Diarrhoea is characterised by increased volume, fluidity or frequency of faecal discharges. Acute diarrhoea is commonly infectious and can be viral (e.g. rotavirus, norovirus), bacterial (often causing food poisoning) or parasitic and is usually associated with nausea & vomiting. In some health service jurisdictions, infections with specific organisms are notifiable (e.g. salmonella). The issue of diarrhoea due to Clostridium difficile has been addressed in a previous RGH e-bulletin.
The use of antimotility agents for infectious diarrhoea is not routinely recommended, because the infectious agent and associated toxins will remain in the GI tract longer. Rehydration and electrolyte replacement are the mainstays of treatment. Oral rehydration solutions contain sodium, potassium, glucose and water plus alkalinising agent; a sachet is given after each loose bowel motion.
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RGH E-bulletin
Drug induced photosensitivity reactions are a relatively common side effect associated with many medications. These reactions occur via activation of a chemical by ultra-violet or visible light. Many commonly used drugs are implicated (both systemic and topical use), and include amiodarone, NSAIDs, phenothiazines, retinoids, quinolones, sulfonamides, tetracyclines, and thiazides.
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A joint initiative of the Patient Services Section and the Drug and Therapeutics Information Service of the Pharmacy Department, Repatriation General Hospital, Daw Park, South Australia. The RGH Pharmacy E-Bulletin is distributed in electronic format on a weekly basis, and aims to present concise, factual information on issues of current interest in therapeutics, drug safety and cost-effective use of medications.
Editor: Assoc. Prof. Chris Alderman, University of South Australia – Director of Pharmacy, RGH © Pharmacy Department, Repatriation General Hospital, Daw Park, South Australia 5041.
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Medications,
NSAIDs,
phenothiazines,
photosensitivity,
quinolones,
retinoids,
RGH E-bulletin,
sulfonamides,
tetracyclines
Drug-induced myopathies may present in varying degrees of severity from mild muscle weakness to rhabdomyolysis with acute renal failure. Drugs may cause myopathic symptoms by directly affecting a muscle organelle, inducing immunological or inflammatory myopathy, altering systemic functions leading to electrolyte disturbances or via nutritional deprivation, and this in turn affects muscle function. Many toxic myopathies are reversible, thus prompt detection of the offending agent is essential. These are some common drugs implicated in this condition
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rhabdomyolysis,
Zidovudine
Information is Beautiful is one of my favourite blogs. Interesting data in beautiful and easy to take in visual presentations.
A recent post looked at the poisoning deaths in the UK and then compared them to the number of press reports the drug deaths received.
It was very interesting. Some drugs received an extraordinary number of mentions when a death occured as a result of misadventure. Deaths due to heroin had only 9% of deaths reported. Cocaine with a little over a quarter of the number of deaths compared to heroin had 66% of all deaths reported. The number of press reports for cocaine doubled those of heroin.
My personal favourites are aspirin and cannabis where the press reported more often than people died. In the case of cannabis almost five times as much.
Media Hysteria or public interest?
Unfortunately I believe these results would be replicated in Australia.
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Deadly Drugs,
deaths,
drugs,
informationisbeautiful.net,
misadventure,
visualisation
