Grapefruit, Medicine Interaction Warning Expanded

Nov 26, 2012 5:48pm

Image credit: Johner/Getty Images

ABC News’ Ben Maas reports:

It has long been known that grapefruit juice can pose dangerous — and even deadly — risks when taken along with certain medications. Now, experts warn the list of medications that can result in these interactions is longer than many may have believed.

Check below to see whether your medication appears on the list.

In a new report released Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers at the University of Western Ontario said that while 17 drugs were identified in 2008 as having the potential to cause serious problems when taken with grapefruit, this number has now grown to 43.

“The frequency of these reactions may be small, but the risks are not worth it, especially for drugs which could cause sudden death,” said lead study author David Bailey, a professor of pharmacology and one of the first to report the interactions between grapefruit juice and certain medications 20 years ago. “Physicians need to know that this affects a number of new drugs and apply this information to their practice and patients.”

So how does a common breakfast fruit cause these problems? Grapefruits contain chemicals called furanocoumarins that interfere with how your body breaks down drugs before they enter the bloodstream. By preventing this normal breakdown of a drug, these chemicals in grapefruit can effectively cause a drug overdose and more severe side-effects.

Among the side effects sometimes seen with grapefruit-induced overdoses are heart rhythm problems, kidney failure, muscle breakdown, difficulty with breathing and blood clots. Atorvastatin — commonly known by the brand name Lipitor and taken by millions of Americans — is one of the drugs that have been linked to serious cases of drug toxicity when combined with grapefruit products. Other common heart medications — including verapamil and amiodarone — have also led to serious interactions when consumed with grapefruit or grapefruit juice.

While there have been many reported cases of serious side effects attributable to this problem, the total number of Americans who have been affected is not known.

As little as one grapefruit or one 8-ounce glass of grapefruit juice can cause an effect that may last more than 24 hours.  Other fruits including Seville oranges, limes, and pomelos can have the same effect, although sweet orange varieties do not produce this interaction.

“People know that drugs react with drugs, but fewer are aware of drug-food interactions,” said Professor Paul Doering of the University of Florida Pharmacy Department. “Health professionals need to learn as much as they can about this.  Undetected there are very serious adverse effects.”

For consumers, the best advice may be to ask a doctor or pharmacist when they are prescribed a new drug whether there are foods or other medicines that they should avoid.

A-C
Alfentanil (oral)
Amiodarone
Apixaban
Atorvastatin
Buspirone
Clopidogrel
Crizotinib
Cyclosporine

D-F
Darifenacin
Dasatinib
Dextromethorphan
Domperidone
Dronedarone
Eplerenone
Erlotinib
Erythromycin
Everolimus
Felodipine
Fentanyl (oral)
Fesoterodine

H-P
Halofantrine
Ketamine (oral)
Latatinib
Lovastatin
Lurasidone
Maraviroc
Nifedipine
Nilotinib
Oxycodone

P-Z
Pazopanib
Pimozide
Primaquine
Quinine
Quetiapine
Quinidine
Rilpivirine
Rivaroxaban
Silodosin
Simvastatin
Sirolimus
Solifenacin
Sunitinib
Tacrolimus
Tamsulosin
Ticagrelor
Triazolam
Vandetanib
Venurafenib

Verapamil
Ziprasidone

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Aston Martin firm denies bid talk

25 November 2012 Last updated at 07:38 ET

The owner of Aston Martin, Kuwait’s Investment Dar, has denied reports it has received competing bids for a 50% stake in the luxury British car brand.

Italian private equity fund Investindustrial is widely reported to have made an offer of nearly £250m ($ 400m) for Aston Martin.

India’s Mahindra and Mahindra is understood to have made a higher offer.

But in an interview with Kuwait’s Al Watan newspaper Investment Dar chairman Adnan Al Musallam denied the story.

Continue reading the main story

Aston Martin is a world famous brand, largely due to its long association with James Bond, as well as its exploits in motor racing. Yet it remains a relatively small company operating in a niche market, selling just a few thousand cars every year.

When the current owners bought the business from Ford five years ago, they promised to take Aston Martin to “even greater heights”, and outlined ambitious plans to build up sales in Asia, especially in China. To a certain extent they have succeeded. China is now the company’s fifth largest market. But sales in the UK and North America have been badly affected by the after-effects of the financial crisis, and are yet to recover.

The biggest challenge for the company remains its ability to develop new products which are capable of competing with the likes of Ferrari and Porsche, both of which have the financial and engineering muscle of major companies behind them. Its new Vanquish, for example, is largely based on an engine and chassis which have been around for the best part of a decade.

Earlier this month, Investment Dar dismissed a Bloomberg story which said it was looking to sell its stake in the British car maker as having “no truth to it”.

At the time, the investment house said it had “a long-term plan and commitment with Aston Martin and has no plans to sell its stake in Aston Martin in the short term”.

Despite that statement on 12 November though, reports of a bidding war between Investindustrial and Mahindra and Mahindra have become more widespread.

Mahindra and Mahindra declined to comment, while Investindustrial could not be reached.

Aston Martin, based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.

Its cars have been immortalised in James Bond films over the last few decades.

The company was sold in 2007 by Ford for £479m to a consortium of Investment Dar and another Kuwaiti investment fund, Adeem Investment.

The consortium was fronted by Dave Richards, former Formula One Benetton and BAR boss, who remains as chairman of Aston Martin.

The new owners targeted higher sales in China, but sales in the UK and North America have been hit in the financial crisis.

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Israel successfully tests missile defense system

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel successfully tested its newest missile defense system Sunday, the military said, a step toward making the third leg of what Israel calls its “multilayer missile defense” operational.

The “David’s Sling” system is designed to stop mid-range missiles. It successfully passed its test, shooting down its first missile in a drill Sunday in southern Israel, the military said.

The system is designed to intercept projectiles with ranges of up to 300 kilometers (180 miles).

Israel has also deployed Arrow systems for longer-range threats from Iran. The Iron Dome protects against short-range rockets fired by militants in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Iron Dome shot down hundreds of rockets from Gaza in this month’s round of fighting.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the success of Iron Dome highlighted the “immense importance” of such systems.

“David’s Sling,” also known “Magic Wand,” is developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and U.S.-based Raytheon Co. and is primarily designed to counter the large arsenal of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon.

The military said the program, which is on schedule for deployment in 2014, would “provide an additional layer of defense against ballistic missiles.”

The next generation of the Arrow, now in the development stage, is set to be deployed in 2016. Called the Arrow 3, it is designed to strike its target outside the atmosphere, intercepting missiles closer to their launch sites. Together, the two Arrow systems would provide two chances to strike down incoming missiles.

Israel also uses U.S.-made Patriot missile defense batteries against mid-range missiles, though these failed to hit any of the 39 Scud missiles fired at Israel from Iraq In the first Gulf War 20 years ago. Manufacturers say the Patriot system has been improved since then.

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Nokia imaging chief to quit

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s long-time imaging chief Damian Dinning has decided to leave the loss-making cellphone maker at the end of this month, the company said in a statement.

The strong imaging capabilities of the new Lumia smartphone models are a key sales argument for the former market leader, which has been burning through cash while losing share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Stephen Elop has replaced most of the top management since he joined in late 2010 and Dinnig is the latest of several executives to leave.

Dinning did not want to move to Finland as part of the phonemakers’ effort to concentrate operations and will join Jaguar Land Rover to head innovations in the field of connected cars, he said on Nokia’s imaging fan site PureViewclub.com.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki, editing by William Hardy)

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Singer Bjork’s vocal cord surgery successful

LONDON (AP) — Icelandic singer Bjork says she has had successful surgery to remove a vocal cord polyp.

The eccentric 47-year-old singer says on her official website that she had been trying to tackle the problem with exercises and diets since doctors first discovered the polyp, a benign growth on either one or both of the vocal cords, several years ago.

Bjork said that she decided to undergo laser surgery and it has worked, though she had to stay quiet for three weeks.

She wrote: “Surgery rocks! … It’s been very satisfying to sing all them clear notes again.”

The singer apologized for cancelling various shows earlier this year, and that she looked forward to singing for her fans next year.

Last year Adele had minor surgery to remove a benign polyp.

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Detecting Cancer…With a Cellphone?

Smartphone technology is often seen as much of nuisance as it is a convenience, but having that kind of communicative power at our fingertips has a surprising advantage; it’s serving as a bridge, bringing  healthcare to third world countries that had previously been too remote and too costly to reach.

The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is spearheading one use of smartphone technology in a way that’s surprisingly simple, but could end up saving thousands of women’s lives.

Armed with screening kits, treatment tools and cellphones, teams of non-physician medical workers will visit remote locations in rural Tanzania to screen women for cervical cancer. Instead of the swab method used in the typical Pap smear, workers will use their cellphones to photograph a patient’s cervix, text the image to a physician and then receive back a diagnosis and treatment recommendation.

But can it really be that simple? Dr. Karen Yeates of Queen’s University, who is the lead investigator of the project, told CNN, “That’s the beauty of it — for early grade cancers, those will be able to be treated right in the field, right in the rural area.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), rates of cervical cancer in Africa are up to ten times those in developed countries, and among those diagnosed, about 50,000 women die from it annually.

Though cervical cancer has very low mortality rates in developed countries like the U.S., that’s generally due to regular screenings which catch the disease in its earliest and most treatable incarnations. However, in countries like Tanzania, women in remote villages obviously don’t have access to those types of preventative measures. Subsequently, the WHO estimates that by the time most African women are diagnosed with the disease, they’ve already advanced into its latest fatal stages. But regular screenings could put a stop to that. 

In addition to addressing reproductive healthcare, cellphones are as of late becoming facilitators of cardiac care in developing countries as well. Earlier this year, high school student Catherine Wong discovered how to turn her cellphone into a portable ECG machine, bringing heart monitoring capabilities to the most remote locations with results that could be beamed to doctors no matter how far away.

The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is gaining some notoriety because it’s recently become one of the 68 finalists in Canada’s Grand Challenges, a fund awarded to medical innovators who’ve invented new systems or products to bring healthcare to the poorest parts of the world. As a finalist, the Kilimanjaro Project has been granted $ 100,000, allowing it to begin its initial trials.

So much of good healthcare rests on the early detection of illness and now that geography and cost aren’t the impediments they once were, patients in developing countries have real opportunities to survive illnesses once believed to be fatal. 

Do you expect that “mobile healthcare” may eventually become the standard method of care in countries like the U.S. as well? Let us know what you think about it in the Comments.

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• Cardiac Arrest? An iPhone App Might Save Your Life

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a web editor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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Germany rejects Swiss tax deal

23 November 2012 Last updated at 11:29 ET

Germany’s upper house of parliament has rejected a deal with Switzerland to tax German assets held in Swiss bank accounts.

The deal would have allowed Germans with undeclared assets in Switzerland to avoid punishment by making a one-off payment of between 21% and 41% of the value of their assets.

The deal had been negotiated in April and was due to take effect in January.

But it needed to be ratified by both parliaments.

The rejection by the German upper house, the Bundesrat, prolongs the dispute between the two countries over how to deal with the estimated 180-200bn euros (£145-160bn) of German assets hidden in Switzerland.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had called for support for the deal, saying: “The agreement tries to find a better solution for a situation which is unsatisfactory.”

But Norbert Walter-Borjans, of the main opposition Social Democrats, told the Bundesrat it was a deal which made “honest taxpayers feel like fools”.

Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said her government remained “committed to a successful ratification”.

And the Swiss Bankers Association said in a statement: “The German upper house has missed a major opportunity to reach a fair, optimum and sustainable solution for all parties to definitively settle the bilateral tax issues.”

BBC News – Business

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Police mull action over false Twitter abuse claims

LONDON (Reuters) – Britons who posted remarks on Twitter and in blogs wrongly identifying a senior Conservative politician as a child sex abuser might face prosecution after police said on Wednesday they were looking to see if any crimes had been committed.

Lord Alistair McAlpine, an ally of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was widely named on social media sites as being the unidentified politician accused in a report by the BBC’s Newsnight program of abusing boys in social care.

McAlpine, who is 70 and in poor health, vigorously denied the claims and the abuse victim central to the BBC story later confirmed that the peer was not one of his attackers.

London’s Metropolitan Police said no criminal allegations had yet been made but that detectives would be meeting with McAlpine to begin assessing whether action should be taken.

Under the Malicious Communications Act, people can be prosecuted for sending any electronic communication or article which conveys a grossly offensive message or information which is false and believed to be false by the sender.

“It is far too early to say whether any criminal investigation will follow,” the police said in a statement.

The intervention comes as lawyers for McAlpine continued legal action against those who “sullied” his reputation.

The BBC has already agreed to pay 185,000 pounds ($ 294,400)over the Newsnight report, and his lawyers have also contacted ITV after a presenter on a chat show brandished a list of alleged abusers during an interview with Prime Minister David Cameron.

McAlpine has also threatened to go after Twitter users, and media reports said his legal team had identified up to 10,000 defamatory tweets.

Sally Bercow, flamboyant wife of Britain’s parliamentary speaker, the man who keeps lawmakers in order during debates, is one of those who could face legal action.

Other Twitter users have been asked to come forward, apologize and make a “sensible and modest” donation to charity as compensation, at a level yet to be decided.

“Given the large amount of information that continues to be disseminated, the band for which the charity payment will be settled shall be when Lord McAlpine has a full understanding of this material,” his lawyers said in a statement.

“The donation is intended for tweeters with fewer than 500 followers, but those with larger numbers of followers are still encouraged to identify themselves and offer their formal apologies at this stage.”

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Steve Addison)

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“Big Bang Theory” star Mayim Bialik tweets pre-Thanksgiving divorce plans

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Things are bound to be a little tense around the dinner table at Mayim Bialik‘s house this Thanksgiving.

Bialik is divorcing her husband of nine years, Mike Stone, the “Big Bang Theory” star announced via her twitter account Wednesday.

The actress, 36, tweeted a link to a blog post about the split with the message, “I’m beating the tabloids to it and posting this Divorce Statement.”

The post itself says that the pair decided to divorce “after much consideration and soul-searching,” and cites irreconcilable differences as the reason for the breakup.

Bialik and Stone have two sons, 7-year-old Miles and 4-year-old Frederick, together.

“Divorce is terribly sad, painful and incomprehensible for children. It is not something we have decided lightly,” Bialik wrote in her blog post. “The hands-on style of parenting we practice played no role in the changes that led to this decision; relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose.”

The actress added, “Our sons deserve parents committed to their growth and health and that’s what we are focusing on.”

Bialik’s post concludes, “We will be ok.”

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First Person: Unemployed, Disabled and Hungry for Work

Five million Americans are among the long-term unemployed–those without a job for 27 weeks or longer–according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 7.3 million are looking for work, while the unemployment rate sits at 7.9 percent. Numbers aside, individual stories illustrate how America is affected. To see how joblessness hits home, Yahoo News asked unemployed workers to share their job-hunting stories. Here’s one.

FIRST PERSON | I am 40 and live in Racine, Wis. I have been unemployed since I was 33. I try to find work, but I’ve been disabled since 27, and I do not collect Social Security or other income. On job applications, when I am asked if I have any disabilities, I answer yes.

I have even tried to travel to different states for employment. I am seeking employment where I can. I have tried Lowe’s, Home Depot and other similar stores. All I get are letters saying I do not qualify for employment.

By trade, I am a tattoo artist, a job I have been very good at until I became disabled. I have shoulder impingement syndrome, which consists of some of the following: torn ligaments, torn tendons, bone spurs, bursitis and arthritis.

And constant pain. I feel the weather. I hardly sleep. I wish I could be somewhere else, as it is hard on my mind to deal with on a daily basis.

Still, I try to find work where I can in this tough economy, and I am on several lists to be called and never have been called to date.

I am too proud to try to get Social Security. I cannot even afford insurance to get my condition fixed. I even have applied for local state insurance to get the problem resolved so I can work again, always with no luck. So I have remained unemployed now for over 10 years and going.

I injured myself, and I am not able to lift more than 10 pounds at a time or stand or sit for long periods of time.

I just want a job so I can try to cover the medical expenses myself since I cannot get help. Surgery costs are around $ 18,000, which sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I am no stranger to hard work. Since 12, I cut grass, shoveled snow, painted houses and fences, swept chimneys, worked in heat treatment plants with dirt and oil, worked in the casting of hot metals, laid brick, made bathroom sinks, swept floors in factories, did drill-press work, sanding work, and worked at fast food places.

I do not lie to get jobs or hid my injury. I do want to work, but I worry now that my disability will mean I won’t be hired by companies because they’re afraid it will come back on them and their company.

I cannot afford private insurance as I do not have steady income. Now I find whatever I can do to reach my goal of paying for my own surgery.

It is a sad world when you live in pain, day in and day out, and you want and need to find work.

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