[mrsD]

I didn't notice this was here until today.

Many medication questions should be directed to your doctor and pharmacist.
Pharmacies today provide extensive handouts to help you understand your
medications.

But given the way drugs are marketed today, some effects from newer
medications are not completely understood. So a forum of this type is a
good meeting place for people to exchange experiences about medications, when they are worried about them, or interactions.

A very good reference for drug information is:
www.rxlist.com

This site gives side effects reported to FDA in table form and is useful to see clustering reports etc:
http://www.drugcite.com/

And this is a good reference for drug interactions:
http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html


This one is very also:
http://www.pdrhealth.com/

If you have a problem with a medication toxicity or adverse reaction you can report it here:
http://www.fda.gov/
the medwatch program:
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html

If you have problems with understanding the medical terminology that you
find on the net, I can help members with that issue.

I also have experience about what really is going on compared to the dry,
medical stuff you can find on websites that give drug info. Some alarming things that you read about, don't commonly happen. And the vice versa,
some things you or your doctor don't expect, may happen to you.

I hope others come along here and offer web locations that they have found useful as well.

[mrsD]

Here is a good link to test drug interactions:

http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/Interac...,4109,,00.html

And a very good paper on the effects of NSAIDs on the body, including
the new FDA warning about them:

http://arthritis.about.com/cs/nsaids...tsofnsaids.htm

And this database will match up drugs with complementary use of vitamins/minerals/herbs: Alot of interesting information can be found on this database.

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/

[mrsD]

As I come across them, I will post them here.
Unfortunately, many physicians do not read or understand some of the
new warnings that come out. Some never see them even. So I will post
links here in this post on those that are significant.
This is the main link from FDA:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/warn2004.htm

This is a link to the search engine that you can use to search for your
specific drug, if you think a warning letter has been issued:
http://www.fda.gov/foi/warning.htm
There is some pretty interesting reading at the above site..if you choose
by date, you can see many issues the FDA oversees besides drugs.

1) Cymbalta:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514768

2) Topamax: There are several warnings included in this link:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2004/12547.pdf

3) Zoloft:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/zoloft_letter.pdf

4) Enbrel:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/Enbrelwl.pdf

5) Celebrex and Bextra:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/12560-letter.pdf
and http://www.fda.gov/medWatch/SAFETY/2...ty05.htm#NSAID

6) Paxil + pregnancy:
http://www.fda.gov/MedWatch/SAFETY/2...hcp_letter.pdf
specifically the first trimester when the heart is forming. Discuss Paxil use with your doctor in this event.

These are just some examples. The site is huge.. and includes food and devices, and manufacturing issues/safety.

[agnuscrucis]

hey guys,

just for your information..
listen to Mrs. D, but it's good to be aware of what I have learned over the years..

better know something rather than not knowing anything. But the more you know seomthing, the more you know the things you don't know. that's why I stop asking (which is a very unwise thing to do, but I'm really tired.) in my experience the pharmacist only know so much.. OK, they know a lot, but in my case, absolutely not enough. I'm the one that have to do all the studying.. and now I'm so tired of studying. in the past weeks scary things have happened to me. It's time that I should start doing my homework to report to my doctors. But I don't even have enough energy to do what I utmostly need to do, so the homework just keep piling up, and dangerous things keep happening. Fortunately so far I still could manage. Believe it or not, my doctors trust me that I know what I'm doing.

And once I went to a American Epilepsy Society meeting, and I stopped by at different companies.. actually they got nervous that I asked questions.. (i could understand why). They all promised to send me the information, but at the end, only one company sent me something.. pretty much what's on ythe PDR. The thing is, once the drug is approved, the company wants nothing to do with studying it anymore. They only need one FDA approval and that's it, all they do after that is selling. long term effects? not their business.

not many people interested to study drug interactions. what for? first it's very expensive to do a proper study, second, they don't make any money out of this, and third, it's impossible to do a proper study anyway. All the studies that have been done have to use strict criterias. If you want a drug to be aprroved for diabetes, your studies will include only people with diabetes, not diabetes and stroke, or diabetes and MS etc. While in the real world, that is not the case. And also in the real world, people are taking so amny different variations of drugs, which are not the case with the people who are the subjects of these studies. And even furthermore, your genetic make ups (and your lifestyle etc.) determine how your body takes on the drug. And of course, a lot of people don't take the drug properly.. in other words, as labeled.

[mrsD]

Here is a good site, listing the most commonly encountered drug-drug interactions:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000315/1745.html
It is dated 2000, so some newer things are not listed.
Such as SSRI bleeding risks. But the text is informative, and explanations are
good. Anyone taking multiple drugs should read it.

[mrsD]

In finding the truth among all the contention about the drug industry today,
there is a very good book written by an experienced M.D.:

The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell M.D.
Here is part of a review of it:

In what should serve as the Fast Food Nation of the drug industry, Angell, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, presents a searing indictment of "big pharma" as corrupt and corrupting: of Congress, through huge campaign contributions; of the FDA, which is funded in part by the very companies it oversees; and, perhaps most shocking, of members of the medical profession and its institutions. Angell delineates how the drug giants, such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, pay physicians to prescribe their products with gifts, junkets and marketing programs disguised as "professional education." According to Angell, the cost of marketing, both to physicians and consumers, far outweighs expenditures on research and development, though drug makers invoke R&D as the reason drug prices are so high. In fact, says Angell, with combined 2002 profits of $35.9 billion for the Fortune 500's top 10 drug companies, the drug industry is America's most profitable by far, thanks to disproportionately high prices, generous tax breaks and manipulation of patents to extend exclusive marketing rights to blockbuster drugs like Prozac and Claritin. Angell mounts a powerful case (and offers specific suggestions) for reform of this essential industry—a case worth bearing in mind as "big pharma" continues to oppose importing cheaper drugs from Canada.

Dr. Angell was editor of New England Journal of Medicine for 20 yrs.
Her experience and research are very revealing. One thing that surprised me is that the R & D departments of many major companies no longer do research.
They buy/lease patents from Universities and other research foundations who actually have the creative talent. Today drug companies mainly market.

While searching the net today, I also found this interesting doctoral thesis published on the Web. It echos Dr. Angell:
http://www.fdastudy.com/

And from the Wall Street Journal this echos the thesis above:

FDA Goes, Hat in Hand, To the Drug Industry
Topics: U.S. government | pharmaceuticals | health | corporations
Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), September 1, 2006
Pills
"Regulators usually don't negotiate their budgets with the industries they oversee," writes Anna Wilde Mathews, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does. In the early 1990s, drug companies started paying the FDA millions of dollars in user fees, to speed the drug approval process. The fees "now fund more than half the agency's critical drug-review process." Industry groups and the FDA renegotiate the fees and how they're used every five years, giving drug makers "considerable input into which programs receive funding." The FDA is currently negotiating the next agreement, with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and Biotechnology Industry Organization. The industry groups are pushing for faster decisions on "labels and other conditions on approval" of new drugs, and faster review of ads voluntarily submitted to the agency. The FDA wants more funding to monitor drugs' safety following their approval.

What is a person to do? Well, for starters if you have an adverse reaction to a drug --insist on a Medwatch report being made. Postmarketing has become the time when serious side effects appear. And if reports are not made, these effects damage many people. Right now in the news is the controversy over the antibiotic Ketek.

We are living at a time when patients should have a say, and research their own treatments. And this is just too difficult for many, sadly.



This book is a real eye opener and now is available in paperback. I bought my hardcover copy a while ago from Amazon.

[oldersis1]

Interesting information. Thank you.