May 19th, 2011
Podcast 122: Most newer antiepileptics apparently safer in early pregnancy — but not all.
A paper from Denmark looks at five newer-generation antiepileptics and finds no strong birth-defects signal associated with their use in the first trimester. However, as the senior author points out in a statement to Clinical Conversations, one of the drugs — topiramate — has only recently been cited by the FDA as carrying a risk […]
May 14th, 2011
Podcast 121: NSAIDs Unsafe at Any Dose after MI
Guidelines warn about using NSAIDs after myocardial infarction, and a 10-year look-back study from Denmark shows that the warning should be even louder. Whereas current AHA guidelines advise using NSAIDs after MI for the briefest possible time, the Danish study, published last week in Circulation, finds that the risks for death and reinfarction begin within […]
May 6th, 2011
Podcast 120: Pass the salt!
European researchers say they’ve got the data to show that restricting salt in the general population is a bad mistake. By implication, the U.S. dietary salt guidelines are plainly wrong. How did they do this? They followed 3700 subjects for roughly 8 years, having first measured their 24-hour urinary sodium excretion. Their data show that lower […]