans, they start with phase 1 clinical trials. Those studies aren’t aimed at seeing whether a drug works; instead, researchers are looking at the drug’s safety, and trying to figure out the highest dose that people can tolerate without troublesome side effects. Then the drug can move on to larger trials testing its effectiveness. …

Antidepressants linked to risk of brain bleeds

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People using a common class of antidepressants may have slightly increased odds of suffering bleeding in the brain – though the risk is still very small, researchers reported Wednesday. The antidepressants are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and include widely used drugs like fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), citalopram (Celexa) and paroxetine (Paxil). SSRIs have been linked to a risk of stomach bleeding. …

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