Drugs and Pharmacology, Tenth Edition

Welcome to the tenth edition of Drugs and Pharmacology. Today, we discuss a variety of topics from novel biological approaches to battling memory impairment to the bloody side effects of taking SSRIs and NSAIDs together.

Remember, we review the latest blogs related to drugs — medicinal, recreational, interactional, personal, professional, or any other aspects. If you were left out in this round, just leave a comment with your blog entry. You can check out the archives for every edition of this carnival.

For future editions, please remember to submit your blog entries using the online submission form. We will do our best to review and include your entry! Enjoy your readings…

Brain Stimulant writes Future Cognitive Enhancer:

Intracellular Therapies is currently testing a new pharmaceutical compound that could improve a person’s working memory. Working memory is the brain’s process for temporarily storing and manipulating information. This new drug enhances the D1 type dopamine receptor but is not an agonist.

Physician Entrepreneur writes Medicare Pilot Personal Health Record Program:

A pilot Personal Health Record (PHR) program will be rolled out next year in Arizona and Utah for Medicare patients. Personal Health Records belong to the patient and are distinct from the records maintained by physicians. The program will begin in January 2009.

IC Disease writes Side Effects of Pain Relievers:

The American Academy of Family Physicians says you should talk to your doctor about these potential risks of pain medications (via Health Central): Liver damage can occur in people who take large quantities of acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol), or in those who already have liver problems.

Debt Prison writes Wal-mart, Walgreens, a Prescription Hell:

I was very lucky in that the manager was on duty and just happened to be the aunt of a close friend. She said that they didn’t carry Bromfed [brompheniramine, an over-the-counter allergy medication that has the potential for abuse]. Naturally I’m standing there wondering what the hell is going on in this country. If it’s this hard to get some quality allergy medicine, what if I was really sick, dying and desperately needed the drugs to survive?

Health Assistant writes Benefits of Eating Onion for your Health:

Here are the ways how to use onion for: Headache = Mince two to three grain of onion, massage the extracts of onions to part of head were it aches most, massage circularly, repeatedly until it penetrates the skin. repeat this until you feel relief.

Dr Shock writes Carefull with the combination SSRIs and NSAIDs:

When both SSRIs and NSAIDs are concomitantly used, it would be sufficient to treat 250 patients per year for 1 case of upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract bleeding to be attributed to such combination, and 500 patients per year if SRIs are concomitantly used with antiplatelet drugs.