The April 10th issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) contains a clinical review that shows that antidepressants should not be prescribed as a medication for depression in people under 18 years of age. According to the BMJ, Australian researchers analyzed existing results from six randomized controlled trials of newer antidepressants and their use in
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A November 18, 2004 Reuters News story with the above headline starts off by noting that according to a new study doctors are prescribing more antidepressants for children and adolescents although there is little evidence about their safety or efficacy in youngsters. Dr. Ian Wong of the Centre for Paediatric Pharmacy Research at the University
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This February 8, 2006 USA Today article starts off with a grave warning to pregnant women, “Women who take a common type of antidepressant during the second half of their pregnancy are about six times more likely to give birth to a baby with a rare but potentially fatal heart and lung condition.” The problems
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The Associated Press reported on a study by a group of Pediatricians who studied 383 children with acute respiratory tract illness, ranging from infants to age 12. The study conducted over a one year period was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Of the three hundred eighty-three children in the study,
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The opening remarks of an article from the October 1, 2003 BBC News states, “Babies given antibiotics are more likely to develop asthma and other allergies, research suggests.” The article reports on research done at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Senior researcher and epidemiologist, Dr. Christine Cole Johnson, studied 448 children, whose development was
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Antibiotics soon will bear a big new warning that overusing them makes them less effective. From the February 6, 2003 release of the Associated Press Health News, comes the news that antibiotics will soon carry a new warning message mandated by the US Food and Drug Administration. The new action was prompted because it has
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The November 9, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA) published a study that showed that antibiotics are still being overprescribed for children who do not need them, and in many cases when they do the wrong ones are being given. The study showed that 53% of children with sore throats
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The above headline is from an April 30, 2003 article from Reuters Health. On that same date panelists from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists warned that the medical community is losing the fight against antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” and few new
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In two articles featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the New England Journal of Medicine, comes disturbing news of strains of the dangerous Staphylococcus aureus bacteria now resistant to the antibiotics used to kill them. In two cases in the United States strains of this bacteria have been identified that
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A study published in the September 13, 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that “watchful waiting” is better than using antibiotics for the treatment of ear infections known as Acute Otitis Media (AOM). The study starts off by noting that AOM is the most common diagnosis for which antibiotics are prescribed to
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