Patients being harmed by drug shortages, doctors warn

One in three GPs say their patients have suffered as a result of shortages of common prescription drugs

         Medicines currently subject to shortages include Naproxen for arthritis and Tamoxifen for breast cancer

Patients are being harmed and put at risk because of national shortages of some prescription drugs, doctors have warned.
Medicines currently subject to shortages include Tamoxifen for breast cancer, Naproxen for arthritis and Amiloride, used to treat heart failure and high blood pressure.
A poll of GPs has revealed that more than nine in 10 family doctors have been forced to write prescriptions for “second choice” medicines because the drug they wished to provide was out of stock.
In recent years, scores of medicines, including those for breast cancer, arthritis and schizophrenia have run low because drugs intended for British use are being diverted abroad for profit, while others have been subject to production problems.

Discovery made that could prevent sudden cardiac death that nearly killed Fabrice Muamba

Scientists have discovered how a genetic fault causes sudden cardiac death leading to hopes for a screening test to identify those at risk and eventually a drug to prevent it

 17 March 2012: The medical team tending to Bolton Wanderers' Fabrice Muamba as manager Owen Coyle and Tottenham Hotspur's Benoit Assou-Ekotto and William Gallas look on

A test to identify those at risk of sudden cardiac death syndrome – the condition that nearly killed footballer Fabrice Muamba – could be developed after scientists discovered how the genetic fault causes the heart to stop.
Researchers at Cardiff University who discovered the cause of the fault now hope their discovery will lead to new drugs that can prevent the condition, which often hits young and seemingly healthy victims.
Most people have no idea they are at risk until their heart suddenly stops which is fatal in most cases.

Mr Muamba, the former Arsenel midfielder, nearly died on the pitch two years ago while playing for Bolton Wanderers when he suddenly collapsed and his heart stopped. He was rushed to hospital and recovered.

Genomics are not overhyped: they really can change medicine

As the Government announces a huge, pioneering project to sequence 100,000 genomes, Mark  Henderson looks at what needs to happen to make the technique live up to its promise

                           A pioneering project to map 100,000 genomes will revolutionise medicine in Britain

A few years ago, I spat into three test tubes and dispatched them special delivery to companies that will now, for a few hundred pounds, test your genes for clues to your future health. Though each service examined the same DNA, and evaluated the same diseases, each set of results was dramatically different. My lifetime risk of glaucoma, an eye condition, was as low as 2 per cent or as high as 36 per cent, depending on which service I chose to believe. One company thought my chances of a heart attack were twice as high as another.
Mine was the sort of experience that has fed a growing sense that the sequencing of the human genome, heralded by Bill Clinton in 2000 as the future of medicine, has failed to deliver on its promise. While DNA has since become much cheaper and simpler to read – the cost of a human genome is dipping below the magical figure of $1,000 a time – its meaning remains devilishly difficult to interpret. As my results demonstrate, this is especially true of the conditions that are the greatest causes of morbidity and mortality – diabetes and heart disease, stroke and mental illness.

I wish they’d give me an alcohol monitor wristband, too

All day long, I’ll happily use wristbands to record my steps, heartbeat, pulse, weight, food (calories in), additional exercise (calories out) and even water consumption

 Persistent binge-drinking criminals are to be fitted with an electronic tag capable of working out when they have had more than a permitted level of grog, which then alerts a police or parole officer via the internet

Most mornings I begin life-logging as I get up. I sync my mobile phone to my purple plastic Vivofit, and download all the data from the previous night about how well – or badly – I slept: patches of light sleep, fragments of deep sleep, moments when the car alarm next door woke me up completely. Great lumps of quantifiable ammunition for when I want to moan later about how tired I am.
They’re going to be collecting personal data in Croydon, too. But there, it’s part of an initiative to cut anti-social behaviour. Persistent binge-drinking criminals in the borough are to be fitted with an electronic tag, capable of working out when they have had more than a permitted level of grog, which then alerts a police or parole officer, via the internet.

Driver who used two phones at the wheel jailed for killing man

Marina Usaceva had made calls and sent texts before killing Sukhdeep Singh Johal

               Marina Usaceva had told police she was not using a phone after crashing her car into the back of another

A female driver who killed a man while using two mobile phones behind the wheel has been jailed by a judge who called such crimes “a plague on society”.
Marina Usaceva had told police she was not using a phone after crashing her car into the back of another, killing Sukhdeep Singh Johal, its driver.

Georgina Gibbs, prosecuting, told a court that Usaceva, 31, continued to deny using the phones despite the findings of a police investigation. She had previously been caught twice using her phone behind the wheel and her licence was endorsed in 2009 and 2012.
Usaceva, who admitted causing death by dangerous driving at an earlier hearing, was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from driving for eight years.
Judge Sean Enright told her: “If you were not sending texts at the time, then you were fiddling with your phone and that is what caused this collision. In my opinion there is not a scrap of remorse. Mobile phone use while driving is a plague on our society.”