If You Take This To Stop Smoking, You May Have a Heart Attack
If you take this to stop smoking, you may have a heart attack.
The newest drug to help people stop smoking seems to cause heart attaks in a small but significant number of users:
Our meta-analysis raises safety concerns about the potential for an increased risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of varenicline among tobacco users. Despite the limitations of our analysis, our findings have potential regulatory and clinical implications. Drugs that receive priority review have limited safety data at the time of approval.34 The initial safety signal regarding ardiovascular events in people using varenicline was not followed up by an adequately powered safety trial. Until such trials are conducted, clinicians should carefully balance the risk of serious cardiovascular events and serious neuropsychiatric adverse events associated with varenicline use against the known benefits of the drug on smoking cessation.
This is in addition to the major mood disorders that it (Chantix) sometimes causes.
Once again, we see that many pharmaceuticals have surprising risks that are not noticed by the FDA until long after they are released. Proceed with caution…
It’s A Boy!
It’s a Boy!
We just had a new baby. On June 14th, my wife gave birth to a 7 lb 4 oz baby boy by C-section due to “breech presentation” (he was right-side up instead of the usual head first position). We’ve named him William Edward, after my father.
He’s been in and out of the hospital due to jaundice. He was put under the “Bili lights’ and received a new (to me at least) IV immunoglobulin treatment. Fortunately, he’s doing well and his mom is well, too. He’s still a little yellow, but it appears to be a benign condition called “breast milk jaundice”.
Many thanks to Drs. Cahill, Gennaro and Grafani (the OB’s) and Dr. Lasky and her partners at the Pediatric Center. More to come…
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