Life, Health and Enjoyment

The 10 most prescribed drugs in the U.S. aren't the drugs on which we spend the most, according to a report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The institute is the public face of IMS, a pharmaceutical market intelligence firm. Its latest report provides a wealth of data on U.S. prescription drug use. Continuing a major trend, IMS finds that 78% of the nearly 4 billion U.S. prescriptions written in 2010 were for generic drugs (both unbranded and those still sold under a brand name). In order of number of prescriptions written in 2010, the 10 most-prescribed drugs in the U.S. are: Hydrocodone (combined with acetaminophen) -- 131.2 million prescriptions Generic Zocor (simvastatin), a cholesterol-lowering statin drug -- 94.1 million prescriptions Lisinopril (brand names include Prinivil and Zestril), a blood pressure drug -- 87.4 million prescriptions Generic Synthroid (levothyroxine sodium), synthetic thyroid hormone -- 70.5 million prescriptions Generic ...

Daliresp Will Be Sold in Pill Form to Treat Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease March 1, 2011 -- The FDA has approved a new treatment for people with worsening symptoms of severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a lung disorder that makes breathing difficult. The drug, roflumilast -- carrying the trade name Daliresp -- will be sold in pill form, unlike some other medications for COPD, which are inhaled. The FDA says roflumilast, a new drug class for COPD treatment, is an inhibitor of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type 4 (PDE-4). The pill is recommended for people with severe COPD to treat symptoms of cough and excess mucus linked to bronchitis. It is not intended to treat another form of COPD, which involves primary emphysema. The FDA's approval was announced even though the agency's advisory panel voted 10-5 on April 7, 2010, not to recommend approval of the once-daily pill. At the time the panel members decided the drug had too many adverse effect...

Please click the link below to star your Quiz. How well do you know love

Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold. But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years. Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago. "Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph. He intends to use Dr Wakayama's technique to identify the nuclei of viable mammoth cells before extracting the healthy ones. The nuclei will then be inserted into the egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as the surrogate mother for ...

A mysterious syndrome in which men come down with a flu-like illness after an orgasm may be caused by an allergy to semen, Dutch scientists said Monday. Men with the condition, known as post orgasmic illness syndrome or POIS and documented in medical journals since 2002, get flu-like symptoms such as feverishness, runny nose, extreme fatigue and burning eyes immediately after they ejaculate. Symptoms can last for up to week. Marcel Waldinger, a professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, published two studies which suggest that men with POIS have an allergy to their own semen, and that a treatment known as hyposensitisation therapy can help reduce its impact. "These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome," Waldinger said in a telephone interview. He said the findings "contradict the idea that the complaints have a psychological cause" and show that an auto-allergic reaction to semen is th...

A German porn actress suffered a fatal heart attack following her sixth breast augmentation operation, leading to a police investigation. "Sexy Cora," a 23-year-old porn actress and former Big Brother reality television star was in a coma for nine days after complications during the operation to increase her breast size from an F to a G cup, according to German media reports Friday. She died Thursday at the Hamburg University Hospital, leading to an investigation into the Hamburg plastic surgery clinic where she received the breast operation. "The brain damage was too great. Her blood pressure dropped steadily, physiological functions gave out ... then she went to sleep quietly," husband Tim Wosnitza told the German newspaper Bild. German police are investigating the 54-year-old anesthesiologist and the 49-year-old surgeon who performed the operation on suspicion of negligent homicide. Stern magazine said Sexy Cora's death also raised serious questions...