Posts Tagged 'birth defects'

The U.S. National Library of Medicine describes ventricular septal defect as one or more holes in the wall that separates the right and left ventricles of the heart.

It’s one of the most common heart defects that occurs before birth.

According to the National Library, the right and left ventricles of its heart are not separate before a baby is born, but a wall forms to separate the two ventricles ...

Kaitlin Bell Barnett, author of Dosed: The Medication Generation Grows Up, wrote a piece for Website PsychCentral about what she terms a “shocking lack of studies” concerning the relationship between antidepressant use and sexual dysfunction in young people.

Barnett writes that the drugs most famous for causing loss of libido and sexual dysfunction are the SSRI antidepressants, such as Prozac and Zoloft, which can cause loss of libido and problems with sexual arousal and orgasm.

Barnett points out that the connection between ...

Antidepressants such as Zoloft may put middle-aged men at higher risk for heart attacks and stroke, according to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg reports a U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded study of 513 male twins, average age 55, which found those taking antidepressants including Zoloft had thicker blood vessel walls.

The report quotes the lead researcher as saying antidepressants may increase levels of brain chemicals including serotonin and norepinephrine, which could cause blood vessels ...

In a recent piece for the New York Times Magazine, Columbia University Professor Siddhartha Mukherjee takes a look at the changing attitudes regarding the nature of clinical depression and its treatment.

Mukherjee observes that a class of anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), widely considered wonder drugs in the 1990s, now have a considerably diminished reputation.

“Fast forward to 2012 and the same antidepressants that inspired such enthusiasm have become ...

Researchers at McMaster University in Canada are questioning whether widely prescribed antidepressants do more harm than good. Their study is published in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology.

An article about the study in PsychCentral quotes lead author Dr. Paul Andrews as saying: “We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs. It’s important because millions of people are prescribed antidepressants each year, and the conventional wisdom about these drugs is that they’re safe and effective.”

Most ...

In a piece published in British newspaper The Daily Mail, psychiatrist David Healy claims pharmaceutical companies commonly use deceptive tactics to manipulate clinical trials for new drugs. As a result, Healy alleges, health regulatory agencies approve drugs that are not only ineffective, but dangerous for patients who use them.

He writes that the corporate tactics include the following:

• Conducting clinical trials and not publishing any negative results that come out of ...