U.S. regulators further restrict pain medication use in children
Government requiring drug makers to change labels to warn against giving them to kids under 12
U.S. regulators are strengthening warnings about the dangers of two types of powerful opioid painkillers, codeine and tramadol, due to risks of slowed breathing and death.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said last week it is requiring makers of the pain medicines to change the products’ labels to warn against giving them to children under age12, and to limit use in older children.
The agency had warned in 2013 against use of codeine and tramadol in children and adolescents to treat pain after surgery to remove tonsils. Antidepressants not as harmful during pregnancy as previously thought, study finds Women who take antidepressants early in pregnancy are not at a higher risk of having children who develop autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), contrary to earlier reports, a study published last week found.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found only a slight increase in the risk of premature birth for infants of mothers who used antidepressants during the first trimester of their pregnancy. But the researchers found no increase in the risk of autism, ADHD or reduced fetal growth among children exposed to antidepressants during fetal development.
A protein from human umbilical cords revitalizes memory — in mice You leave your car in a vast, crowded parking lot, and when you return, you have no idea where it is.
That experience occurs more frequently as we get older, because the functions of the part of the brain that encodes spatial and episodic memories — the hippocampus — decline with age.
But now neuroscientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that in mice, an infusion of plasma taken from human umbilical cords im- proves the hippocampus’s functioning, resulting in significant gains in memory and cognition.
Salmonella drops to No. 2 on U.S. list of most common food poisoning culprits The U.S. government’s latest report card on food poisoning suggests that a germ commonly linked to raw milk and poultry is surpassing salmonella at the top of the culprit list.
Last week’s report counts cases in only 10 states for nine of the most common causes of food-borne illness, but is believed to be a good indicator of national food poisoning trends.