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APhA Publishes New Print, CD-ROM Editions Of Handbook Of Pharmaceutical Excipients
The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) will publish this month the sixth edition of Handbook of Pharmaceutical Excipients and the corresponding single-user CD ROM, titled Pharmaceutical Excipients 6.
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University Of Central Lancashire To Deliver Nurtured Heart Workshop, UK
Residential childcare and fostering agency, Perpetual Care, and the University of Central Lancashire"s School of Nursing & Caring Sciences are jointly developing an introductory workshop on the ground-breaking Nurtured Heart Approach, which seeks to improve social and educational outcomes for many children and young people. Experts from UCLan and Perpetual are currently designing an awareness workshop, which will provide an overview of the approach, examine existing US research findings and explore its potential role in UK residential childcare and fostering, particularly in the light of revised NICE guidelines relating to children with ADHD. The first session is scheduled at UCLan"s Preston campus in late June this year and should be of interest to registered social workers, local authority placement officers and other social care and health professionals concerned with the well-being of challenging young people.
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Iron Supplements Safe For Children At Risk Of Malaria
Iron supplements do not increase the likelihood of contracting malaria and should not be withheld from children at risk of the disease, despite World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines to the contrary, a new review by Cochrane Researchers suggests.
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An Aspirin A Day Brings No Clear Benefits To Healthy People

UK researchers who reviewed pooled clinical trial data covering 95,000 people concluded that there was no net benefit to healthy people taking an aspirin a day as a way to protect against vascular disease although there was for people with existing cardiovascular disease since they were already at much higher risk of another serious vascular event, such as a heart attack, stroke and even death. The study was the work of researchers at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford and was published online today in The Lancet. For the meta-analytical study (that is a study that pools data from a group of studies and re-analyzes it as if it had come from one large study), the Oxford team included six primary and secondary prevention trials that had all compared the long term use of aspirin against controls. The analysis showed that when aspirin was taken as a preventive against cardiovascular disease in healthy people (primary prevention), it reduced the risk of a non-fatal heart attack by around one fifth. Scaled up to a public health statistic this is equivalent to five fewer non-fatal heart attacks every year for every 10,000 patients treated. However, this modest benefit is more or less wiped out by the increased risk of gastrointestinal bleeds from long term aspirin use. On a public health statistic level this risk equates to three extra gastrointestinal bleeds a year for every 10,000 people treated, and one in three of those bleeds also leads to a stroke. In the case of secondary prevention, however, the case for taking the drug is much stronger. Again, as in primary prevention the benefit was a one fifth reduction in the risk of a (further) serious vascular event, but this reduction applies to a risk that is already much higher, resulting in 150 fewer such events a year per 10,000 patients treated. Thus the benefit in this case clearly outweighs the risk of bleeding, which is the same as for the healthy patients. The benefits of taking aspirin were the same for both men and women in both primary prevention and secondary prevention trials said the researchers. Leading the team was Professor Colin Baigent of the UK Medical Research Council. He said that: "We don"t have good evidence that, for healthy people, the benefits of long-term aspirin exceed the risks by an appropriate margin." Many doctors recommend their healthy patients who have high risk factors for coronorary heart disease, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, take an aspirin a day. This is because previous research on primary prevention trials has led to guidelines that recommend this as a suitable prevention strategy. But this new study suggests this may not be such a good policy, because healthy people (ie those who do not have an exisiting cardiovascular condition) with high risk factors for coronary heart disease also have a higher than average risk of intestinal bleeding. As Baigent explained, the primary prevention trials were done a while ago, before statins became widely available. "Nowadays, primary prevention with statins and other drugs can safely halve the risk of heart attacks and strokes," said Baigent. He also explained that when you add aspirin to such drugs, then the further reduction in risk of a serious vascular event is half that of the aspirin on its own, which tips the risk-benefit balance even more toward bad news and "has important implications when judging the likely effects of aspirin in practice". Baigent and colleagues concluded that while aspirin offers clear benefits for people who already have cardiovascular disease, this latest study does not justify the routine use of aspirin in healthy people who have an above average risk of developing coronary heart disease. Baigent said it was important to think about the potential harm that can come from prescribing aspirin to healthy people: "Drug safety really matters when making recommendations for tens of millions of healthy people. We don"t have good evidence that, for healthy people, the benefits of long-term aspirin exceed the risks by an appropriate margin," he cautioned. The study was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, and the European Community Biomed Programme. "Aspirin in the primary and secondary prevention of vascular disease: collaborative meta-analysis of individual participant data from randomised trials." Antithrombotic Trialists" (ATT) Collaboration. The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9678, Pages 1849 - 1860. Published online 29 May 2009. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60503-1 s:The Lancet, Oxford University. Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today


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