Prescription Plan
  Free Medicine

  Prescription Card
  United Project
 

Click here to add your site to Health Resources

Birth control pill poses no added health risk
One of the world’s largest studies of the contraceptive pill has found that women who have taken it can expect longer lives and are less likely to die from any cause, including cancer and heart disease. British researchers said their study, which should reassure many millions of women across the world who have taken oral birth control pills, found no link between the drugs and an increased long-term risk of dying sooner. “The results of this study are enormously reassuring and suggest that in the longer term the health benefits of the contraceptive pill outweigh any risks,” said Richard Anderson of Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council human reproductive sciences unit, who was not involved in the study.

New study identifies best treatment for childhood epilepsy
One of the oldest available anti-seizure medications, ethosuximide, is the most effective treatment for childhood absence epilepsy, according to initial outcomes published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital is one of 32 comprehensive pediatric epilepsy centers nationwide selected to participate in this landmark clinical trial as part of the NIH Childhood Absence Epilepsy Study Group. The study group compared three medications typically used to treat the most common childhood epilepsy syndrome, childhood absence epilepsy, which is characterized by frequent non-convulsive seizures that cause the child to stop what he or she is doing and stare for up to 30 seconds at time. 

15 Years After ACL Knee Reconstruction, 84% of Male Patients Still Highly Active
Eighty-four percent of males who had ACL knee (anterior cruciate ligament) reconstruction with a patellar tendon (the tendon that attaches the knee to the front of the tibia or shin bone) graft continue at a high level of activity 15 years later, according to a study presented today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine’s Specialty Day in New Orleans, Louisiana (March 13). Additionally, these patients have not developed severe osteoarthritis and their knees remain stable. “We have done this procedure for many years and this study looks at patients as far back as 17 years,” said Leo Pinczewski, MD, corresponding author and consultant surgeon at the North Sydney Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Centre, Wollstonecraft, Australia. “The results of this technique, which was new almost 20 years ago, were excellent at five years, outstanding at 10 years and still very, very good at 15 years. Patients went back to sport quickly, had an easy rehabilitation with no brace and were frequently walking straight away.” The goal of ACL knee surgery is to stabilize the knee with a short rehabilitation letting patients get back to an active lifestyle. Long-term, the surgery aims to prevent additional damage to the knee and minimize osteoarthritis.

Kids outgrow growing pains: study
Most youngsters grow out of having otherwise unexplained bone and muscle aches known as growing pains, researchers from Israel report. Of 35 children who originally had growing pains, Dr. Yosef Uziel, at Meir Medical Center in Kfar-Saba, and co-investigators found that 18—or 51 percent—no longer had growing pains 5 years later, when they were about 13 years old. Fourteen of the 17 who still had growing pains after 5 years said their episodes had decreased and become milder, the researchers report in The Journal of Pediatrics. 

Center Aims to Cut Obesity in Black, Latino New Yorkers
A $6 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has funded the creation of ORBIT: Obesity Related Behavioral Intervention Trials to focus on reducing obesity and obesity-related deaths in New York City’s African-American and Latino communities. “African-Americans and Latinos have been disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, and its related risks for diabetes and heart disease,” says Dr. Mary Charlson, the center’s director, the William T. Foley Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and chief of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluative Sciences Research in the Department of Medicine and executive director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “To address obesity, we will focus on changing eating behaviors.” Stress, certain visual cues, even someone’s mood can all have a substantial impact on behavior and eating, she continues. “By affecting changes in these areas we think people will be able to achieve sustainable weight loss.”