News flash: "Cost-related medication restriction" is bad for you

Shocking news from the knowledge factory:

"After adjusting for differences in sociodemographic characteristics, health status, smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI), and comorbid chronic conditions, we determined the risk of a significant decline in overall health among respondents in good to excellent health at baseline and of developing new disease-related adverse outcomes among respondents with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and depression....Respondents with cardiovascular disease who restricted medications reported higher rates of angina...and experienced higher rates of nonfatal heart attacks or strokes....Cost-related medication restriction among middle-aged and elderly Americans is associated with an increased risk of a subsequent decline in their self-reported health status, and among those with preexisting cardiovascular disease with higher rates of angina and nonfatal heart attacks or strokes. Such cost-related medication restriction could be a mechanism for worse health outcomes among low-income and other vulnerable populations who lack adequate insurance coverage." Source: Heisler M, Langa KM, Eby EL, Fendrick AM, Kabeto MU, and Piette JD, "The health effects of restricting prescription medication use because of cost," MEDICAL CARE 42 (7): 626-634 JUL 2004

Meanwhile, a news flash from the annals of America's growing war on club drugs. You may have seen pictures showing PET scans of people taking MDMA or "ecstasy" on big-city billboards and postcards, suggesting that it fries your brain. Now, it turns out those changes disappear once you stop taking ecstasy. Funny how we didn't bother to find this out until after the government started cracking down. (Previous studies were "limited by small sample size, lack of tracer selectivity, unreliable assessment of MDMA doses, insufficiently matched comparison groups, or region-of-interest analysis.") Source: Buchert R, Thomasius R, Wilke F, Petersen K, Nebeling B, Obrocki J, Schulze O, Schmidt U, and Clausen M, "A voxel-based PET investigation of the long-term effects of "Ecstasy" consumption on brain serotonin transporters," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY 161 (7): 1181-1189 JUL 2004