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Although opioids are extremely valuable painkillers, particularly for patients at the end of life, drugs like Oxycontin (oxycodone) and Vicodin (hydrocodone and acetaminophen) are unfortunately better known for being addictive. While new studies have sharpened the understanding of how opioids work, and clarified their harms, the general question of safety remains complicated. Differences in the age and health of patients, their history of substance misuse, the nature of the pain and patients' sensitivity to certain drugs mean that a miracle drug for one person may be harmful to another. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
...identify exactly what went wrong in all of the cases. Was it the high-prescribed dose alone, or were there other risk factors like illness, escalation of pain or undiagnosed addiction? While Von Korff and Volkow agree that prescription dose is a major contributor to overdose risk, they say better studies are needed to determine the precise causes and consequences. "One would hope that for a treatment regimen that millions of people are using, we'd have large, long-term, well-designed randomized controlled trials, and we don't," says Von Korff. (See "The Year in Health 2009: From...
...researcher Gavril Pasternak, head of molecular pharmacology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "It works in many patients who don't respond to other agents, but it is more dangerous in the sense that it's more difficult to prescribe appropriately. We have to do better in terms of educating physicians...
...while U.S.-Pakistan relations are better now, they are still fraught. As U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, a veteran of the Balkans and other bruising diplomatic acts, remarked wearily on Feb. 18, during his seventh swing through Islamabad, "This is the most complicated relation with an ally that I've ever experienced. I don't want to mislead you; it's still fragile...
...being caught up in the fervor. Voltaire says she decided to participate in the three days of fasting because she wanted God's forgiveness. Dressed in a neat bright-pink top, she points to the concrete slab where she sleeps and says she still has hope for a better Haiti because of Brutus' message. "I believe God sent her on a mission," says Voltaire. "Haiti will get better with her plan...