HEALTH TIPS - Thursday, March 30, 2006
"News That Keeps You Healthy"
When to 'unprescribe' a drug
CHICAGO, -- Four University of Chicago physicians are pro-
posing the first general framework for withholding or dis-
continuing prescribed medications. "Our framework was
designed to help patients and physicians decide when to
stop taking even safe and effective drugs in situations
that are often radically different from those where the
medications were started," said geriatrician Dr. Holly
Holmes, lead author of the study. The impetus for the guide-
lines came in the form of an advisory note from a pharmacy
to the physicians who care for patients at a nursing home.
The pharmacy, which monitors drug use at the facility, noted
two patients at the nursing home ought to be taking a statin
-- a cholesterol-lowering drug that can, over time, reduce
the risk of heart attack. "One of those patients was more
than 100 years old, quite frail, with advanced cancer and
multiple other medical problems," Holmes said. "The other
one was dead. It made us wonder whether something wasn't
missing from those guidelines." The physicians detail their
recommendations in the current issue of the Archives of
Internal Medicine.
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Alcohol contributes to infant problems
SYDNEY, -- A large Australian study finds that women hos-
pitalized for alcohol-related reasons during pregnancy are
more likely to have low birth-weight babies. The infants
are more likely to be admitted to a neo-natal intensive
care unit and have lower Apgar scores on the test of
physical responses administered immediately after birth.
"To reduce alcohol consumption by pregnant women, there
needs to be a government-society approach to the issue,
rather than simply regarding it as a health problem," said
lead researcher Lucy Burns of the National Drug and Alcohol
Research Center in Sydney. The researchers tracked 416,834
admissions of pregnant women from 1998 through 2002 and
found that 342 women had at least one alcohol-related diag-
nosis. Thirty percent of their babies had low birth weight,
compared to 10 percent in the non-alcohol group, and 16
percent were premature compared to 6 percent. The study was
published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
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Weight-training helps cancer survivors
ST. PAUL, Minn., -- A study finds that breast cancer sur-
vivors can improve their lives with weight training. Re-
searchers said women who had weight training with improve-
ment in lean body mass and upper-body strength got relief
from depression and from other symptoms. Dr. Tetsuya Ohira
and colleagues at the University of Minnesota tracked 86
women who had been treated for breast cancer within three
years. Half were put on a weight-training program. The
physical changes that came from a six-month exercise pro-
gram gave the women "a sense of return to feeling in con-
trol of their bodies that may translate into feeling
greater efficacy in other areas of life," the authors
said. Another recent study found that aerobic exercise
also improves quality of life for cancer survivors. But
the authors said the benefit was greater from weight-
training. The study was published in CANCER, a journal of
the American Cancer Society.
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