The You Docs:
Kids and codeine cough medicine don’t mix.
With flu season upon us, we strongly advise moms and dads to follow the labeling recommendations and use caution when reaching for cough and cold medicines containing codeine. Why? Codeine is an opioid pain reliever, and there’s a potential for serious adverse effects for kids, including slowed or difficult breathing.
Earlier this year, the European Medicine Agency issued a warning, saying that codeine “must not be used to treat cough and cold in children under 12” and for any children between 12 and 18 with breathing problems. And that’s moved the Food and Drug Administration to take a look at strengthening its 2013 “boxed” warning (its strongest); that warning said codeine should not be given to kids who have post-op pain following a tonsillectomy and/or adenoidectomy.
We suggest that all physicians and parents opt for the tighter restraints. And use alternatives, such as honey. A spoonful is the tried-and-true remedy for a cough and sore throat.
Acupuncture helps cool hot flashes linked to cancer treatment
When Cybill Shepherd recorded the “Menopause Blues” (it’s on YouTube) in 2004, she crooned about “those hot-flashin’, mood-swingin’ ” miseries. But we bet she didn’t know that for millions of women with breast cancer (and men with prostate cancer), those symptoms are a direct result of their life-saving treatments.
Up to 80 percent of prostate survivors, especially those on hormone-deprivation therapy, and 80 percent of women on tamoxifen for treatment of estrogen-dependent breast cancer experience hot flashes. Oftentimes, they’re bad enough for folks to consider ending their cancer therapy. And antidepressants, anti-seizure medications and anti-anxiety medications commonly prescribed to quell the fire sometimes are ineffective or come with their own serious side effects.
Now for the good news. First, those hot flashes, at least for women taking tamoxifen, are a positive. A five-year study of almost 900 women found that those with hot flashes were less likely to have recurrence of breast cancer than those who stayed cool. And, ta da, electroacupuncture works to tame hot flashes and night sweats more effectively than the often-prescribed anti-seizure drug gabapentin (even sham acupuncture worked better!).
For guys being treated for prostate cancer and others who are getting chemotherapy or radiation treatments that trigger hormone shifts, this treatment is worth a try. The researchers did 30-minute sessions daily for eight weeks and found that even after treatment, at week 24, the women who got EA were staying much cooler. Talk to your oncologist about finding a reliable practitioner in your area.
Q: I hear that 3-D printers can make prescription medications. Is there any way this technology can bring down the ridiculous cost of meds here in the U.S.?
Charlie H., Detroit
A: Sorry, Charlie, you’re not going to be able to print out your own drugs anytime soon, and here’s why. You can bet your bottom dollar that pharmaceutical companies have been in front of this technology for some time. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to develop new medications, so they’re not about to let someone come in and just copy their latest innovation. And they’ve shown no inclination to make drug prices reflect the true cost of producing or sustaining them. Take the cost of the new hepatitis C meds that come in at upward of $1,000 a pill and are costing Medicare billions of dollars.
But one pharmaceutical company (Aprecia) recently has used 3-D printing and its own proprietary technology (called ZipDose) to improve their delivery system of a basic antiepileptic drug. It’s the first 3-D oral medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration and should be out next year.
They developed it primarily for kids and the elderly, who have a hard time swallowing pills that they need to take every day. The technology allows the pill to dissolve on the tongue with a glass of water. It’s what the company calls “a porous formulation ... that disintegrates rapidly.” No muss, no fuss, and down the hatch it goes. Pretty cool stuff.
But complex chemical compounds don’t always lend themselves to this technology (it works kind of like the old ink jet printers that ran back and forth across the page, laying down layer after layer of ink.) So it remains to be seen what other meds can be produced this way. As amazing as it sounds, this technology isn’t anywhere close to a Star Trek-style replicator. Not yet anyway.