Well the flu season is about to get started and this year we have a swine flu (also known as H1N1) instead of just regular flu to deal with. A recent story that hit that news is that less than half of Canadians say that the care about getting a swine flu shot and this kind of lack of interest is making the Center for Disease Control and other groups nervous about the uptake of the flu shot this year.

Will you be getting a flu shot?

The other story that hit the news in support of this is the head of the CDC, Thomas Frieden, saying that he will be getting his kids immunized this year (no info as to whether he has done this in the past) and is telling people on the news shows this morning that he is very nervous in the amount of swine flu with many cases of flu showing up already.

The stats over that last year seem to show that Swine Flu is most deadly to youngsters. We always look at kids and teens being most susceptible to getting the flu and dying from it. In the past 5 years between 40 and 60% of flu deaths were kids between 5 and 17 years old but this past year the number grew to 80%

Human Swine Flu Vaccine Testing?

I have been hearing rumors lately that the swine flu vaccine has not been tested on humans but this is absolutely not true GlaxoSmithKline which is the creator of the vaccine being used has started and continues to test the vaccine starting in August (last month)

This is a very serious health issue that will be coming at us fast. I know that the school that my kids go to has already been telling parents that they have a plan for if and when there is an outbreak of swine flu so please add your comments to this post and email this post to anyone that you know that may be interested or needs info on Swine Flu (H1N1) this fall

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: center for disease control, GlaxoSmithKline, H1N1, head, Swine Flu, Thomas Frieden

Alli is now out. The news we have been looking at for months is here. Alli, which is the over the counter version of Xenical for weight loss is now on the market so that people can use this as a aid to their weight loss program. I have said for years that you can not trust any pills to have you lose weight and I am still a little apprehensive to recommend that people use Alli to try to lose weight as the most important things in your weight control program are proper eating and exercise. Here is the press release for the product

Before you go out and buy Alli I just wanted to let you know that in researching this product I looked for a natural alternative. I have found one product that does what Alli does but is natural, cheaper and best of all has no side effects. That product is called Avatrim. Check out Avatrim before you go out to purchase Alli.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare announces today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the weight-loss product orlistat 60 mg capsules for over-the-counter (OTC) use in the United States. GSK Consumer Healthcare will market OTC orlistat under the brand name alli(TM) (pronounced AL-eye). Approved for use by overweight adults in conjunction with a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet, alli helps people lose 50 percent more weight than with diet alone. alli is the only FDA-approved weight-loss product available to consumers without a prescription, and it is the first clinically-proven over- the-counter product to be combined with a comprehensive support program. alli is expected to be available in stores nationwide by summer 2007. This approval marks the start of an educational program that includes a series of resources online at myalli.com.

GSK Consumer Healthcare selected alli as the brand name because it conveys the concept of partnership with consumers in their weight-loss efforts. Consumers spend billions of dollars each year on fad diets, unproven miracle pills, and potentially unsafe weight-loss supplements that may not work. alli is the clinically proven option to these hyped, quick-fix products that mislead overweight adults away from weight-loss strategies that are backed by medical science. With alli, consumers have access to an individually tailored online action plan that provides support and the necessary tools to help them lose 50 percent more weight than with diet alone.
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Tags: Alli, Boston Medical Center, Caroline Apovian, Center for Nutrition and Weight Management, Center for Nutrition and Weight Management at Boston Medical Center, diabetes, director, educational tools, food, GlaxoSmithKline, heart disease, hypertension, individualized online action plan, low fat diet, obesity, online action plan, online support program, physician, Steven L. Burton, the-counter product, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, United States, Vice President, Weight Control, Xenical

My wife suffered mild postpartum depression just after our first girl was born and so when we started to try again for our second she was as you could imagine very nervous about it. No matter what Tom Cruise and others say anyone that is close to someone suffering from the baby blues know exactly how bad and how overwhelmingly sad this problem is for the woman that is feeling no love for their new born child and does not know why and is so incredibly frustrated by it.

Two widely used antidepressants, nortriptyline and Zoloft (sertraline), are safe and effective for treating postpartum depression, a new study finds. The University of Pittsburgh study is one of the first to compare the effectiveness of two classes of antidepressants — a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (Zoloft) and a tricyclic (nortriptyline) — in treating the common, debilitating condition.

“We’ve been treating postpartum depression based on the assumption that drugs that work for a woman with depression under usual circumstances, will work for a women who experiences depression after giving birth, but there have not been studies that provide scientific proof that this was an effective and safe course of treatment,” Dr. Katherine L. Wisner, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.

The study started with 109 participants, randomly selected to take either nortriptyline or Zoloft. Of those 109 women, 95 provided response data at four weeks, 83 provided data at eight weeks, and 29 completed between 20 and 24 weeks of the study.

Both drugs produced similar results.

By week four, 46 of the participants taking Zoloft had responded with a reduction in depressive symptoms and 27 percent had remitted (few depressive symptoms), while 56 percent of those taking nortriptyline responded and 30 percent remitted. Of the 29 women who remained in the study until 20 to 24 weeks, 93 percent taking Zoloft responded and 73 percent remitted, while 100 percent taking nortriptyline responded and 79 percent remitted.

Both drugs produced similar improvements in psychosocial functioning, and neither drug was superior to the other in treating aggressive obsessional thoughts, the study said. The findings were published in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

The Zoloft used in the study was donated by the drug’s maker, Pfizer, but the drug company did not provide any direct financial support for the study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Wisner is a member of Pfizer’s speaker’s bureau and has a grant from Pfizer to study one of its other products. Wisner is also a member of the speaker’s bureau for GlaxoSmithKline.

Tags: depression, GlaxoSmithKline, Katherine L. Wisner, member, member of the speaker's bureau, pfizer, PostPartum depression, professor of psychiatry, speaker, Tom Cruise, University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Zoloft

I was speaking to one of my colleagues at work a couple of days ago about the horrible rainy weather that we are having right now and she mentioned that she suffers from SAD, seasonal affective disorder. This condition usually affects people in the winter in the northern latitudes, like here in Canada when there is not much sun during the Winter. Wellbutrin XL is a drug that has been hoped to treat this problem.

This week the FDA in the United States approved the first drug for the treatment of SAD and it has been a long wait for many people. Wellbutrin XL is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and on June 12th this drug was finally approved for sale to be prescribed for seasonal affective disorder.

A doctor is the only one that can really figure out if the depression you feel is seasonal affective disorder or clinical depression or the “blues” that can all be treated in different ways.
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Tags: affective disorder, affective disorder drug, Canada, Center of Drugs and Research, clinical depression, depression, director, fatigue, fda, functioning, GlaxoSmithKline, hypersomnia, insomnia, major depressive disorder, SAD, seasonal affective disorder, Steven Galson, United States, Wellbutrin XL

Xenical is a very popular prescription fat inhibitor that has been on the market since 1999. Now the company that is making Xenical, GlaxoSmithKline is trying to get approval for another pill, Alli for over the counter purchase. The big pitch by GlaxoSmithKline is that this product has half of the active ingredient of Xenical. The active ingredient in both Xenical and Alli is orlistat. Although the product is not approved yet the over the counter approval may happen in as little as six months.

How Good is Orlistat

Reports of the usefulness of orlistat is mixed at best. In six-month clinical trials, obese people who took orlistat lost on average 5.3 pounds to 6.2 pounds more than did those who were given dummy pills. Glaxo wants people to use the pill for only six months at a time, but as an over-the-counter item, its use could not be policed.

Alli could cost consumers $12 to $25 a week, Glaxo said. The company estimated 5 million to 6 million Americans a year would buy the drug over the counter. Those numbers could mean at least $1.5 billion a year in retail sales. More than 22 million people worldwide have used orlistat in prescription form.

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Tags: Alli, dietary supplements, fda, GlaxoSmithKline, retail sales, USD