Belize Medical And Dental Association

Using a U.K. general practice database, researchers identified some 14,000 bowel disease patients with a recent prescription for corticosteroids and some 72,000 controls without inflammatory bowel disease matched for age, sex, and provider. In the 4 months after patients received the prescription (corresponding to a likely disease flare-up), the relative risk for VTE outside the hospital setting was roughly 16 (absolute risk, 6.4 per 1000 person-years).

Researchers examined data on some 1700 visits to GPs for new low back pain from 2005 to 2008, after national guidelines for treating musculoskeletal pain were released. Among the findings:

The new labeling, recommended by an FDA advisory panel late last year, also marks the first time that a drug label will include an indication based on the biomarker highly-sensitive C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker.

The new indication would be for men 50 or older and women 60 or older who have fasting LDL of less than 130 mg/dL, a highly-sensitive CRP of 2.0 mg/L or greater, triglycerides of less than 500 mg/dL, and no prior history of heart attack or stroke, or coronary heart disease risk.

Many patients and parents use kitchen spoons to dose liquid medications, but the accuracy of spoon dosing is questionable. These authors conducted a simple study in 195 university students to examine the effect of spoon size on dosing of liquid medication.