Drug Resistant Superbugs are a Serious Threat

The spread of deadly superbugs that evade even the most powerful antibiotics is no longer a prediction but is happening right now across the world, United Nations officials said on Wednesday.

Antibiotic resistance has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country, the U.N.'s World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a report. It is now a major threat to public health, of which "the implications will be devastating".

"The world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director-general for health security.

In its first global report on antibiotic resistance, with data from 114 countries, the WHO said superbugs able to evade event the hardest-hitting antibiotics - a class of drugs called carbapenems - has now been found in all regions of the world.

Drug resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them.

Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, and it is a race against time to find more as bacterial infections increasingly evolve into "superbugs" resistant to even the most powerful last-resort medicines reserved for extreme cases.

One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far more than HIV and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.

The drugs don't work

The WHO said in some countries, because of resistance, carbapenems now do not work in more than half of people with common hospital-acquired infections caused by a bacteria called K. pneumoniae, such as pneumonia, blood infections, and infections in newborn babies and intensive-care patients.

Resistance to one of the most widely used antibiotics for treating urinary tract infections caused by E. coli -medicines called fluoroquinolones - is also very widespread, it said.

In the 1980s, when these drugs were first introduced, resistance was virtually zero, according to the WHO report. But now there are countries in many parts of the world where the drugs are ineffective in more than half of patients.

To continue reading this visit http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/04/30/who-drug-resistant-superbugs-serious-threat-worldwide/

High Dose of Antidepressants Linked to Suicidal Behavior

Children and young adults who start taking antidepressants at high doses are more likely to think about or attempt suicide than those who start at the doses of antidepressants that are typically prescribed, according to a new study.

Researchers found that young people between ages 10 and 24 who started antidepressant therapy at high doses were twice as likely to attempt or think about suicide over the first 90 days of treatment compared to those who started taking antidepressants at the doses recommended by doctors' guidelines.

This translates into about one additional event of suicidal behavior for every 150 patients who take high doses of antidepressants, the researchers said, writing April 28 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

"There is no evidence that starting at a higher dose is beneficial," said Dr. David Brent, of the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the research, but wrote a commentary about the study also published in the journal. 

About 18 percent of the 10- to 24-year-olds in the study were prescribed a higher dose, and although the study doesn'tmake clear why some got a higher dose, there may be differences between the young people in this group and those given the normal doses, Brent noted in his commentary. For example, those given higher doses may not have received average doses of antidepressants in the past and failed to respond.

Among young people between ages 10 to 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death, the CDC reported in January 2014. And there are many more suicide attempts than suicides that are actually completed. Each year, about 157,000 young people between ages 10 and 24 receive medical care for injuries resulting from suicidal behavior at ERs across the United States.

To continue reading this article visit: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/04/29/high-doses-antidepressants-linked-to-suicide-behavior-in-younger-patients/

Zohydro and Addiction

A new, highly potent painkiller is out on the market – and many health experts want it gone.

The controversial drug is Zohydro, an extended-release painkiller containing the already widely used opioid, hydrocodone.  Designed to release painkilling medication into the body slowly over a 12-hour period, Zohydro is available in doses as high as 50 milligrams – five times the amount found in similar immediate-release hydrocodone pills.

According to Zohydro’s manufacturer Zogenix Inc., the drug’s hallmark is its simplicity.  Zohydro is the first painkiller to contain only hydrocodone, while other comparable drugs, such as Vicodin and Lortab, contain hydrocodone plus acetaminophen.   The company claims that acetaminophen overdose is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and 63 percent of these cases are caused by hydrocodone-acetaminophen combination drugs.  Zohydro is meant to provide pain relief without this threat of liver toxicity.

But addiction experts claim this argument isn’t enough to outweigh the potential dangers posed by the painkiller.  Because of its extremely high dosage and lack of abuse deterrents, many believe Zohydro could easily ignite another addiction epidemic – as well as a new wave of overdose deaths.

“I treat addiction, and see countless young people come in – a lot of guys in their late 20s, early 30s – who had a sports injury and were given an opiate.  I’m seeing them years later, and it’s devastated their lives,” Dr. Dana Jane Saltzman, a licensed acupuncturist and addiction specialist in New York City, told FoxNews.com. “...It’s really a lifelong struggle, and a lot of these kids wouldn’t be addicted if [opioids] weren’t so readily available.”

Opioids and the brain

Derived from the opium poppy plant, opioids work by binding to receptor sights in the brain called opioid receptors.  Normally, when the body experiences pain, naturally occurring peptides, such as endorphins and other chemicals, will bind to these receptor sites in order to reduce discomfort.  

Opioids, on the other hand, greatly enhance this process.  Not only do they help to diminish pain, but they also stimulate the brain’s reward pathways, increasing the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

This causes an overall sense of euphoria – which ultimately gets users hooked.

“When the brain receives a reward message that feels good, we tend to want to do it again,” Ray Isackila, a licensed professional counselor and team lead of addiction recovery services at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, told FoxNews.com. “…And when the brain receives a message over and over from these opiate medications, the brain changes to adapt to that reward and that drug.  So the first change in the brain is tolerance.”

For individuals who start using opioids day after day, it may take only a few weeks before their brains build up a tolerance to the medication.  This means users will need higher and higher doses to get the desired euphoric effect – and as they take more pills, their bodies begin to develop a physical dependence on the drug.  Then, if they are ever deprived of medication, the withdrawal period can be very intense.

To continue reading visit: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/04/28/zohydro-why-this-new-painkiller-could-spark-new-addiction-epidemic/

Powdered Alcohol--What's the Rage?

Palcohol could give new meaning to the phrase “dry martini"

DRY UP: Image of a Booz2go packet, a powdered alcoholic beverage developed at Helicon Vocational Institute in Boxtel, the Netherlands (via YouTube).

Just add water. It works for instant coffee, tea and juice mix. Might it also work for your favorite cocktail? Powdered alcohol hasn’t gotten much of a foothold in the U.S. even though the idea has been around for decades. An Arizona company thinks that Americans are ready for the convenience of mojitos and margaritas that come from a small foil packet. The U.S. government thought so, too, at least for a couple of weeks earlier this month.

Makers of the new powdered alcohol drink mix Palcohol have to put the cork back in their champagne, for now anyway. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), part of the Department of the Treasury, earlier this week told the Associated Press that it had on April 8 issued “in error” the federal approvals necessary for Palcohol maker Lipsmark to make and sell its product. The agency has not elaborated on its comments since, and Lipsmark claims to have resubmitted its product labels after a “minor change,” according to the Palcohol Web site. The issue is a discrepancy over how much powder each product packet contains, the company says.

Adding to the controversy, “the government has no authority to simply cancel the approvals,” according to Bevlaw.com, a Web site run by Lehrman Beverage Law, which specializes in the federal regulation of alcohol beverages. This means Palcohol may yet show up on liquor store shelves in the U.S.

The TTB approved labels for several Palcohol flavors: two beverages resembling rum and two vodkalike drinks as well as those simulating a cosmopolitan, a lemon drop and a margarita. Companies in Japan, Germany and the Netherlands already sell powdered alcohol products. In fact, Japan’s Sato Foods Industries had patented a process that encapsulated alcohol in powder form and since the 1970s has been selling its product to be used as an additive to jelly, chocolate and other foods, according to a 1977 Seattle Times article (pdf). At the time, a U.S. company tried unsuccessfully to bring to market a beverage in the States called SureShot and based on Sato’s product.

Lipsmark is, not surprisingly, tight-lipped about how it makes Palcohol. To find out more about how powdered alcohol works and its potential impact on those partaking in it, Scientific American interviewed “Food Matters” blogger See Arr Oh, a PhD scientist with experience in organic, inorganic and medicinal chemistry as well as biology.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]


When did you first become aware of powdered alcohol?
I've heard of various "liquids in powder form" for quite some time: instant coffee, tea, powdered milk, etcetera. "Powdered alcohol" is a great example of nothing new under the sun—there's patents for this that go back to the early 1970s.

How does powdered alcohol work?
First things first: "Powdered" is a misnomer. Unlike CBS News’s account, this powder is not "freeze-dried alcohol." Rather, it appears to be ethyl alcohol encapsulated by a fancy sugar container. Most powdered forms of liquids rely on cyclodextrins—literally small rings of sugars—to carry "guest" molecules in their inner cavities. To make the powder, you suck all the moisture out of the carrier and then just mix with ethanol. When you add warm water it dissolves the molecular container, springs loose the "cargo" (alcohol) and you get a martini.

How does creating a powdered alcoholic drink impact its alcohol content?
According to one patent [for “alcohol-containing powder,” filed in 1972 (US 3,795,747)], the dextrin carrier tops out at 60 percent, even in pure alcohol. Part of that has to do with space: Each carrier molecule only has so much room to adsorb [adhere to] ethanol, and this is dependent on size, shape, number of sugars and how dry it was to start.

To continue reading visit http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-big-deal-about-powdered-alcohol/

Whooping Cough on the Rise in California

A Southern California city has seen a spike in reported whooping cough cases so far this year, with the number of infections nearly tripling compared to all of last year, possibly due to a less potent vaccine or lower vaccination rates, officials said on Wednesday.

Some 43 cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, have been documented since January in Long Beach, a city of about 470,000, up from 15 cases reported in all of 2013 and four cases reported in 2012, Long Beach Health Officer Michael Kushner said.

"We've never had so many cases in such a short amount of time," Kushner said.

Whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial infection that often begins with cold-like symptoms and a mild cough, followed by severe coughing that can last for several weeks.

The infection, which can be treated with antibiotics, is spread through the coughing or sneezing of an infected person. It is especially dangerous for young babies, who can develop pneumonia and other sometimes fatal complications.

Kushner said the rise in whooping cough cases in Long Beach was likely due to a drop in vaccinations or booster shots, a weakened vaccine or infections that are left untreated.

Across the nation, the number of reported whooping cough cases has ballooned since the 1990s, when there were fewer than 10,000 reported infections each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To continue reading this article vist: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/04/24/california-city-sees-spike-in-whooping-cough-cases/

Ebola Breakout in Africa

Check out this video below. There are so many amazing volunteers willing to sacrifice their time and risk their lives to serve those infected with the deadly Ebola virus that has infected 112 people in Africa so far. 

Children and Codeine in the ER

Despite recommended limits on codeine use in children, the potent painkiller is prescribed for children in at least half a million emergency room visits each year, a study suggests.

Use of the drug in that setting is hardly rampant — just 3 percent of kids' ER visits resulted in a codeine prescription in 2010, the 10-year study found. But with more than 25 million ER visits by children each year, the authors say far too many kids are getting the drug when better options are available.

THE CONCERNS

Codeine is an opiate drug and a genetic variation makes some people metabolize it too quickly, potentially resulting in dangerous side effects including excessive sleepiness and difficulty breathing. The Food and Drug Administration issued its strictest warning last year about a rare risk for life-threatening complications or death in children given the drug after certain surgeries. It advises using codeine for children's pain only if anticipated benefits outweigh the risks.

Another genetic variation makes the drug ineffective for pain relief in as many as a third of patients. Codeine was once commonly used for coughs, but the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against that use because of the risks and no evidence it relieves coughs.

THE FINE PRINT

Injuries and respiratory symptoms are the top reasons for children's ER visits. The study authors analyzed 2001-10 national data on ER visits for kids aged 3 to 17. The portion of visits where codeine was prescribed dipped slightly during the study. But the authors estimated the yearly number of codeine visits ranged from almost 560,000 to 877,000. Information on any side effects was not included in the data.

The study was published online Monday in Pediatrics.

WHAT DO DOCTORS SAY?

Dr. Kathleen Neville, a pediatric drug expert at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, said it's likely the numbers have declined since the study ended, given the FDA's black box warning.

Dr. Bradley Berg, medical director of McLane Children's Clinic in Round Rock, Texas, said some ER doctors may have been unaware of pediatricians' guidelines on limiting codeine's use, or recalled getting the drug themselves as children, when its use was more common, with no ill effects.

Dr. Alfred Sacchetti, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, says codeine can be safely used in many children, especially older kids. Children typically are monitored in the ER after getting codeine and would not be sent home with a prescription if they had a bad reaction or it didn't work, he said.

To continue reading visit: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/kids-codeine-er-risks-guidelines-23402822