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WDDTY e-News Service - 13 November 2003

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:50:26 -0000

 

 

WHAT DOCTORS DON’T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST No.58 - 13 November 03

 

Please feel free to email this broadcast to any friends you feel would

appreciate receiving it.

 

 

 

 

ANTIDEPRESSANTS: They're great for two-year-olds

 

America's drug 'watchdog', the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is finally

waking up to a drug scandal that is involving children as young as two years of

age.

 

These children are being prescribed powerful antidepressants that could be

making them suicidal, and so the FDA has agreed to review the practice.

 

Today, it's been reckoned that 2 per cent of all youths in the USA are now

prescribed an antidepressant. Prescriptions to children increased by 400 per

cent between 1988 and 1994 alone, a study has found.

 

Researchers have discovered that children as young as two have been prescribed

an antidepressant such as Prozac, although usage more usually begins at the age

of six and then carries on until the age of 19.

 

Nobody knows for sure how many children have committed suicide, attempted

suicide or had suicidal thoughts while on these drugs, and regulators the world

over have always hidden behind the fact that these children may have been

suicidal because of their depression.

 

The FDA has nonetheless conceded that the drugs are more likely than a placebo

to cause suicidal thoughts. It based its conclusion on a review of 20

placebo-controlled trials, involving over 4100 children and adolescents who were

prescribed one of eight antidepressants. The 'gang of eight' includes

citalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, mirtazapine, nefazodone,paroxetine,

sertraline and venlazafine.

 

Worse, perhaps, the FDA concluded that the drugs were not even effective.

 

Of the drugs reviewed, only Prozac (fluoxetine) has been approved for pediatric

use, and fluvoxamine is not even approved as an antidepressant in the USA.

 

Pfizer, the manufacturer of sertraline, marketed as Lustral in the UK and as

Zoloft in the USA, has been quick to try and distance itself from the review.

 

In a study of 376 depressed children aged from 6 to 17 years, sertraline was

" effective and well-tolerated " , the researchers concluded. A generous

conclusion for a study that saw 17 of the children having to stop treatment

because of a side effect, and two who tried to commit suicide. It's perhaps

worth pointing out that Pfizer kindly sponsored the research.

 

But even leaving all that aside, there is no doubt that the drugs should not be

prescribed to children anyway. Aside from Prozac, none of the drugs has been

licensed for pediatric use, and so the drug regulators should be stopping the

practice for that reason alone.

 

(Sources: Pediatrics, 2002; 109: 721-7; Journal of the American Medical

Association, 2003; 290: 1033-41).

 

 

 

PSA: It's a test that has had its day

 

We've said it before, and now we have to say it again-the prostate specific

antigen (PSA) blood test doesn't work. In fact, it works less well than even we

thought.

 

A new study has found that it's failing to recognize eight out of every 10 cases

of prostate cancer.

 

Researchers from Harvard Medical School analysed the test results of 6,691 men

who had a PSA, and found that it failed to spot 82 per cent of cancer cases.

The test also came up with just 2 per cent of 'false positives' - where the test

detected a cancer that wasn't actually there - a pretty low rating compared to

most other tests that throw up many more false positives.

 

So what can be done? The test currently assesses as healthy a PSA blood

concentration of 4 ng/ml. If this was reduced to 2.6 ng/ml, researchers reckon

that the test would detect around 36 per cent of cancers - but it would also

dramatically increase the rate of false positives.

 

This is still not an acceptable detection rate. It's perhaps time to discard

the PSA and search for a more reliable test.

 

(Source: New England Journal of Medicine, 2003; 349: 335-42).

 

 

 

A PAIN IN THE NECK: The daily routine is as good as special exercise

 

Quite a few of us will get neck pain sometime in our lives. And if we see a

physiotherapist, we might be advised to start a course of 'dynamic muscle

training', using dumbbells, or relaxation training. The trouble is that neither

therapy works.

 

Instead, you are as likely to get better by just carrying on with your usual

daily activities, a new research study has concluded.

 

Researchers in Finland tested the three approaches - dynamic training,

relaxation, and carrying on with normal daily activities - on 393 female office

workers with chronic neck pain.

 

They were split into three groups: some did 12 weeks of dynamic muscle training,

others carried out relaxation training for the same period, while the rest just

carried on with their usual activities.

 

At the end of the trial period, each of the groups reported similar levels of

neck pain. Although pain levels were the same, those who undertook exercise or

relaxation did report greater flexibility and ability to move the head round.

 

(Source: British Medical Journal, 2003; 327: 475-7).

 

 

 

WE CAN HELP YOU: And with our 'pay-as-you' plan, there's no risk, either

 

What Doctors Don't Tell You has such a powerful database of knowledge that we're

pretty sure we can help you if you have some niggling, chronic condition.

 

Chronic diseases include problems such as asthma, arthritis, IBS and the like -

the very things that medicine just can't seem to cure, other than to make the

day-to-day more comfortable.

 

But, over the years, we've made so many connections between these diseases and

environmental factors, diet, stress everyday pollutants - and many other things

besides - that we probably have information, some clue, to help you.

 

To try us out, we've devised a simple quarterly payment plan. To start you off,

you pay just £6.99, and for that you will be sent our next three monthly

newsletters AND you get three search sessions of our database for FREE (and

those three search sessions alone would normally cost you £26). Thereafter

we're confident that you will continue subscribing, and you will then pay £14.75

each quarter until you tell us to stop.

 

What could be fairer? To take the first steps on the road to a better,

healthier life, click on http://www.wddty.co.uk/shop/details.asp?product=330

 

 

 

MIND AND BODY: How a positive attitude can help you survive by-pass surgery

 

More evidence that the mind affects the body has come from a new study of

patients who had coronary by-pass surgery.

 

Researchers have discovered that patients are more likely to die after surgery

if they are depressed, and the risk increases with the depth of the depression.

 

Depression is a fairly common reaction following by-pass surgery, with up to 47

per cent of all patients suffering from it to some extent.

 

It's something that heart surgeons have noticed, but the link had never been

proven because research had been on groups that were too small to be a

scientifically valid sample.

 

So researchers from Duke University in North Carolina followed up for five years

817 patients who had by-pass surgery at the university's medical centre.

 

During that time 38 per cent of the group suffered depression, 26 per cent of

whom had mild depression, and the remainder had severe attacks.

 

Of the 122 patients who died during the five years of follow-up, researchers

found that those who suffered deep depression were nearly two-and-a-half times

more likely to die, while the risk dropped slightly - to just over two times -

among patients with mild depression.

 

Despite all the advances of modern surgery, a positive outlook has as much to do

with survival as anything else, researchers concluded.

 

(Source: The Lancet, 2003; 362: 604-9).

 

 

 

READERS' CORNER

 

MMR mums: One reader has taken us to task for what he sees as our partial

reporting of the case of the MMR mums. The courts were forced to adjudicate

between parents who could not agree on the vaccination of their children; the

judge, for his part, had to rely on the scientific and medical evidence

presented to him, says our reader. " If the mothers win, will you then say that

the UK justice system is forcing the fathers' children to be at risk of death

for not being so vaccinated? " he argues. Fair point, but it doesn't get to the

heart of the matter. Our concerns are several: in the first place, a dangerous

legal precedent has been established that will free the State to intervene e

more frequently in these type of cases; secondly, we don't feel that a court is

the appropriate place to determine these issues. And how about this for a

fairer solution: all vaccinations must first have the consent, freely given, of

both parents, otherwise the treatment doesn't go ahead. Or are we

being too simplistic?

 

Fibromyalgia: One reader is suffering badly from fibromyalgia. She wonders if

it a subject we've ever covered, and if so, is there anything that can make her

life more bearable? We've not covered the subject in E-news, but the alternative

therapies were thoroughly investigated in an Alternatives column in an earlier

issue of What Doctors Don't Tell You newsletter (vol 6, no 6). The article is

far too long to repeat here, but there's plenty of scientific evidence to

suggest that you can find long-term relief (if not improvement) from homeopathy,

electro-acupuncture and massage therapy.

 

 

* To search the WDDTY database - where every word from the last 14 years of

research can be found – click on http://www.wddty.co.uk/search/infodatabase.asp

 

 

Listen to Lynne

 

On the radio: Hear Lynne McTaggart on Passion the new DAB Digital Radio Station

focusing on your health and your environment -

http://www.wddty.co.uk/passion_main.asp

 

On demand: Select and listen to any of Lynne's archived broadcasts on Passion,

there's a new one each week - http://www.wddty.co.uk/passion_archive.asp

 

 

View missed/lost e-News broadcasts:

 

View our e-News broadcast archives, follow this link -

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