WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday strongly warns four medications, extensively used to treat arthritis and other serious illnesses, saying, these can increase the risk of possible lethal fungal infections.

The drugs include Enbrel, Remicade, Humira and Cimzia, act by putting down the immunity system to keep it from attacking the body. The treatment provides relief from painful and swollen joints in patients of rheumatoid arthritis, but it’s “a double-edged sword,” said the FDA’s Dr. Jeffrey Siegel, because these drugs also weaken the body’s defense to multiple infections.

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MUNICH, Germany – Women naturally become heart patient much later than men, but not if they smoke, researchers said Tuesday. In fact, smoking, in women can cause heart attack fourteen years earlier than women who don’t smoke.

For men, the gap is not as big as in women. Male smokers have risk of heart attacks about six years earlier than non-smoker men.

“This is not a minor difference,” said Dr. Silvia Priori. “Women need to realize they are losing much more than men when they smoke,” she said.

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WASHINGTON – Nearly 1,500 widely used drugs have names, alike to at least one other medication that they’ve already caused mix-ups, says a major study by the U.S. Pharmacopoeia.

Mixing up drug names, because they have similar names or looks, is one of the most common types of medical mistakes which can cause deadly results. Now new efforts are focusing to stop the confusion, and make patients aware of the expected risk.

”There are so many new drugs approved each year, this problem can only get worse,” warns USP vice president Diane Cousins.

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