HEALTH
February 27, 2012 | By James S. Fell, Special to the Los Angeles Times
On a recent ski trip, my best friend handed me a flask of cinnamon schnapps. He called it "courage in 100-proof form," and I needed it. I was perched at the edge of a cliff, looking at a 20-foot drop into thigh-deep powder. Nearly a decade ago, when I was laid up in an emergency room with two bulging disks in my lower lumbar spine, there's no way I could have imagined myself attempting such foolish feats of middle-aged manliness. I'm hardly alone in my lower lumbar woes. A 2009 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that the prevalence of chronic, impairing low-back pain rose from 3.9% of adults in 1992 to 10.2% in 2006.
NEWS
March 4, 2011 | By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
Taking ibuprofen regularly may lower the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by about a third, perhaps by reducing the inflammation that is thought to contribute to the onset of the disease, Harvard University researchers reported this week. Surprisingly, however, other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that also reduce inflammation have no effect on the disease, they reported online in the journal Neurology. Dr. Alberto Ascherio and Dr. Xiang Gao of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and their colleagues studied 98,892 women in the Nurses' Health Study and 37,305 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, two well-established, ongoing programs.
HEALTH
February 14, 2011 | By Emily Sohn, Special to the Los Angeles Times
People usually have good reasons for swallowing over-the-counter painkillers: They're hurting. But though the drugs often help, new research suggests that they sometimes do the opposite of what their users intended. That's especially true for serious athletes, for whom pain ? and painkillers ? are regular companions. In recent years, scientists have been studying runners competing in the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile race through California's Sierra Nevada mountains that involves more than 18,000 total feet of uphill climbing, more than 21,000 feet of downhill running and an average of 26 hours to complete.
NEWS
November 8, 2010 | By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
Taking mild painkilllers such as aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen during pregnancy, especially during the second trimester, can cause a sharp increase in reproductive problems in male offspring, researchers from Denmark, Finland and France reported Monday. The team found that women who used two of the drugs simultaneously during the second trimester were as much as 16 times as likely to bear a son with undescended testicles, a condition known as cryptorchidism. Cryptorchidism is known to be a risk factor for poor semen quality and testicular germ cell cancer in later life.
NATIONAL
August 18, 2009 | Times Wire Reports
Children with broken arms do better on a simple over-the-counter painkiller than on a more powerful prescription combination that includes a narcotic, a study found. It tested ibuprofen, sold as Advil, Motrin and other brands, against acetaminophen plus codeine -- a combo called Tylenol No. 3 that is also sold in generic form. The children on ibuprofen did better, said the study leader, Dr. Amy Drendel of the Medical College of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee. "They were more likely to play, they ate better and they had fewer adverse effects," she said.
NATIONAL
April 22, 2009 | David G. Savage
The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to lawyers for a girl who was strip-searched in school when she was 13 on suspicion that she had extra-strength ibuprofen in her underwear. Instead, most of the justices voiced concern about drugs, such as heroin and crack cocaine, and said they were wary of limiting officials' authority to search students for any drugs. "How is a school administrator supposed to know?" Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked.