Drug Side Effects

Desperate to help their autistic children, hundreds of parents nationwide are turning to an unproven and potentially damaging treatment: multiple high doses of a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders. The therapy is based on a theory, unsupported by mainstream medicine, that autism is caused by a harmful link between mercury and testosterone. Children with autism have too much of the hormone, according to the theory, and a drug called Lupron can fix that.

Many parents slather Vicks VapoRub on their sniffling, coughing kids when they're sick -- because, by gosh, that's what their parents did to them. For children under the age of 2, the folksy remedy could be dangerous, researchers warned today.

Late last month, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that makers of the drug metoclopramide must put the strongest so-called black-box warning on the product's package insert. Also sold as Reglan, Octamide and Maxolon, metoclopramide is used to treat certain gastrointestinal problems. If taken chronically, it can cause a serious neurological disorder called tardive dyskinesia (TD). -- What's metoclopramide?

You'd probably be interested in a drug that'll keep you peppy even when you're running on fumes. How about a drug that can cause depression, anxiety, hallucinations, psychosis, mania and suicidal thoughts? How about chest pain, sores or serious rashes? You had to sift through the fine print of full-page newspaper ads that ran coast to coast last week to learn that these drugs are one and the same. The ads were for Provigil, which its maker, Cephalon Inc.

A young man reportedly taking the antidepressant Prozac has a history of significant psychiatric troubles, including self-cutting, obsessive thoughts and anxiety. But among the 27-year-old's current teachers and acquaintances, he has a reputation as a caring, dependable friend and a highly motivated student. Surely, say mental health professionals, this recovery was brought about by Prozac.

Years of high-profile court battles over drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex, along with billion-dollar settlements and jury verdicts, could soon be a thing of the past. The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, ruled last month that patients injured by most medical devices can't sue their manufacturers. And this fall, a similar case could extend the same legal protection to the much larger pharmaceutical industry -- a frequent target of lawsuits.

Roche Holding and GlaxoSmithKline said Tuesday that they had added new labels to their prescription flu medicines that contain reports of abnormal psychiatric behavior in some patients. A warning about cases of delirium and unusual behavior had been listed previously on Roche's drug, Tamiflu. That language was strengthened to say some cases were fatal.

The scope of concerns about the possible ill effects of a contaminated blood thinner from China grew significantly Tuesday as federal regulators urged makers of many kinds of medical devices that contain the drug to test their supplies. The products to be tested cover a spectrum of equipment and uses.

As symptoms of depression go, there is none much clearer than having thoughts of suicide. But a spate of recent announcements from federal health officials suggests a surprising new interpretation of suicidal fantasies and the depression they are thought to signal: Sometimes, sadness, anxiety and self-destructive thoughts are not symptoms but side effects -- of medicine.

As young survivors of the modern era of cancer treatment enter the third and fourth decades of their lives, they find themselves poster children for the hope of medical progress -- and also for the toll taken by cancer's toxic treatments. The cure rate for childhood cancer is one of 20th century medicine's greatest success stories. Before 1970, few children with cancer made it. Today, nearly 80% of children who have cancer are cured, according to the American Cancer Society's 2008 statistics.