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Stevens-Johnson Syndrome...
The worst side effect you've never heard of
4/20/2011 - Common drugs can trigger rare and sometimes deadly Stevens-Johnson Syndrome
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Grandsons may be affected by old pregnancy drug
4/20/2011 - Diethylstilbestrol was prescribed decades ago to prevent pregnancy complications
The worst side effect you've never heard of
4/20/2011 - Common drugs can trigger rare and sometimes deadly Stevens-Johnson Syndrome
It only took two small pills to alter the course of Veronica Zenkner’s life forever. Seven years ago, Zenkner, then 13, popped a couple of ibuprofens over the course of two days, hoping to get rid of a headache — something she’d done many times in the past. But this time the drug triggered an allergic reaction that left the basketball-loving teen fighting for her life in a hospital burn unit. Zenkner, now 20, was a victim of one of the most frightening drug side effects you've likely never heard of: Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a rare but devastating condition where the top layer of skin and mucous membranes, such as those covering the eyes and lips, blisters and peels off in waves. It can even affect the internal organs like the lungs. Some patients go blind. Some wind up with severe scarring. Some patients die.
In about half of all cases, doctors don’t know what jumpstarts the syndrome. Sometimes an infection is to blame. Or, in rare cases, a malignancy. But one of the most likely causes lurks in the medicine cabinet: over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Although virtually any drug can cause the disorder, the medications most often implicated include anticonvulsants, antibiotics like penicillin and sulfonamides, and common anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin, naproxen and ibuprofen, like Zenkner took.
Some over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen, for example, warn consumers of “severe allergic reactions,” such as rash, blisters or facial swelling, with no mention of SJS specifically, or its devastating effects. But other drugs such as the anticonvulsant Lamictal (lamotrogine) carry the FDA’s black box warning, cautioning physicians about the potential for patients to develop SJS. But the problem is that most of us don’t pay much attention to those labels — or recognize what the warning really means. In cases where SJS does develop, recognizing the symptoms and stopping the medication immediately is key, but many don't even know what to look for, experts say.
More The worst side effect you've never heard of - Health - Health care - More health news - msnbc.com
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Grandsons may be affected by old pregnancy drug
4/20/2011 - Diethylstilbestrol was prescribed decades ago to prevent pregnancy complications
Four decades after doctors realized that a drug called DES — used to prevent pregnancy complications — had devastating consequences for babies, a new study finds those effects may be reverberating into the third generation. French researchers report that the grandsons of women who took diethylstilbestrol (DES) are more likely than other men to have deformations in the opening of the penis. Doctors prescribed DES to pregnant women in the mid-20th century until research, published 40 years ago this week, revealed a tragic side effect: girls exposed in the womb have a vastly higher chance of developing a cancer in the vagina. Later studies found that girls whose mothers took DES while pregnant were also more likely to have birth defects and fertility problems.
One of the birth defects suspected in boys is hypospadias, in which the urethra (the tube that carries urine) ends somewhere along the penis or close to the scrotum, rather than at the tip of the penis. About 4 out of every 1,000 boys are born with hypospadias. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it's unclear whether DES increased the risk of hypospadias, but some studies have shown a link. Previous studies have also suggested that the effects of DES might transmit down to the third generation - to the grandchildren of women who took the drug.
In this study, Dr. Nicolas Kalfa at Universite Montpellie and colleagues looked at the number of hypospadias cases among the sons and grandsons of a group of women who took DES. The women reported using DES during 1,000 pregnancies, and did not take the drug during 180 pregnancies. About 3 out of every 100 boys exposed to DES while their mother was pregnant had the defect. There were no cases of hypospadias when mothers did not take DES. Among grandsons, the only ones to have the malformation were the sons of daughters who were exposed to the drug prenatally. Eight out of every 100 grandsons in this group had hypospadias.
More http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42685291/ns/health-pregnancy/
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