Health Glance
An inexpensive drug could save tens of thousands of lives lost in accidents and war every year by minimizing excessive bleeding, British researchers reported Monday. The drug, called tranexamic acid, is already used during surgeries in many developed countries to prevent unwanted bleeding, but the results from a massive clinical trial reported in the journal Lancet indicate that it could be used on an everyday basis even in the poorest countries.
Physicians had feared that such widespread use of the drug might lead to heart attacks, embolisms or other problems resulting from clot formation, but the new study showed an excellent safety profile for the drug.
Millions of cancer survivors have put off receiving medical care because they could not afford it, according to a new study.
To hear Big Pharma tell it, statin drugs are "miracle" medicines that have prevented millions of heart attacks and strokes. But a recent study published in the British Medical Journal tells a completely different story: For every heart attack prevented by the drug, two or more people suffered liver damage, kidney failure, cataracts or extreme muscle weakness as a result of taking the drug.
The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on 23andMe and other companies that sell genetic tests directly to consumers.
"Our work shows that radiation can change the microenvironment of breast cells, and this in turn can allow the growth of abnormal cells with a long-lived phenotype that have a much greater potential to be cancerous," Paul Yaswen, a cell biologist and breast cancer research specialist with Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division, said in a statement to the press.
A new report says the Food and Drug Administration is stretched thin and needs to reorganize to better keep the nation's food safe.
A single dose of radiation during surgery is just as effective as a prolonged course of radiotherapy for breast cancer, a study suggests. Doctors have tested the technique, which involves a single shot of radiotherapy to a tumour site, in more than 2,000 patients.
