Product News and Recalls

Clinical trial sounds warning about Tredaptive

A clinical trial found that the cholesterol drug Tredaptive increased the rate of side effects such as bleeding and infections, while failing in its ostensible purpose of reducing stroke, heart attack, death or the need for surgery in patients with vascular disease.

According to a Bloomberg report, researchers presented the study of 25,673 patients at the American College of Cardiology meeting in San Francisco.

Tredaptive’s manufacturer, Merck, has suffered from other recent ...

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Jury awards $5 million in GE medical dye case

A Cleveland jury ruled that GE Healthcare failed to adequately warn of health risks connected with its medical imaging dye, marketed under the name Omniscan, which is injected into patients to sharpen MRI scans.

The jury awarded $4.5 million to the plaintiff – a 61-year-old man diagnosed with a disease called nephrogenic systemic fibrosis in 2010 — and $500,000 to his wife, ProPublica reports.

Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis is a rare but debilitating ...

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Study: Women have inaccurate perception of IUDs

According to a recent study, most women have inaccurate perceptions about the safety and effectiveness of intrauterine devices, Reuters reports.

Researchers surveyed more than 1,600 women between the ages of 18 and 50 who had visited one of four clinics in Pennsylvania, and only about one in five was aware that IUDs are more effective at preventing pregnancy than birth control pills.

Reuters quotes an obstetrics and gynecology professor as saying that ...

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Diabetes increasing at alarming rate

A story in the Huffington Post says there’s been an alarming increase in diabetes in recent years. Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project that as many as one in three Americans could have diabetes by 2050 if current trends continue.

According to the article, CDC officials estimate that one in 10 Americans have diabetes now, amounting to about 24 million.

Treatment is available, but some treatments carry ...

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Death toll rises from meningitis outbreak

The death toll continues to climb from a fungal meningitis outbreak related to a batch of contaminated steroid medication, the Boston Herald reports.

Six months after health authorities first identified the outbreak, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are reporting 50 deaths and 722 illnesses connected to medication manufactured at the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the tissue surrounding the spinal cord and ...

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Diabetes drug could be a ‘blockbuster’

A blog post on Forbes deals with Johnson & Johnson’s type 2 diabetes drug Canagliflozin, which is expected to receive FDA approval soon and which the report describes as having “blockbuster potential.”

According to the report, Canagliflozin proved effective at lowering blood glucose levels and causing weight loss in diabetics during clinical trials. But it also showed potentially troubling side effects, in the form of elevated risk for heart problems.

The item ...

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