Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Drugs are bad: smoking bad for alcohol, antidepressants bad for bones

Sure, this is common sense, but I never realized the magnitude of the neurocognitive damage.

Science Daily — Alcoholics frequently smoke. Anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of individuals in North America who seek alcoholism treatment are also chronic smokers. New findings indicate that smoking may interfere with alcoholics' neurocognitive recovery during their first six to nine months of abstinence from alcohol.


And, as if treating elderly depressed people wasn't difficult enough, between their hesitation in coming in to seek help, and the multitude of comorbid medical conditions, there is now the risk of worsening their osteoporosis if we give them SSRI antidepressants.

Science Daily — The class of antidepressant medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may be associated with an increased rate of bone loss in older men and women, according to two articles in the June 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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