Health beat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tuesday, August 05, 2008Rapid rise seen in fatal medication errors at home
CHICAGO -- Deaths from medication mistakes at home rose dramatically during the past two decades, an analysis of U.S. death certificates finds.
The authors blame soaring home use of prescription painkillers and other potent drugs, which 25 years ago were given mainly inside hospitals.
The findings, based on nearly 50 million U.S. death certificates, were published in last week's Archives of Internal Medicine. Of those, more than 224,000 involved fatal medication errors, including overdoses and mixing prescription drugs with alcohol or street drugs.
Deaths from medication mistakes at home increased from 1,132 deaths in 1983 to 12,426 in 2004. Adjusted for population growth, that amounts to an increase of more than 700 percent during that time.
In contrast, there was only a 5 percent increase in fatal medication errors away from home, including hospitals, and not involving alcohol or street drugs.
Abuse of prescription drugs plays a role, but it's unclear how much. Valid prescriptions taken in error account for a growing number of deaths, said experts who reviewed the study.
The increases coincided with changing attitudes about painkillers among doctors who now regard pain management as a key to healing. Multiple prescription drugs taken at once also play a part, experts said.
The increase was steepest in death rates from mixing medicine with alcohol or street drugs at home; that death rate climbed from 0.04 per 100,000 people in 1983 to 1.29 per 100,000 people in 2004. The increase in deaths was highest among people in their 40s and 50s.
Missing DNA chunks tied to schizophrenia risk
NEW YORK -- Two huge international studies show that people who lack certain chunks of DNA run a dramatically higher risk of getting schizophrenia, a finding that could help open new doors to understanding and diagnosing the disease.
These deletions are rare, each found in less than 1 percent of schizophrenia patients. But each one boosts the risk of disease by as much as 15-fold, by one estimate.
Scientists said studying such abnormalities may help them find new medications by shedding light on what causes the disease. And if enough rare aberrations can be found eventually, they may be combined into a test to help in diagnosis, said Kari Stefansson, chief executive officer of deCode Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland, and an author of one of the studies.
Schizophrenia is currently diagnosed by its symptoms.
The human DNA can be thought of as a very long string of letters -- about 3 billion of them -- that sometimes form words (genes). Each newly identified deletion removes a section of about half a million to 2 million letters.
In the past, scientists have found specific genes and deletions linked to schizophrenia risk. But the new work is notable because two large studies independently identified the same two DNA deletions, and those aberrations have such a big impact on disease risk. Stefansson's paper also reports evidence for a third deletion.
While the DNA deletions are linked to only a tiny fraction of schizophrenia cases, it's not unusual that a very rare cause of a disease provides insights that apply more generally, said Dr. Pamela Sklar of Massachusetts General Hospital, an author of the other paper. She said such knowledge can lead to treatments for many people.
Both papers were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Study: 'Pre-dementia' is rising, especially in men
CHICAGO -- A milder type of mental decline that often precedes Alzheimer's disease is alarmingly more common than has been believed, and in men more than women, doctors reported last week.
Nearly a million older Americans slide from normal memory into mild impairment each year, researchers estimate, based on a Mayo Clinic study of Minnesota residents.
That's on top of the half million Americans who develop full-blown Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia -- a problem sure to grow as baby boomers age. The oldest boomers turn 62 this year.
"We're seeing that, in fact, there's a much larger burgeoning problem out there" of people at risk of developing dementia, said Dr. Ronald Petersen, the Mayo scientist who led the study.
There are no treatments now to prevent this mental slide or reverse it once it starts.
But that may be changing. Researchers reported early, somewhat encouraging results from an experimental nose spray that seemed to improve certain memory measures in a study of mildly impaired people.
The drug, for now just called AL-108, needs testing in a longer, larger study. It is being developed by Allon Therapeutics Inc., based in Vancouver, B.C.
Doctors said it shows the potential for new types of medicines that target the protein tangles that kill nerve cells instead of targeting the sticky brain deposits that have gotten most of the attention up to now.
The studies were reported at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago.
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