Did You Know?
- Some people get no pain relief from certain prescription painkillers.
- Certain allergy and asthma medicines work well for some people but not at all for others.
- Nearly 3 million people in the United States are at risk for overdose when given the standard amount of a medicine commonly used to prevent blood clots.
- A normally safe dose of a leukemia treatment can, in rare cases, lead to death in a child with an unusual change in just one gene.
- The National Institutes of Health is sponsoring research to understand why people can have such different reactions to medicines.
The National Institutes of Health aims to improve the health of all Americans through medical research that solves mysteries about how the human body normally works—and how and why it doesn't work when disease or injury occurs. One goal of this research is to help improve the good effects of medicines while preventing bad reactions.
You can find more information about medicines and medicine safety at the National Library of Medicine's online health information service, MedlinePlus: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/medicines.html
|