Text Message to Remember Medication

Some studies suggest only half of adolescents, on average, properly
follow treatment steps, says Dr. Dennis Drotar of Cincinnati Children’s
Hospital. The more medications required or the more troublesome the
side effects – even, for appearance-conscious teens, such things as
weight gain from steroid medications – the worse kids adhere.

To help remind teens to take their meds, two Cincinnati doctors are experimenting with text messages to remind them to take their medications.

ADHD Medications and Heart Tests

Before you let a teacher or school counselor bully you and your child into starting a medication for ADHD. Be aware, a new recommendation from the American Heart Association is recommending all children on stimulants or being considered for stimulants need heart tests. The test is not invasive, a simple EKG or ECG, will determine whether your child is free from cardiac complications related to the stimulant medication.

Studies have shown that stimulant medications like those used to treat ADHD can increase heart rate and blood pressure. These side effects are insignificant for most children with ADHD; however, they’re an important consideration for children who have a heart condition. Certain heart conditions increase the risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD), which occurs when the heart rhythm becomes erratic and doesn’t pump blood through the body.

Large study on antidepressant use among children and adolescents

Duke University is launching a a large study to learn about the role of antidepressants in the treatment of children and adolescents.

The first study to be conducted under the CAPTN
umbrella is ASK, a prospective longitudinal cohort study of 2,420
children and adolescents with a depressive disorder, anxiety disorder,
obsessive-compulsive disorder or eating disorder. The study
participants will be prescribed either a selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitor (SSRI) or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI).
While these two classes of medications are widely used among adults and
prescribed to approximately two to three percent of American children,
questions have arisen about potential adverse events, especially
suicidal events, associated with use of these medications. Through ASK,
information will be collected about the safety, tolerability,
effectiveness and potential benefits of these medications.

Muscle cream kills teen

A cross country runner lost her life after using an anti-inflammatory rub on cream, like BenGay. These creams contain methyl salicylate and according to to the medical examiner the runner must have lathered herself up in this cream or her body somehow absorbed way to much if a normal amount was applied.

“Chronic use is more dangerous than one-time use,” Edward Arsura, chairman of medicine at Richmond University Medical Center, told the Staten Island Advance on Friday. “Exercise and heat can accentuate absorption.”

Bristol seeks approval of abilify for adolescents

Bristol-Myers is seeking U.S approval for the antipsychotic medication abilify to be approved for use in adolescents. About 15 percent of antipsychotic sales came from doctors writing prescriptions for uses currently not approved by the FDA, including for adolescents, analysts say. Once the FDA clears a drug for sale, doctors are free to prescribe it for unapproved, “off-label” uses. Drugmakers can’t promote such uses.

Sales of Abilify surged 41 percent last year to $1.3 billion, the biggest increase among antipsychotics, helped by studies showing it caused less weight gain than competing drugs. Sales of Zyprexa grew 3.8 percent to $4.4 billion last year. J&J’s Risperdal generated $4.2 billion, an 18 percent increase.

Antipsychotics link to death in dementia patients

Both newer atypical antipsychotics and older conventional antipsychotics increase the risk of death when used in older adults with dementia. In the study of more than 27,000 people 66 years of age or older with dementia between 1997 and 2002. Atypical antipsychotics increased the risk of death within the first month of use and the risk may last as long as six months into treatment. Conventional antipsychotics were associated with a greater risk of death than atypicals at both one month and six months.

“Physicians shouldn’t be using some of these drugs the way they’re using them,” Schneider said, noting that they may not be carefully monitoring patients while they’re taking the drugs and they may keep them on the medications longer than appropriate.

Lithium to treat neurodegenerative disorders

Lithium is one of the oldest psychiatric drugs and still used routinely to treat the symptoms of mood disorders. New results by Huda Zoghbi (Baylor College of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Harry Orr (University of Minnesota) and colleagues now suggest that lithium also holds promise in treating a group of devastating neurodegenerative disorders for which no other treatments exist at present. As the researchers have reported, dietary lithium markedly improved the symptoms in a mouse model of spinocerebellar ataxia.

Read more on this at the Public Library of Science 

A smart pill bottle

Vitality is a pill bottle, “Glow Caps”, that tells you when it is time to take your medication.  It does this by emitting a soft glowing light from the bottle cap when it is time to take your medicine.  Vitality will also send you and your physicians a monthly progress report.  Vitality also totes a service that will call your home phone if you forget to open the bottle.

This looks like a possible solution for patients with memory problems or Alzheimer’s.

The Vitality web page is here. 

High tech pill box

I first read about this new high tech pill box on Engadget. I provided a link to The San Antonio News Express Coverage. A new wallet-sized computerized pillbox helps people manage their medication and remember to take their pills on schedule.

The portable device beeps when it’s time to take a pill, and it records the time and frequency of the lid openings on its four drug bins. Lifetechniques Inc., which relocated from Santa Barbara, Calif., to San Antonio a year ago, invented the device, called MedSignals. It sits in a cradle that connects to a telephone and electrical line and is programmed to dial a toll-free number once a day to upload information.

Dosing schedule does not matter

This is from the American Psychological Association via MedPage Today:

Frequency of dosing of antipsychotic agents does not appear to affect medication adherence in most patients with schizophrenia, reported investigators here.

Patients who are stable on an antipsychotic agent are just as likely to adhere to their regimen whether the drug is prescribed once or twice daily, according to Paul Pfeiffer, M.D., and colleagues of the VA Center for Practice Management an  Outcomes Research and the University of Michigan, both in Ann Arbor.