European regulators have banned 22 hair dye chemicals as part of a safety investigation prompted by a study linking dyes to bladder cancer.
But cosmetics industry officials tell WebMD consumers have little cause for concern, because the chemicals are virtually nonexistent in commercial hair products sold in Europe and the United States.
The ban, which takes effect Dec. 1, came as part of an overall safety review of hair dyes being conducted by the European Union's regulatory agency, the European Commission.

The findings of a new case controlled study has been published in the August issue of the journal Birth Defects Research Part B, which is published by John Wiley & Sons, states that congenital birth defects especially cardiac septal defects, could be associated with the use of NSAID by women in their first trimester.

Women who took first-trimester NSAIDs also had more than three times the risk of anomalies related to cardiac septal closure, mainly ventricular and atrial septal defects, the investigators found.

A CDC survey found three infant deaths in 2005 associated with cough and cold medicines.
According to the report, in the latest MMWR, the infants ranged in age from 1 to 6 months, and all had high blood levels of what appeared to be pseudoephedrine. The survey was based on e-mail queries to medical examiners and a review of news and journal reports, and because the response was low, the CDC cautioned that the total might have underestimated the true number of cases.

Higher doses of sildenafil impair olfactory function, which is possibly linked to an impairment in nasal airflow that sildenafil can induce, German researchers report in the January issue of The Journal of Urology.

A team led by Dr. V. Gudziol at the University of Dresden Medical School studied 20 healthy, young male volunteers who received 50 mg, 100 mg and placebo in random order in a double-blind, crossover trial.

خلفية عن الدراسة:

حالات الاكتئاب والإصابة بالكسور الناتجة عن هشاشة العظام تعتبر من الأمراض الشائعة بين كبار السن، وحيث أن مضادات الاكتئاب المانعة لإعادة امتصاص السيروتونين الانتقائية (SSRIs) تستخدم بشكل شائع لعلاج حالات الاكتئاب فإن العلاقة بين استخدامها اليومي وقابلية حدوث الكسور في العظام غير واضحة.

FDA informed consumers and healthcare professionals of the potential hazards of using skin numbing products containing topical anesthetic drugs such as lidocaine, tetracaine, benzocaine, and prilocaine in a cream, ointment, or gel. Numbing products are widely used to numb the skin for medical and cosmetic procedures, and to relieve pain, burning and itching due to a variety of medical conditions. FDA has approved many of these products for these uses. Some of these products must be prescribed by a doctor, others may be purchased without a prescription.