Side Effects

It's a common refrain in Gia D'Anna's office: Extra inches that childbirth or time left around the middle are resisting diet and exercise. D'Anna is the office manager for a Lutherville plastic surgeon, and, as a mother, she sympathizes with the patients. She just got her own flat tummy back last year. Her boss, Dr. Ronald H. Schuster, had bought a machine that aimed to zap muffin tops and love handles via low temperatures. He was looking for volunteers on the staff before he rolled out the service to patients.

It's a common refrain in Gia D'Anna's office: Extra inches that childbirth or time left around the middle are resisting diet and exercise. D'Anna is the office manager for a Lutherville plastic surgeon, and, as a mother, she sympathizes with the patients. She just got her own flat tummy back last year. Her boss, Dr. Ronald H. Schuster, had bought a machine that aimed to zap muffin tops and love handles via low temperatures. He was looking for volunteers on the staff before he rolled out the service to patients.

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medicine that uses needles for treatment, is increasingly being used with cancer patients. Dr. Ting Bao, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and faculty at Maryland's Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center and Center for Integrative Medicine, regularly used acupuncture to alleviate pain and treat side effects. Question : How common is it for cancer patients to seek relief using acupuncture? Answer : It is difficult for me to come up with a percentage because there have not been many studies performed to answer this question yet. What I can say is that based on my experience at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center, more and more cancer patients are interested in integrating acupuncture into their cancer treatment.

Over the past 50 years, we have gone from major league athletes with offseason jobs to young athletes with, often, no offseason at all, from parents sticking their heads out the back door to call their children home from play to parents rushing out the door for the next officially sanctioned event. Historically, children have played sports for fun, with the wonderful byproduct of learning life's lessons. Today, achievement in a single sport seems to be the increasing focus. Some parents are choosing year-round lacrosse-only participation for their children long before they have experienced a wide range of other activities.

I am in very good health except for recurrent sinus infections. Recently, my internist put me on a 12-day tapered course of prednisone. Within days, I thought I was going crazy. I became extremely agitated and irritable, and the least little thing set me off. I didn't sleep for three days, even with sleeping pills. I couldn't concentrate. My blood pressure soared, and I became very fearful. My doctor never warned me about any of this. Are these normal side effects of prednisone, and what will I do if I have to take this drug again?

The drug most commonly used to delay pre-term labor in pregnant women has more - and more serious - side effects than alternatives without being any more effective, Stanford University researchers reported yesterday. The drug might cause harm to infants, they concluded. Although it is generally not possible to stop labor completely, physicians try to delay it for at least 48 hours to allow transfer of the mother to a specialized hospital and to maximize the effectiveness of steroids used to help the lungs of the fetus mature.

One of the reasons I originally agreed to develop a weekly column on women's health is my commitment to giving women the information they need to make informed decisions about their own health. And because of their unique ability to conceive and create life, women's decisions are often intrinsically more complicated than men's.The acne medicine Accutane is an extremely effective medication, but for women in particular it also has potentially serious side effects. The decision about whether to use this drug provides an excellent example of the kinds of decisions women must make and the kind of responsibility they must take.

In the wake of the Vioxx fiasco, is there anyplace a consumer can get reliable information, especially on adverse side effects, about drugs already on the market? Dr. Jerry Avorn, author of Powerful Medicines and chief of the division of pharmacoepidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, put it bluntly: "It's hard for a consumer to find a ready source of vetted information." Imagine, for instance, that you want information on Ambien (zolpidem), the popular sleeping pill. You'd probably start with the Food and Drug Administration Web site (www.

A new epilepsy drug, the first approved in 15 years, promises to control seizures without the harsh side effects common with more traditional treatment.Felbatol was approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent epileptic seizures in people 14 and older, or in the 10 percent of children with epilepsy who have seizures from a condition called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, which are difficult to treat.But the drug is likely to be used, as many drugs are, for other patients, including younger children or people with mild seizures.

Q. I will be traveling to Kenya and will need to take anti-malaria medication. I've heard conflicting information regarding side effects of Lariam. Some authorities state that this medicine has a low level of side effects. But I have also heard testimonials from people who have had panic attacks after taking this drug. Do you have any information on this? Is there any alternative? A. Lariam (mefloquine) has made headlines because the Army is investigating the drug's possible connection to a series of domestic murders and suicides at Fort Bragg, N.C. The soldiers had taken Lariam to prevent malaria while on active duty.

I am surprised that the Towson Times (Feb. 15) would endorse the medical marijuana bill favored by state Del. Dan Morhaim (HB1158) and not endorse the medical marijuana bill (HB1024) favored by Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Sharfstein has an outstanding record in protecting public health from untoward side effects of drugs and other consumer products, and there is ample reason to believe his stance on medical marijuana is based on similar concerns.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent advisory panel, recently recommended that healthy men not be given PSA blood tests to detect prostate cancer. But that won't mean the end of diagnosis and treatment of the disease, the most common cancer and the second most common cause of cancer death in American men. Dr. E. James Wright, associate professor and director of the Division of Reconstructive and Neurological Urology and chief of urology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, answers questions about diagnosis and the latest treatments, including measures to mitigate side effects such as incontinence and impotence.

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medicine that uses needles for treatment, is increasingly being used with cancer patients. Dr. Ting Bao, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and faculty at Maryland's Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center and Center for Integrative Medicine, regularly used acupuncture to alleviate pain and treat side effects. Question : How common is it for cancer patients to seek relief using acupuncture? Answer : It is difficult for me to come up with a percentage because there have not been many studies performed to answer this question yet. What I can say is that based on my experience at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center, more and more cancer patients are interested in integrating acupuncture into their cancer treatment.

When Malcolm Coley was diagnosed with HIV, he began preparing to die. The Baltimore man, a former heroin user who suspects he contracted the virus by sharing needles, packed his bags and moved to Washington to live his last days closer to family. "I figured the end was near," he says. That was 1988. More than two decades later, Coley, 54, is, in his words, "still hanging around. " He traded drugs long ago for a healthful diet, owns his own home, works for a Baltimore nonprofit and volunteers as an AIDS educator, talking to students and adults about living with HIV. As advances in treatment have turned what was once a virtual death sentence into a livable condition, the HIV/AIDS population is aging.

Johns Hopkins University officials said Monday that they will use a $30 million gift from a former student to build a home for a center for personalized medicine, a growing field that uses genetic information to tailor treatments for cancer and other ailments. The gift from John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp., is the largest ever made to the Whiting School of Engineering and will help link scientists from many fields in medical research. The center, to be housed on the Homewood campus, will draw on the expertise of scientists around the school, including biomedical and systems engineers, physicians, nurses and public health researchers, Hopkins officials said.

I definitely support City Council member Kevin Kamenetz's plan to bring about a law making K2 and chemicals that have similar effects illegal ("Days of 'legal pot' could be numbered in Balto. County," Aug. 17). I think that if marijuana is outlawed, substances that share its effects should be too. They seem as if they are equally dangerous, having the same side effects such as racing heartbeats, headaches, and high blood pressure. If they have that much in common, it is possible that K2 and the like may be every bit as addicting as pot. Finally, the fact that K2 is so readily available is frightening; at least marijuana isn't so easy to get a hold of. The fact that it is in Ocean City is also a great cause of concern, given how many recent graduates go there for senior each year.

RANDOM THOUGHTS on the passing scene: Sometimes I have so much to do that I don't do anything. As a result of "evolving standards" and "nuanced" judicial decisions, we no longer have clear-cut rights. We have a ticket to a crapshoot in a courtroom. What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way: "Demagoguery beats data." If anyone ever doubts that Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player of all time, ask him: How many shutouts did Barry Bonds ever pitch?

Do you ever feel you are running uphill with lead overshoes? pTC No matter how hard you try, it's difficult to make much progress.Some people find themselves locked in a vicious cycle like hamsters in a treadmill. They get put on a medicine that causes side effects. Other drugs are added to combat the complications from the first medication. Eventually they find themselves taking a handful of pills that may all have negative consequences.We recently received a poignant letter from a mother whose daughter is trapped in an ongoing battle with depression:"My daughter is 39 years old, with a history of ovarian cysts.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine has won a $7.9 million federal grant to acquire an eight-ton, two-story imaging device that will help researchers in the region find new ways to treat cancer, AIDS and other diseases. The device, a spectrometer, houses a superconducting magnet, and is a kind of MRI machine for researching molecules rather than diagnosing people. And once it's installed in November 2011, it will be only one of two in the country; the other is in North Carolina.

Treating twisted, bulging varicose veins used to require painful invasive surgery. Today, a booming industry beckons patients with free screenings and deals on "lunch break" treatments promising faster, more effective and painless procedures. But how do you know which treatment to choose - or if you need to be treated at all? Are varicose veins a legitimate medical problem, or purely cosmetic? For many of the estimated 20 million Americans with the condition, varicose veins are ugly and bothersome, not an indication of a medical problem.