Chronic Cough Due to Statins

Statin drugs (simvastatin for example) are commonly used to treat high cholesterol and have many known side effects... but here's another. Statins are now believed to potentially cause a chronic dry cough according to a recent report!

This chronic cough side effect is common in other types of medications such as ACE-Inhibitors (lisinopril) and angiotensin receptor blockers (losartan) to treat high blood pressure.

Statins were not previously known to cause a chronic dry cough.

Reference:
Chronic cough as a complication of treatment with statins: a case report. Ther Adv Respir Dis. 2012 Jul 3. [Epub ahead of print]

Azithromycin Increases Risk of Death Slightly... Well, So Does Tylenol and Ibuprofen

The media has made much fuss about a NEJM study suggesting a slight increased risk of death from taking azithromycin or z-pack. The more unhealthy you are, the higher the risk... no duh... (I would think the sicker you are, the greater the risk of death PERIOD... a sick person by definition is closer to death than a healthy person).

How slight? Compared to amoxicillin, about 47 additional cardiovascular deaths per one million courses of therapy.

Never mind the blatant biases found in the study nicely espoused on by cardiologist Dr. Wes in his blog.

Thinking you should never take a z-pack again due to this slight increased risk of death?

Well, good luck finding an alternative medication (of any kind) because they ALL have a potential risk of death.

Similar to z-pack, these other antibiotics also have an increased risk of sudden cardiac death:

• Avelox
• Bactrim
• Biaxin
• Cipro
• Diflucan
• Erythromycin
• Factive
• Floxin
• Foscavir
• Ketek
• Levaquin
• Sporanox
• Sulfa
• Tequin

It's not just antibiotics. These other common medications (not all-inclusive) also have an increased risk of sudden cardiac death:

• Benadryl (allergy)
• Pepcid (reflux)
• Albuterol (asthma)
• Prozac (depression)
• Serevent (asthma)
• Sudafed (decongestant)

The complete list can be found here.

Let's consider other popular drugs that also has an increased risk of death, though not necessarily from a cardiac trigger.

• ALL antibiotics due to a severe anaphylactic allergic reaction - Take Penicillin for example... about 300 die annually from penicillin allergic reaction in the US
• Tylenol causes liver failure - About 400 deaths per year in the US
• Ibuprofen causes internal bleeding - About 15,000 - 20,000 die per year in the US
• Alcohol related deaths - 75,000 deaths per year in the US
• Smoking related deaths - 443,000 deaths per year (one in five deaths) in the US

Never mind deaths from driving a car, accidental gunfire, drowning in a swimming pool, etc.

Life in general in the United States has a risk of death.

Source:
Azithromycin may up chance of sudden cardiac death. Heartwire 5/16/12
Popular Antibiotic May Raise Risk of Sudden Death. NYT 5/16/12
Azithromycin and the Risk of Cardiovascular Death. New England Journal of Medicine 2012; 366:1881-1890May 17, 2012

Best Medication for Dizziness

So how would one go about figuring out the best medication for dizziness due to motion-sickness leading to nausea and even vomiting?

Well, step 1... Put a bunch of people in a machine and figure out the necessary motions that will cause dizziness.

Step 2... Do the same thing, but this time, put people on different medications and figure out what works the best.

Sound crazy?

Well it has been done by the friendly folks at NASA. Why would they perform such unpleasant experiments? It's for the fighter pilots and astronauts who may encounter motion sickness where dizziness may mean the difference between life and death and have no alternative other than medications.

So what medication did they find works the best?

Through trial and error, they have found that a combination of oral scopolamine (not the patch), to suppress vomiting, and dextroamphetamine, to counteract scopolamine's potential to induce drowsiness, reduced the incidence of motion sickness from 70 percent to about 12 percent among passengers in the "Vomit Comet"—a DC-9 aircraft used to achieve brief periods of zero gravity as part of NASA's Reduced Gravity Program.

They have also found that conditioning (repeating movements that induce dizziness) over and over again does result in the development of tolerance to a motion environment in 95% of individuals.

Read more about this here.