If you take antidepressants such as fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) early in your pregnancy, you may be doubling the risk that your newborn will be born with a heart defect, according to a new study. However, the vast majority of children born to women who take such antidepressants – known…
The Institute of Medicine will study a U.S. Food and Drug administration program that gives fast-track approval to certain medical devices. Consumer watchdog groups, lawmakers and others have criticized the FDA for using the accelerated approval process for more products than Congress originally intended, leading to problems with devices after…
A Santa Clara County jury this week awarded a former college student more than $49 million in damages, finding that two truckers and state transportation officials were to blame for a 2007 accident on Highway 152 that left him permanently brain damaged. In one of the county’s largest personal injury…
Merck & Co. is paying claims by the families of more than 3,100 users of its Vioxx painkiller who died of heart attacks or strokes blamed on the drug, according to a law firm administering a $4.85 billion settlement fund. The fund will pay about 3,000 claims for heart attack…
New studies point to an increased risk of Paxil birth defects in babies whose mothers use the antidepressant during pregnancy. According to the findings of two studies, women who were taking Paxil during their first trimester were one and a half to two times more likely to have a baby…
Bayer AG, Germany’s largest drugmaker, said its Yaz contraceptive is part of an investigation by a Swiss health regulator into the death of a young woman who took the pill. The Swissmedic agency and an investigative judge are looking into the case of the woman, who died from the effects…
As Reported in the NY Times. Read the full article here. The oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin are the top-selling pharmaceutical line for Bayer HealthCare, largely as a result of marketing that presents them as much more than mere pregnancy prevention. Yaz, in particular, the top-selling birth control pill in…
A faint rotten-egg smell drifts off a covered lagoon a hundred yards from a well-traveled Missouri gravel road. This is battleground — ground zero in what some see as a high-stakes fight for the future of Missouri agriculture. But in Kansas City law offices 80 miles away, combatants prepare for…
In 2003, GSK initiated a retrospective analysis of women, dating back to 1995, who had taken antidepressants in the first trimester of their pregnancies and had given birth to children with major congenital malformations. The study found an association between Paxil and congenital malformations in mothers taking Paxil in the…
Switzerland’s medicines supervisor has said it will investigate allegations an oral contraceptive contributed to a fatal lung embolism in a woman. The embolism occurred ten months after the woman starting taking Yaz birth control pills produced by German firm Bayer. She died in mid-September. Swissmedic announced on Friday it would…