Medications

Some drugs are so common that consumers -- at their peril -- don't think twice about them. But each drug, whether prescription or over-the-counter, poses risks. To highlight these risks, we offer up a few details on five of the most-prescribed medications, with additional input from pharmacists interviewed for this package of stories. Hydrocodone with acetaminophen Brand names: Vicodin, Lortab Description: A combination of a narcotic ( hydrocodone ) with a non-narcotic ( acetaminophen )

When you take medicine, there's a good chance you're getting a dose of modern global business practices as well. Eighty percent of the active ingredients in the medications that Americans use are produced overseas. In a single drug, it's quite possible that the individual components came from several countries and were assembled in yet another before arriving on U.S. shores. This diffuse manufacturing operation increases the opportunities for chicanery, which can include too-low amounts of active ingredients or substitution of different ingredients as well as adulterated ones.

A broad package of bills aimed at reducing prescription drug abuse and overdose deaths won approval from a key state Senate committee Monday. The bills, including a measure that would require coroners to report prescription-involved deaths to the Medical Board of California, followed a series of Times articles linking doctors to patient overdose deaths. In urging approval for his coroner-reporting bill, Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles) cited the case of a doctor identified by The Times as having prescribed drugs to 16 patients who died of overdoses or related causes.

“Take 500 milligrams of this medicine every twelve hours in combination with amoxicillin and lansoprazole for 14 days. Don't forget it should be taken with food, and I will see you in three weeks.” Ever get a complicated prescription from a doctor? There are apps out there to help you remember to take your medicine. The latest is  Mango Health's iPhone app, designed to make managing medications and nutritional supplements easier, safer and maybe even exciting by using games.

The leader of the California Senate says holes in the state's oversight of physicians, exposed in recent Los Angeles Times articles about prescription drug deaths, are "extremely troubling" and need to be corrected "as quickly as we can. " Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said he would put his political muscle behind legislation to give the Medical Board of California more investigators and broader authority to stop reckless prescribing of addictive medications. He said he would champion other measures as well, including a bill to require California's county coroners to report to the medical board all fatal overdoses involving prescription drugs, so the board can determine whether excessive prescribing played a role.

George Engelke manages his CVS prescriptions online. If he needs more of a medicine, he orders it. If he's going to be away from his Corona del Mar home, he tells the pharmacy where to send the shipment. He's never asked CVS to automatically refill his prescriptions. Engelke, 76, recently returned from a vacation in Montana, where he had CVS send a single order of his glaucoma medication and syringes for insulin injections. He got a call from the drugstore the other day informing him that they'd taken the liberty of sending another batch of supplies to the Montana address.

Treatment drugs can do more than improve the health of people with HIV: If administered early, medications can also reduce the spread of the disease to sexual partners and may help stem the AIDS epidemic. But many logistical hurdles stand in the way of making this strategy feasible, affordable and effective, according to experts writing in Tuesday's edition of the journal PLoS Medicine. The medications in question are antiretroviral therapies, which prevent HIV from multiplying and drastically diminish the amount of virus circulating in the blood.

California requires health insurance companies to cover in-vitro fertilization, bone-density screening for osteoporosis and chiropractic sessions. Curiously, it doesn't do the same for treatments to help smokers quit. Kicking the habit is, of course, a tremendous boon to the health of individual smokers, but it's also good public policy and potentially beneficial to insurance companies. Effective smoking-cessation treatments — which include certain medications, nicotine gums and patches, and group counseling — seldom cost more than a few hundred dollars and double the success rate over trying to quit without help.

Some drugs are so common that consumers -- at their peril -- don't think twice about them. But each drug, whether prescription or over-the-counter, poses risks. We offer a few details on five of the most-prescribed medications. Hydrocodone with acetaminophen Brand names: Vicodin, Lortab Description: A combination of a narcotic ( hydrocodone ) with a non-narcotic ( acetaminophen ) pain reliever, it's prescribed for moderate to severe pain. Pharmacists say . . . : Check the labels of any other medications you are taking to see if they contain acetaminophen, and only take one source of acetaminophen at a time.

The family of drugs that includes the over-the-counter medications Benadryl, Dramamine, Excedrin PM, Sominex and Tylenol PM can double the risk of impaired thinking in elderly African Americans, and presumably in Caucasians as well, researchers said Tuesday. The family, called anticholinergics, blocks the activity of the neurotransmitter acetylchoine, and also includes the prescription drugs Paxil, Detrol, Demerol and Elavil. Most of the anticholinergics are used by the elderly to aid sleep and to relieve bladder leakage problems.