FDA & Prescription Drugs

• Federal Advisers say Celebrex for kids: OKAY.

  Allison Snoddy | December 04, 2006 5:48 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  On November 29, 2006 Federal advisers recommended that Pfizer Inc. can market their painkiller Celebrex to children with rheumatoid arthritis. The Food and drug Administration now is faced with making a decision of whether they will expand the approval of Celebrex.The advisers said that the benefit's outweighed the risks in a 15 to 1 vote. Celebrex is also a Cox 2 inhibitor drug along with...

• Celebrex to be Considered for Use in the Treatment of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis

  Tiffany Farr | December 01, 2006 3:20 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  On November 29, 2006, an FDA panel voted in favor of approving the Cox-2 inhibitor, Celebrex, for the treatment of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Extremely debilitating, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis affects between 30,000 to 60,000 children in the United States alone. To this date, the only medications available to children for this condition were naproxen, ibuprofen, and aspirin.Celebrex, the...

• Drug-eluting heart stents pose health risk

  Christen Wiese | November 27, 2006 5:08 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  Patients with drug-eluting stents placed in the heart to avoid heart attacks and blocked arteries now face a new problem. It has been found that the placement of the drug-eluting stent in the heart to avoid heart attacks and clogged arteries is doing the very thing it was designed not to do. The stent was designed in the 1980s to push open clogged arteries. It was placed in a procedure called...

• FDA Ends Ban on Silicone Implants

  Tracy Beard | November 21, 2006 12:12 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ended its 14-year ban on the cosmetic use of silicone breast implants, despite lingering safety concerns from some health officials.After an indepth scientific study, the FDA approved the marketing of silicone gel-filled breast implants made by two manufacturers for breast reconstruction in women of all ages and breast augmentation in women ages...

• Arcoxia Merck's new Vioxx?

  Tiffany Farr | November 20, 2006 4:25 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  On November 13, 2006, the first trial studies for Merck's Arcoxia were released to mixed reviews from American doctors and scientists. Touted to be a new and improved "Vioxx" for use in arthritis relief, Arcoxia is a cox-2 inhibitor like Vioxx, Bextra, and Celebrex. Cox-2 inhibitors are non-steroidal inflammatory drugs that directly target the cox-2 enzyme which causes inflammation and pain. ...

• Naproxen and Increased Risk of Heart Disease?

  Dian Rosier | November 17, 2006 3:48 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  Amid recent claims that a new class of drugs called COX-2 inhibitors (which includes naproxen, marketed and sold as Aleve) may cause strokes and heart attacks, researchers are grappling with a new study and its implications. In a study that included 2,500 elderly volunteers that were given Celebrex, naproxen or a placebo, 8.25 percent of naproxen recipients had a significant cardiovascular...

• Tamiflu Warning Label Updated

  Esmeralda Fuentes | November 16, 2006 10:06 AM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  Recently the FDA added new precautions to the Tamiflu influenza drug. Tamiflu is a drug that is used to reduce the symptoms of influenza. After causing abnormal behavior on more than 100 recent cases on Japanese patients the warning label has been updated.The Tamiflu is causing patients, normally children to have delirium, hallucinations and other psychiatric behavior. The recent reports have...

• FDA Releases Warning about Antidepressant Lamictal

  Tiffany Farr | November 10, 2006 11:58 AM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  The FDA has released a warning regarding the antidepressant Lamictal which may cause birth defects in babies exposed during the first 3 months of pregnancy.Lamictal, an anti-seizure drug, has become an effective tool in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Preliminary research finds that pregnant women who continue taking the drug run higher risks of giving birth to babies with cleft lips and...

• More lawsuits for Ortho Evra patch filed in San Francisco

  Christen Wiese | November 06, 2006 5:09 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  More lawsuits have been filed in the San Francisco Superior Court against Ortho-McNeill Pharmaceutical Co., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of the Ortho Evra birth control patch.One of the cases filed in the San Francisco court alleges that 43 women suffered health problems such as blood clots from the use of Ortho Evra. The second lawsuit contends that a 25-year-old woman...

• GlaxoSmithKline and Paxil Under Fire

  John Ghezzi | November 01, 2006 5:23 PM | 0 CommentsHouston, TX

  GlaxoSmithKline agreed to settle for $63.8 million dollars a class action lawsuit in which class members contended that GSK promoted the treatment of children and adolescents with its antidepressant Paxil while simultaneously withholding negative information about the drug's safety and effectiveness. This is just the latest in an avalanche of bad news for GSK and consumers regarding Paxil.The...