Pharmacology

Doctors typically prescribe several drugs to patients with mental health conditions in order to treat the various symptoms. For example, a person with bipolar disorder may be prescribed one drug to treat mania and another to treat depression. But there’s limited evidence on how combinations of drugs interact, or how diet and nutrition influence their effects. Our study on the effects of combinations of psychiatric drugs and a common dietary supplement had surprising results – results that show just how poorly understood and under-researched this area is. We found that combining drug…

Pharmaceutical companies take a lot of cultural heat for high prices, politicians routinely criticize them to score political points, but at least they did real discovery. One out of 5,000 candidates will make it to market, and then it has to be successfully promoted to make back costs that routinely run into the billions of dollars. Generic companies, on the other hand, get a free pass. They do no work, they just start manufacturing after the real work has been done and the patent expires. Yet the cost savings generic drugs were supposed to bring has not really come to pass. Companies only…

Everyone loves D, the sunshine vitamin. Doctors, patients and the media have been enamored with vitamin D supplements for decades. As well as their clear benefit in curing severe vitamin D deficiencies, endless headlines hail their magical ability to reduce a vast range of conditions from dementia to cancer. Medical specialists such as myself have been promoting supplements to our patients with osteoporosis and other bone problems for decades. Many food products contain artificially added vitamin D with the aim of preventing fractures and falls and improving muscle strength although the…

Folic acid has long been touted as an important supplement for expectant mothers, to prevent defects in the baby’s developing brain and spinal cord. It is added as a supplement to breads, pastas, rice and cereals to help ensure that women are exposed to sufficient amounts of this nutrient even before they know they’re pregnant. In that vein, a team of scholars writing in Cell Reports suggest the supplement carnitine could protect against a certain type of autism. Some one percent of Americans are afflicted with autism, and the annual cost of autism management in the United States…

LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide), ecstasy (MDMA), magic mushrooms (psilocybin) and marijuana have long been designated as drugs of abuse, but they didn't start out that way. The intention for all of them there was first therapautic, and there has been a resurgence of interest in utilizing psychedelic/psychoactive substances in treating mental disorders including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and addictions. In the 1950’s and 1960’s psychedelics, particularly lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), offered significant promise in the treatment of a broad range of…

Epigenetics is spreading its wings out to the painkiller world, at least in an animal model. Of course, it is well-known that just about everything has been linked to causing cancer in rats. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has studied hundreds and hundreds of compounds and only one substance has been placed into group 4 (probably not carcinogenic) so if your name gets mentioned in a meeting, you are going to be found to cause cancer. So don't worry just yet. Unless you are raising money for an environmental group or work at a law group, there is a huge gas…

There are not many "nicotine naïve" teens using e-cigarettes - who have never tried cigarettes - but of those few who do, they are more likely to try the real thing a year later than those who have never vaped, indicates survey results in the journal Tobacco Control. However, subsequent regular smoking is linked only to higher levels of e-cigarette use at the outset, which sends statistical experts into all kinds of alarm. Regardless, almost everyone is in agreement that teens should not be using e-cigarettes, cigarettes or various other things that involve lungs and inhalation, one…

Ayahuasca, known by various names by different indigenous groups in South America, is a generic term commonly associated with preparations of the mildly psychoactive vine Banisteriopsis caapi. Ayahuasca literally translates from the Quechua language of the North Andes as “soul vine” or “vine of the dead” and has traditionally been consumed by indigenous communities such as the Aruák, Chocó, Jívaro, Pano, and Tukano across the upper reaches of the Amazon River system in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Ayahuasca is most commonly consumed by indigenous communities in liquid form…

Over the last few decades, medicine has witnessed a sea change in attitudes toward chronic pain, and particularly toward opioids. While these changes were intended to bring relief to many, they have also fed an epidemic of prescription opioid and heroin abuse. Curbing abuse is a challenge spilling over into the 2016 political campaigns. Amid calls for better addiction treatment and prescription monitoring, it might be time for doctors to rethink how to treat chronic pain. Ancient roots, modern challenges A class of drugs that includes morphine and hydrocodone, opioids get their name from…

Recreational marijuana use is now legal in four states and "medical" marijuana in 23 states. Research on legalization policies has focused largely on direct impact - how they impact marijuana access and use. What is little discussed is that marijuana increases alcohol use. Alcohol is the world's  most popular drug, the majority of adults in the U.S. imbibe to varying degrees and drinking accounts for almost one-third of driving fatalities annually. If you like pretend money estimates, it is claimed that alcohol use cost $223.5 billion in 2006 alone. But people who willingly throw out…