FDA panel rules against asthma drugs
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Gizmorama -
“The Cutting Edge of Science Fact and Science Possibilities”
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Good Morning,
One of todays’ articles deals with the issues of
how video games improve seniors’ mental skills.
Have A Good Day!
Until Tomorrow,
Erin
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FDA orders bowel cleanser safety warnings
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it will
add a “Boxed Warning” to prescription oral sodium
phosphate products Visicol and OsmoPrep. The FDA
said the action is being taken to warn consumers
about the risk of acute phosphate nephropathy — a
type of serious kidney injury. Patients routinely
take sodium phosphate products to cleanse their
bowels before a colonoscopy or other medical pro-
cedures. The FDA also voiced concern about risks
associated with the use of similar over-the-count
products, such as Fleet Phospho-soda, when they are
used at higher doses for bowel cleansing. But
officials said data does not indicate a risk of
kidney injury when those OTC products are used at
lower doses for laxative use. “Though rare, (there
are) serious adverse events associated with the use
of oral sodium phosphates — both prescription and
over-the-counter products,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock,
director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and
Research. “In some cases, these serious adverse
events occurred in patients with no pre-existing
health factors that would have put them at risk for
developing kidney injury. “We cannot rule out, how-
ever, that some of these patients were dehydrated
prior to ingestion of OSP products or they did not
drink sufficient fluids after ingesting OSP products,”
Woodcock added.
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Video game improves seniors’ mental skills
U.S. researchers say they’ve found playing a strategic
video game can improve the mental skills of adults in
their 60s and 70s. University of Illinois psychology
professor Arthur Kramer, an author of the research,
said the findings from the first such study of older
adults are the first to show pronounced effects on
cognitive skills not directly related to skills learn-
ed in the video game. After testing several video games,
the researchers selected “Rise of Nations,” which gives
gamers points for building cities and feeding and employ-
ing their people, maintaining an adequate military and
expanding their territory. The researchers found, over-
all, video game training improved participants’ per-
formance on several tests. As a group, the gamers be-
came significantly better and faster at switching
between tasks compared with a comparison group. Their
working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was
significantly improved and their reasoning ability was
enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory
of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as
was their ability to identify rotated objects. But the
scientists said the video-game training had no effect
on ability to recall a list of words in order, numera-
tion ability or ability to inhibit certain responses.
The study that included postdoctoral researcher
Chandramallika Basak appears in the journal
Psychology & Aging.
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FDA panel rules against asthma drugs
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel said the
drugs Serevent and Foradil shouldn’t be used for
treating asthma. The panel said Serevent and Foradil
are often prescribed inappropriately by doctors and
used incorrectly by patients, The New York Times said
Thursday. The drugs are longer-acting beta agonists
intended to prevent attacks but have been shown to
increase the risk of more severe attacks if used with-
out a steroid, the newspaper said. The panel ruled
that Advair and Symbicort should continue to be used
as asthma treatments. Advair and Symbicort combine
longer-acting beta agonists with steroids in a single
inhaler. The newspaper said some drug safety experts
recommended that all four drugs be banned from treat-
ing asthma, although others said the drugs’ benefits
outweighed their risks.