Archive for March 24th, 2012
Whitney Houston: How cocaine use compounds heart disease
March 24th, 2012 | 
Author:
The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office reported Thursday that singer Whitney Houston’s death at the Beverly Hills Hotel was an accidental drowning.
Cocaine use and heart disease were contributing factors in her death, officials said …
Cocaine’s negative effects on cardiac health are well-established. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2001, Dr. Richard A. Lange and Dr. L. David Hillis of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas explained how the popular drug can hurt the heart.
By increasing heart rate and blood pressure, they wrote, cocaine amps up demand for oxygen. It also constricts coronary arteries and speeds clotting in arteries leading to the heart. All three can restrict the flow of oxygenated blood to the heart, resulting in tissue death.
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The necessary steps healthcare must take for patient safety
Unlike most other industries, safety in healthcare has a unique set of circumstances to overcome: 1 patients die from errors oneatatime, and 2 we rarely find out exactly why.
Obesity harms “later brain skill”
Being overweight in later life puts you at higher risk of brain decline, Korean research suggests.
A study of 250 people aged between 60 and 70 found those with a high body mass index (BMI) and big waists scored more poorly in cognitive tests.
The Alzheimer's Society said the research, in the journal Age and Ageing, added to evidence that excess body fat can affect brain function.
The necessary steps healthcare must take for patient safety
Unlike most other industries, safety in healthcare has a unique set of circumstances to overcome: 1 patients die from errors oneatatime, and 2 we rarely find out exactly why.
FDA Told to Move on Antibiotic Use in Livestock
A federal judge in New York City has ordered the FDA to start proceedings to revoke approvals for the use of antibiotics in livestock, a practice blamed for the spread of antibiotic-resistant "superbug" bacteria.
Publication Bias Mars Psychiatric Drug Literature
Several negative studies of second-generation antipsychotic drugs were never published, leading to an exaggerated portrayal of the agents’ effectiveness in the scientific literature, researchers said.