Side Effects

Q: For the last two months, I have been taking a green coffee bean extract recommended by Dr. Oz on his show. So far, I've lost 10 pounds without even trying. What's your opinion of it? A: Generally, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. But this stuff may actually work. Excitement about the weight-loss magic of green coffee bean extract began this year, after a "randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover University of Scranton study.

Viagra is having interesting side effects. It's making some women angry. In the two months since the anti-impotence pill was introduced, insurers have paid for nearly half of 270,000 prescriptions for the drug, according to reports. But the companies are not nearly so accommodating to women. Many insurers pay for birth control pills, but not other family planning methods, such as diaphragms and IUDs. This disparity provides fresh evidence of the double standards many insurers have when it comes to women.

A completely new type of drug appears to lift depression without causing the sexual dysfunction, nausea, and other side effects that often plague people taking Prozac and its relatives. Scientists from Merck Research Laboratories tested their new drug, dubbed MK-869, in a six-month-long trial involving 210 patients. They published their conclusions in this week's issue of Science. "This is really very important," said Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Americans, barraged with warnings about the dangers of crack cocaine and other street drugs, may have as much to fear from the medicine they get from their doctors. Each year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves between 20 and 30 drugs, setting in motion marketing efforts by manufacturers eager to promote their new pharmaceutical wonders. "Safer than aspirin" was Eli Lilly's claim for its arthritis drug Oraflex. A "first step" for high blood pressure was SmithKline Beecham's boast for Selacryn.

Imagine a pharmaceutical company putting a prescription medication on the market knowing that its use could result in death. In August, a jury in Texas awarded the wife of a Vioxx user $253 million in damages for the wrongful death of her husband, concluding that Merck & Co. had done just that. But in the second state-level Vioxx trial, decided last month in Atlantic City, Merck and its executives were found not guilty. This week, the jury in the first federal Vioxx trial deadlocked.

War is about victims and violence. It can be about soldiers who die in battle or civilians who get in harm's way. It's always about the pain, fear and insanity that are part of the ritual when old men start wars for young boys to fight. Ten years of war in Lebanon have killed one person in every 40. Thirty-five percent of newly delivered babies in Lebanon are born physically deformed or mentally retarded, and a primary cause is the use of drugs during pregnancy. There's been a five-fold increase in the number of adolescents regularly using heroin or other hard drugs; 80 percent of teens now smoke cigarettes, compared to 2 percent before fighting started in 1975.

When Dominic Carbone was admitted to Graduate Hospital for chemotherapy, he expected the worst. He knew that intense nausea and vomiting almost always accompanied the anti-cancer drug he was to receive. Instead, Carbone, a lung cancer patient, looked so hale that a security guard admonished him, "Visiting hours are over and you'll have to leave. " Carbone assumed he'd be sedated with anti-nausea medication as deeply as the cancer patient in the adjacent bed. "It was a Monday and the man in the next bed said, 'I'm going to say goodbye to you for a while.

It's been 15 years since the appearance of the last new drug to treat epilepsy. Current anti-epileptic medications have side effects that make patients feel sleepy or sluggish or do not adequately control patients' seizures. That's why a new generation of drugs - medications that promise to prevent seizures but cause minimal side effects - is being hailed by doctors and patients. The first of these new drugs, felbamate - to be sold under the trade name Felbatol - was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists it as a "hazard. " The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry warns that high levels of exposure can harm your health. It is used to treat human health but remains largely untested by the Food and Drug Administration. The substance we're talking about is fluoride. Why would we want this in our drinking water? While the benefits of topically applied fluoride (i.e. applying it directly to your teeth) have long been accepted, there is evidence that ingested fluoride is detrimental.

The mind of Angelo Hughes is a quieter place, now. It used to resonate with the voices of men, women and children he didn't recognize. Voices from "a place like purgatory" that judged and condemned him. "I would try and communicate with them," said Hughes, who has schizophrenia. "But the best I could do was make a speech now and then, protesting, proclaiming my position. " Then, in March 1990, Hughes began taking an experimental drug, risperidone. It has neither cured his schizophrenia nor silenced the voices.

Jonathan Papelbon said he and many of his former Boston Red Sox teammates were regularly injected with a legal painkiller called Toradol, according to an ESPNBoston.com report. The drug is not banned by MLB. Phillies team doctors told Papelbon to stop using Toradol upon joining the team before the 2012 season. He estimated that the injections started in 2007. Boston's medical staff has come under scrutiny amid accusations by Curt Schilling that he was advised to use performance-enhancing drugs.

In Side Effects , the tricky psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara as a depressed and quite possibly suicidal New Yorker, Jude Law shows up as Dr. Jonathan Banks, Mara's character's psychiatrist. He meets her after a car accident brings her to the hospital, and then takes her on as a patient. He prescribes antidepressants, and then other antidepressants, and then a new drug, still in clinical trials. The whole world of SSRI's - Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft (has anyone done a study on why all the x' s and z' s?

New Jersey authorities announced today that a temporary ban on so-called synthetic marijuana has been made permanent, placing the designer drug in the same legal category as cocaine and heroin. In February, the state Division of Consumer Affairs initially banned the drug - marketed as herbal incense under the brand names K2, Spice, and Kush, among others - for a 270-day period pending public input. Until then it was sold in the Garden State at convenience stores, gas stations, and shops selling smoking paraphernalia.

THE MOST COMMON side effects in people taking Vivitrol for opioid dependence include cold symptoms, insomnia and toothache. More serious side effects have also been reported. Patients are urged to carry a wallet card or wear a medical-alert bracelet in the event that they are rendered unconscious and emergency personnel attempt to administer painkillers. Opioid medication can be ineffective or dangerous for people on Vivitrol. - William Bender

Richie Suarez and his family would say that all in all, they have a lot to be thankful for. In late August 2010, Richie was 18 and in the best shape of his life. He was two days away from moving from Voorhees to Rowan University, where he would study math or science and play his beloved baseball. Then he was thrown the worst curve imaginable: He was diagnosed with a pediatric form of leukemia. Nearly 14 months of intensive chemotherapy followed to beat the disease into remission.

Richie Suarez and his family would say that all in all, they have a lot to be thankful for. In late August 2010, Richie was 18 and in the best shape of his life. He was two days away from moving from Voorhees to Rowan University, where he would study math or science and play his beloved baseball. Then he was thrown the worst curve imaginable: He was diagnosed with a pediatric form of leukemia. Nearly 14 months of intensive chemotherapy followed to beat the disease into remission.

With a Philadelphia jury waiting - and the company wanting to avoid having the judge order chief executive officer Alex Gorsky to testify - health care giant Johnson & Johnson Monday settled a lawsuit brought by a man who said its antipsychotic drug Risperdal had caused him to grow breasts. The trial, one of hundreds involving allegations of inappropriate marketing of the drug, was set to begin in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court before Judge George W. Overton. The only remaining pretrial motion was a defense request to quash a subpoena to compel testimony from Gorsky, who led Janssen, the J&J subsidiary that made Risperdal during the period when the man was taking the drug.

Question: With all the recent attention paid to athletes over illegal steroid drug use, I've been wondering what harm these drugs actually do. Can you explain? Answer: There are a number of performance-enhancing drugs with different effects and safety concerns. The most common performance-enhancing drugs are derivatives of testosterone, such as androstenediol, DHEA, hCG (the same hormone used to detect pregnancy), THG, oxandrolone and stanozolol. They are well-known to increase muscle bulk and strength.

Roughly two million to three million baby boomers are chronically infected with hepatitis C, putting them at risk of serious liver damage if left untreated. Dramatic improvements in what is now a very unpleasant drug regimen are expected over the next several years. Should they wait? Before deciding that this story doesn't apply to you, note that chronic hepatitis C can lie dormant for decades with no symptoms. Most people who have it are unaware of the infection. So the first step is to get a blood test, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month proposed recommending for everyone born from 1945 to 1965.

WASHINGTON - Isabel Doran is only 4 years old, but she's already had about 15 CT scans - and every one comes with a dose of radiation. "I think there's always that part of you that thinks it's too much," said her mother, Veronica Doran of Burke, Va. Doran is glad the scans have allowed doctors at Children's National Medical Center to monitor Isabel's progress while they treat her kidney cancer. But she's worried about the long-term effects of the scans, which could put Isabel at risk for another cancer later.