A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal finds that heart patients on antiplatelet agents (such as Plavix and aspirin) who are prescribed a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are at a greater risk of internal bleeding.

In a letter to the FDA on modified risk tobacco products (MRTP), a coalition of public health non-profits, including the American Cancer Society, The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the American Heart Association, cites the tobacco industry s long history of misleading the public. As is now common knowledge, the industry hid the dangers of cigarette smoking, manipulated their products to enhance addictiveness, and marketed to young people. Now, these non-profits have used this history as a springboard to urge the FDA to establish stringent standards for the marketing of MRTP.

Dr. Neal Benowitz, a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, acknowledges that use of smokeless tobacco (ST) could reduce harm to smokers if they switched to the products entirely. He reviewed the literature and found, surprisingly, total agreement with our approach: ST is not a risk for cardiovascular disease and is only a minimal risk for pancreatic cancer (far less than smoking).

We incorrectly referred to Dr. Mehmet Oz as a former physician in yesterday s Dispatch. While we continue to disparage his irresponsible and misleading assault on apple juice, we do apologize for our mischaracterization. To the best of our knowledge, Dr. Oz continues to be a licensed physician.

In 2009, nearly 37,500 people died from drug overdoses in the US. That number, writes Maia Szalavitz in The New York Times, could be significantly lowered if Naloxone (Narcan), a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, were available over-the-counter and placed in every first aid kit.

Last week, we watched incredulously as the very popular TV personality, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former physician, continued to insist that there may be unsafe levels of arsenic in the apple juice parents are serving to their children. Despite the FDA and other experts stepping in to clarify that Dr.

A study just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has found that American consumption of added sugars dipped from 2000 to 2008. We wonder how that information can be correlated with the conventional mantra that added sugar, especially in soda, is the main cause of rampant obesity in America.

Patients suffering from kidney disease rely on dialysis in order to stay alive. Without functioning kidneys to remove the waste and fluids that accumulate in the body, the majority of the 400,000 Americans with this condition have their blood purified by a dialysis machine three days a week.

If you re someone who relies on an over-the-counter inhaler to cope with asthma, you should be sure that you have a doctor s prescription for an albuterol inhaler by the end of this year. The FDA has been phasing out epinephrine inhalers over the past three years, and they will be completely banned by the start of 2012.

In a number of U.S. cities (New York, for instance), bedbugs have become a relatively common concern. Do you also need to be worried about the insecticides used to combat them? Well ¦yes and no.