Category: Asthma

JGrimes
Also: why health-care costs are rising in Utah, what exposure to microbes may mean for allergies and asthma.
Read more this great post here

JGrimes
Last week some experts played down the World Health Organization’s announcement that it was “very concerned” about the potential health effects of inhaled ash from the Iceland volcano. But we wanted to follow up on that point: can it really be safe to breathe in the same stuff that threatens to destroy jet […]

JGrimes
Whether or not Europeans should be concerned about inhaling the ash from Iceland’s volcano depends on whom you ask.
A spokesman for the World Health Organization says the agency is “very concerned” about the potential health effects of ash that drifts down to ground level, the Associated Press reports. In fact, he advises that […]

JGrimes
A proposal by British doctors to ban smoking in private cars has drivers, well, fuming.
The Royal College of Physicians says passive smoke results in 300,000 extra visits by children to the doctor every year in the U.K. Banning smoking in autos, as well as in public places where kids congregate, would help fight […]

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Safety experts advising the FDA have been sending up flares about various asthma drugs for several years. In 2007, a panel said GlaxoSmithKline’s Serevent and Advair should carry a warning about risks to children. In 2008, experts said Serevent and Norvartis’s Foradil shouldn’t be used for asthma any more.
Today, the FDA itself […]

JGrimes
An FDA advisory panel said yesterday that two drugs, Serevent and Foradil, shouldn’t be used for asthma any more, and two others, Advair and Symbicort, should. So what’s the difference between these drugs?
This morning’s New York Times gives quick overview of asthma by way of explanation. Asthma strikes when airways in the lungs […]

JGrimes
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Teva has launched a generic of AstraZeneca’s inhaled asthma treatment for kids.
Generics maker Teva is causing headaches for another brand-name drugmaker.
AstraZeneca taking the hit on its asthma treatment Pulmicort Respules. Teva just got FDA approval of a generic version, and the Israeli company said it has started selling the medicine. AstraZeneca’s […]

JGrimes
The era of personalized medicine won’t work unless we can also find our way into the era of reliable diagnostic testing.  And in the case of breast cancer — one of the diseases with good personalized drugs for certain types of tumors — the diagnostic tests aren’t working very well, the WSJ reports.
As […]