Welcome to Consumer Reports Health News for health and medical journalists.  Consumer Reports and ConsumerReportsHealth.org cover issues pertaining to the efficacy and safety of prescription and non-prescription drugs (including natural medicines), mental health, diet and nutrition, food safety, and fitness.  CR tests health and fitness products, rates the effectiveness and affordability of prescription drugs, and evaluates the claims made by drug companies and the health-care industry—all without commercial agendas or advertiser influence.

Why Medical Mistakes Still Happen, Despite High-Tech Advances

CR medical adviser, Dr. Orly Avitzur, explains why your prescription may not be what the doctor ordered.  While digital tools such as handheld prescribing devices and electronic health records are now available, only about 20% of doctors currently use them.  And alas, blogs Dr. Avitzur, doctors’ handwriting still hasn’t improved.  The downside of not taking advantage of those high tech advances is that doctors are still scribbling scripts and look-alike and sound-alike errors are still being made. Log on to CR’s Health Blog at www.ConsumerReports.org for Dr. Avitzur’s advice about how to avoid medication errors.

Tips for Learning to Manage Pain

Pain is the main complaint for about 40 percent of patients visiting primary-care doctors, with roughly half of the people with chronic or recurrent pain failing to get adequate relief. In many ways pain remains a medical mystery, but Consumer Reports recommends several steps people can take for occasional, severe, and recurrent pain.  First, notes CR’s Health Blog at www.ConsumerReports.org, people should self assess their pain on a scale from 0 (no pain) to 10 (worst pain).  CR’s blog provides tips about how to choose an over-the-counter drug; solutions for severe pain; and best treatments for recurrent pain.  Or, log on to www.ConsumerReportsHealth.org and click on the “Prescription Drugs” tab. 

Fibromyalgia: Many Roads to Relief

Once viewed as a psychosomatic mystery, fibromyalgia is now considered a real disorder, causing an estimated 6 million Americans to suffer fatigue, pain, and sleep disorders.  While there’s no magic bullet, the anticonvulsant drug pregabalin (Lyrica) is gaining traction as a medicine to treat fibromyalgia.  Other medicines approved to treat fibromyalgia may soon include the antidepressants desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) and duloxetine (Cymbalta), which also may ease pain by regulating certain brain chemicals.  The May issue of Consumer Reports on Health notes that fibromyalgia affects people in different ways, so patients and doctors need to work together to tailor the right treatment for each individual patient.  For the report, click on www.ConsumerReportsHealth.org and click on the “Treatments & Conditions” tab.

The Power of the Placebo

Dr. Marvin Lipman, chief medical adviser to Consumers Union, has himself been enrolled in a clinical trial since 1982.  As a volunteer in the Physicians’ Health Study, Dr. Lipman is like all the other participants in medical clinical trials made up of participants randomly divided into two groups, with one receiving the medicine being studied and the other taking the placebo.  When the trial is over, the code is broken and the drug’s effect is compared with that of the placebo.  But, as Dr. Lipman notes in his “Office Visit” column in the May issue of Consumer Reports on Health, placebos alone can exert powerful effects and may have a place in settings other than clinical trials. In fact, sometimes the placebo effect stems not from the pill itself but from the patient’s own biases.