News & Features

October, 2008

October edition of M.D. Pharmacy's monthly newsletter. Articles regarding your medications, their safety, and the politics behind the price you pay for them. Please share this with your neighbors.

Measles Cases Highest Since 1996.

Some parents' refusal to vaccinate children seems to be behind the highest rate of measles cases reported since 1996, federal officials said. "Many cases are in children who are eligible for vaccination but who have not been immunized because of parents' decisions" said the director of CDC's Center for Immunization and Respiratory diseases. Each year some cases of measles have been imported from other countries, but because of extensive vaccinations in the U.S. the disease was not able to spread. This year, due to a lower degree of immunity the disease has been reported in 131 cases in just the first seven months. Before the measles vaccine became available in the mid-1960's the disease caused an estimated 3 to 4 million cases annually, resulting in 450 deaths and 4,000 cases of measles encephalitis, some 1000 of which resulted in chronic disability each year. In a separate study at Columbia University the measles vaccine has NOT been shown raise the risk of autism, hoping to dispel the long-running concerns of some parents. The disease was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, but still occurs in 20 million cases globally. Very high levels of population immunity (95%) are needed to prevent the spread of the extremely contagious virus. In a room of 100 people, only 1 person having the virus will infect another 90 to 95 people. (iVillage Health)

Study Shows Expensive Ads Sell Few Prescription Drugs.

Those expensive "direct to consumer" TV and newspaper ads do little to encourage sales. They do of course, affect the costs of marketing by Big Pharma, which is then passed on to the consumer. Drug companies spent an estimated $3 Billion in 2005 on such ads in the United States. Most countries ban direct advertising of prescription drugs, with the exceptions of the United States and New Zealand. (Reuters).

New Screening Catches More Breast Cancers.

A screening technique known as molecular breast imaging (MBI) detected three times as many breast cancers in women who have dense breasts and who are at a higher risk of developing the disease. Some 184,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2008, and about 41,000 women will die of the disease. In the study, MBI detected 10 of 13 cancers among 375 patients, while mammography detected only 3. But while relatively inexpensive and easy to use, MBI is not yet widely available. (NBC/iVillage)

CDC Campaign Targets MRSA.

A national campaign to teach parents how to protect kids from skin infections caused by dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was recently begun. MRSA, a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to most antibiotics, can cause severe infections, mostly in people in hospitals, but also in healthy people who haven't recently been hospitalized. MRSA is spread through direct contact with an infection, sharing personal items such as towels or razors that have touched infected skin, or by touching surfaces contaminated by MRSA. Signs and symptoms include a bump or infected area on the skin that may be red, swollen painful, warm to the touch, or contain pus or other drainage. Fever may be another symptom. Parents need to help children keep their cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage, and encourage children to have good hand washing and general hygiene habits. In some areas of the U.S. MRSA accounts for over 6 million doctor's visits yearly. (CDC)

2nd Drug May Help In Low-Dose Aspirin Regimen.

Good medicine and cheap medicine don't always show up in the same pills, but here are two that do. For years, doctors have recommended a daily. Low-dose (children's) aspirin for people at risk of coronary heart disease, but while effective and cheap, it can also cause upper G-I bleeding. This bleeding carries a small risk of death. Another class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPI's) can lessen the possibility of bleeding from aspirin, and one such drug is available generically and without a prescription. Adding a PPI to aspirin reduced the risk of G-I bleeding lifetime from 9 percent to 3 percent, and related deaths from 1.4 percent to 0.4 percent. (Archives of Internal Medicine/Philadelphia Inquirer)

The pharmacists and staff at M.D. Pharmacy, your neighborhood pharmacy.

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