Side Effects

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.

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.

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 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 Cutler has spent most of his career in the pharmaceutical industry, primarily in marketing products with big names: Tylenol, Motrin, Pepcid, Remicade. "It was an honor and a great experience to be with those big-name products," Cutler said. "But when the opportunity came to work with a small brand early in its life cycle, it was too good to turn down. " Earlier this summer, Cutler, 36, who goes by his nickname, J.J., took over as president and chief operating officer of Lindi Skin Inc., a five-year-old Ardmore company that specializes in skin-care products for people with cancer, mostly those suffering from irritations caused by chemotherapy and other treatments.

The blood-pressure-lowering drugs known as ACE inhibitors are a mainstay of treatment for many diseases. But with growing use of these heart-helping medications, more and more patients are winding up in emergency rooms with a rare side effect that most have not been warned about: swelling around the face and neck. In the worst cases, the patient's tongue and throat become hugely bloated, closing the airway. No medications can slow or reverse this swelling, called angioedema.

ST. LOUIS - Caroll Marlow, 71, said she has been rescued from clinical depression by researchers at Washington University who want to help people older than 60. After more than 40 years of living with depression, she said, experiences and feelings that are routine for most other people are new for her. She goes to lunch to laugh with her sisters; she's closer to her children and friends. She dates her husband. And she found a job. "I love it; I work a swing shift and I just love it," she said.

Avastin is no longer approved for treating metastatic breast cancer because it exposes patients to dangerous side effects without any benefit, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday. The FDA noted that Avastin's risks include severely high blood pressure, bleeding, heart attacks, and perforations in such body parts as the nose, stomach, and intestines. "After reviewing the available studies it is clear that women who take Avastin for metastatic breast cancer risk potentially life-threatening side effects without proof that the use of Avastin will provide a benefit, in terms of delay in tumor growth, that would justify those risks," FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said.

The Conshohocken woman found dead in the Schuylkill on Aug. 10 was being treated for narcolepsy with a controlled substance known to have serious side effects, an official said. Coroner Walter I. Hofman said last month that Catherine Kelly, 72, died from accidental drowning in the river. Earlier, he refused to name a firm cause of death until toxicology reports were received. The Montgomery County coroner said tests showed therapeutic levels of gamma hydroxybutyrate, also known as sodium oxybate, in Kelly's blood.

Question: My husband had robotic surgery for Stage 1 prostate cancer. He can have orgasms, but he does not have erections. Will that ever change? His surgeon is evasive about it. My husband is 60 years old and I'm 50. Answer: It would be helpful for me to know when your husband had his robotic surgery, since sexual side effects often improve significantly within three to 12 months after robotic prostate-removal surgery. A significantly lower risk of permanent impotence is the biggest advantage of robotic-assisted prostate cancer surgery over the traditional radical prostate cancer surgery.

Men under 65 with early prostate cancer had better survival odds if they had surgery right away instead of waiting for treatment only if their cancer got worse, a study in Sweden found. That was true even for tumors thought to be low-risk because they did not look very aggressive under a microscope. Doctors have long debated whether and how to treat such early cases, and the study shows "there clearly is a benefit to getting the cancer out in the younger population," said Richard Greenberg, urology chief at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

WASHINGTON - Federal health experts are recommending approval for a highly anticipated drug from Merck to treat hepatitis C, based on studies showing that it cures patients at a higher rate than drugs used for over 20 years. A Food and Drug Administration panel of experts voted unanimously, 18-0, in favor of Merck's boceprevir tablet as an effective treatment for hepatitis C, which affects an estimated 3.2 million Americans. The agency is not required to follow the group's recommendation, though it usually does.

It would be insulting and inaccurate to suggest that the menopausal meltdown known as a hot flash is all in a woman's head. But the brain plays a big, rather mysterious, role. The latest evidence comes from a study of the antidepressant Lexapro led by University of Pennsylvania researcher Ellen W. Freeman. Over eight weeks, Lexapro was much better than a placebo at reducing hot flash severity and frequency among 205 women of a certain age. Lexapro improves mood by boosting the brain's supply of serotonin, a chemical messenger.

Three years ago, as my dear friend Gloria Harper Dickinson waged a losing battle with inflammatory breast cancer, she would constantly mention the name of Lillie Daniels. "My guardian angel," Gloria would say. That year, I met Daniels with Gloria at the annual luncheon for cancer survivors (or overcomers, as Daniels likes to say) hosted by her foundation, Bread of Life. Right away, I understood why Gloria loved her so much. See, as a cancer survivor herself, Daniels knew what Gloria was going through.

CONCORD, N.H. - A New Hampshire woman is seeking more than $24 million in damages from the Philadelphia-based maker of a prescription drug she took to ease shoulder pain, but that caused a reaction so severe that she is now blind and scarred by internal and external burns. A federal jury began deliberations today after a 14-day trial in the products liability lawsuit filed by Karen Bartlett, 51, of Plaistow, against Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. Mutual manufactures and distributes a generic brand of Sulindac.