Author: Erin Elizabeth

According to a new Canadian report, published in JAMA Pediatrics, drinking diet soda and other artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy is associated with having overweight 1-year-olds. The team studied 3,033 mothers who delivered healthy, single babies between 2009 and 2012 and had completed diet questionnaires during their pregnancies. They later examined the babies when they were a year old. Nearly 30 percent of the women drank artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy. After the team controlled for maternal body mass index, age, breastfeeding duration, maternal smoking, maternal diabetes, timing of the introduction of solid foods and other factors, they found that women...

Recently the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) announced that it will require more stringent warnings about the potentially dangerous and sometimes disabling side effects from the commonly used class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. That class of medications is mostly sold as generic but there are well-known brand names such as Bayer AG’s Cipro (generically called ciprofloxacin) and Johnson & Johnson’s Levaquin (or levofloxacin). Fluoroquinolones, which are commonly prescribed, have been on the market for about three decades. The FDA would like an updated box warning which would inform patients that the serious side effects of the drug generally outweigh the benefits...