What good are drugs if patients don’t take them? That’s exactly what reporter Katherine Hobson asks in her article for The Wall Street Journal, “How Can You Help the Medicine Go Down?” According to the World Health Organization, half of chronically ill patients in the developed world don’t take their drugs properly, while another study estimates that 90,000 premature deaths in the U.S. are due to poor adherence to high blood pressure treatment alone.

Known to invoke feelings of ecstasy, the eponymous illicit party drug, also known as MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is the cause of an increasing number of medical emergencies, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In 2008, 17,865 patients were treated for problems related to Ecstasy, a figure that spiked by 75 percent compared to 10,220 cases treated in 2004.

After allegations were made linking the diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) to an increased risk of heart attack, it was taken off the market in Europe, and its use was severely restricted here by the FDA. Now a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine gives hope that a related “glitazone” drug, pioglitazone (Actos), may actually be able to stave off diabetes.

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s new melanoma drug Yervoy won approval from the FDA on Friday after a randomized clinical trial showed that patients with metastatic melanoma treated with the drug lived about four months longer than patients in the control group — although the median survival among the treated patients was only ten months. Consisting of four infusions spread out over a three-month period, this complete course of Yervoy treatment will cost $120,000.

Varicella zoster virus (VZV), the pathogen that causes chickenpox when first encountered in early childhood, can reawaken decades later and cause the painful skin eruption known as shingles. While rarely life-threatening, shingles — a disease with an incidence of one million new cases in the U.S. each year — can be debilitating.

Transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) may be referred to as “mini-strokes,” but there’s nothing mini about the increased risk for stroke and heart attack which comes in their wake.

Back pain sufferers unable to find relief from physical therapy or pain medications may look to alternative therapies for a solution, particularly acupuncture. If you are considering acupuncture, you may want to consider the results of a new meta-analysis showing that the procedure may pose more risks than benefits.

Patients with locally advanced prostate cancer may benefit from a six month hormone treatment, according to a new Lancet Oncology study.

Some West Virginia University researchers are frying up a skillet of fear for pre-menopausal women. Published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), a new study alleges that the perfluorocarbons (PFCs) — referred to as “gender bending chemicals” by U.K.

Is the U.S. moving towards health care rationing? Taking note of the U.S. FDA s plan to remove Avastin s breast cancer indication pending an appeal by the drugs manufacturer, Genentech, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross warns against the FDA trend towards using treatment cost as a factor in the drug approval process in an op-ed published in yesterday s Medical News Today. Meanwhile, the U.K. is beginning to remove cost from its list of regulatory considerations.