Noctiva is the first drug that FDA has approved for frequent nighttime urination. Unfortunately, the low dose (0.83 mcg) isn’t effective and the high dose (1.66 mcg) can cause serious side effects. It would be more effective to treat the cause of nighttime urination, so patients should talk to their doctors to consider possible causes before considering Noctiva. Do the benefits outweigh the risks for most patients? Since the benefits are small and the risks can be serious, Noctiva is probably not the best solution for most patients. Some patients may benefit from it without any harmful side effects, but the research doesn’t help us predict who those patients would be.
Read More »Medical Care for Adults
The National Center for Health Research reviews important new research as soon as it is published. We cut through the hype regarding various medical treatments to let you know what is proven and what is unknown about the risks and benefits of various treatment options. We do not accept funding from the companies that make medical products, so you can trust that our information is based on science, and not biased by financial ties to the treatments we’re evaluating.
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Why Are So Many American Women Having Mastectomies?
Our Bodies Ourselves, June 16, 2017. Breast cancer experts believe that many women undergoing mastectomies do not need them and are getting them out of fear, not because of the actual risks.
Read More »Are Mastectomies Necessary for Women with BRCA1 or BRCA2? What About for Women Without the Breast Cancer Gene?
When Angelina Jolie publicly announced her double mastectomy in 2013, she was praised for possibly saving many women’s lives. But we know more today than we did then and experts now agree that too many women are undergoing unnecessary mastectomies. Here are the facts.
Read More »What You Need to Know About Breast Implants
Research clearly shows that implants are associated with significant health, cosmetic, and economic risks within the first few years and these risks increase over time. Unfortunately, long-term risks remain unknown because of a lack of careful scientific studies. FDA has required implant manufacturers to conduct additional research to determine why implants break, how long they can be expected to last, and what the longer-term health consequences of broken and leaking breast implants might be. Those studies, however, have not yet been made public.
Read More »Steroid Injections May do Harm and do No Good for Joint Pain
A 2017 study showing that steroid injections are not helpful for joint pain finally confirms what many researchers have been saying for years.
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