Author: Emma Yasinski

Adam is the youngest of three children. His older brother and sister came down with a cough and fever when Adam was nearly a month old. A week or so later, Adam was coughing as well, but his cough was phlegmy, and he started vomiting after each feeding. He tested positive for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus).  After 12 hours, he hadn’t wet his diaper at all. His mother had to rush him to the hospital, where he spent four days and three nights. He got oxygen, IV fluids, and antibiotics. Still, since there are no antiviral drugs specifically to fight…

Most of PrEP’s side effects are relatively mild and dissipate within a few months. However, these drugs can come with rare but serious risks.

After decades of clinical trial failures, two new Alzheimer’s drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have thrilled many healthcare providers and advocacy groups. Others warn that the two new drugs, Aduhelm (aducanumab) and Leqembi (lecanemab-irmb), may not be the medical miracles they seem to be.   Doctors have been using the same drugs and lifestyle adjustments to treat Alzheimer’s for years with modest benefits at best. None of these drugs can stop, slow, or reverse the seemingly inevitable progression of Alzheimer’s disease. They may temporarily reduce the condition’s symptoms. To learn about the efficacy of older Alzheimer’s drugs…

It is difficult to know what medicine you can take while breastfeeding. Studies tend to be lacking. Advice can be confusing. Let’s dive into medication while breastfeeding. Two years ago, a researcher who specializes in the safety of breast milk was in the midst of breastfeeding her own child when she experienced a serious bout of postpartum depression. She had a televisit with her doctor, who refused to write her a prescription for antidepressant medications as long as she was still breastfeeding, even though the drugs are often considered safe to take during pregnancy and breastfeeding.  “A lot of times,…

✅ This article was reviewed and approved by Frieda Wiley, PharmD, member of our MedShadow Medical Advisory Board. As a teenager, I was a bit rough around the edges. I defined myself as “blunt” and would tease my girlfriends if they cried during movies. Nowadays, I’m the crier—and not just at movies. Funny television shows, radio commercials, even the intensity of the world cup soccer game have sent tears streaming. For years, I thought perhaps I’d just become more empathetic with age (and wisdom!). That conclusion wouldn’t be outlandish; our personalities all change as we grow older. But recently, I…

Regular MedShadow readers are likely familiar with the idea of deprescribing—the process of reducing the number or dose of drugs a person is taking. MedShadow has written about the phenomenon before. But, while the idea of taking fewer medications is simple, the real world process of deprescribing while balancing risks versus benefits is complicated. Some medications have withdrawal symptoms, and tapering may take time. The Therapeutics Initiative at the University of British Columbia (UBC) is hosting a series of webinars with healthcare professionals sharing real-life stories about their own patients whose medications they were able to reduce, and what happened…

Updated Jan 5, 2023 with new details on Paxlovid side effects. Two recently authorized antiviral drugs designed to protect against the most severe outcomes of COVID-19 may be game-changers during the ongoing pandemic. Those benefits may come at a cost, however. It’s crucial that you and your healthcare providers understand these drugs’ potential side effects, so you use them as safely as possible. “Obviously, if you’ve got a serious case of COVID, you need to be treated,” despite the risk of side effects says Katherine Seley-Radtke, PhD, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How…

MedShadow recently posted an article in which a journalist investigates his own sleep apnea diagnosis and ends up forgoing expensive machinery and learning that sleeping on his side was all it took in his case to keep his oxygen levels stable through the night. In the Kaiser Health News article, author Jay Hancock describes an “expensive testing cascade” including an at-home test and two separate nights in a sleep lab testing for different characteristics of the condition.  Testing is not the only cascade in medicine. In recent years, researchers have started to identify “prescription cascades”—situations in which a patient is…

Read through MedShadow’s coverage of the side effects of drugs and you’ll see many of the same side effects mentioned over and over. For example, patients report nausea after taking a whole host of drugs, such as those for Lupus, HIV prevention, cancer and more. It’s crucial to differentiate side effects from symptoms, explains Suzanne Soliman, PharmD, founder of the Pharmacist Moms Group, so that you and your healthcare provider can work together to improve your care. She says, when she works with patients who are experiencing new symptoms or side effects, the first step is for her to take…

Shalamar suffered from chronic insomnia. She couldn’t fall asleep after her late-night shifts as a server at a New York City bar. To address the insomnia, she sought advice from a psychiatrist who prescribed pills and told her to take them both at night and in the morning. She thought it was odd that she would need to take a pill to help her sleep during the day, but her doctor said that is how the medicine worked. She followed the doctor’s recommendations, though. “It did help me to sleep. I slept like a rock,” she says.  What her doctor…