'Benign' Brain Events May Signal Stroke Study: Symptoms Like Confusion or Fainting May Be Linked to Stroke and Dementia Written by Salynn Boyles Medically Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD on December 27, 2007 From the WebMD Archives Assessing Stroke Risk Benign or Risky? Dec. 27, 2007 -- Brief episodes of confusion, amnesia, or fainting with no easily explainable medical cause may signal an increased risk for stroke and dementia among older people, new research suggests. Doctors often dismiss such episodes as benign occurrences, but researchers found that they were associated with a more than 50% higher risk of stroke and dementia among people age 55 and over. "Our findings challenge the strong but unfounded conviction that [these events] are harmless," Michiel J. Bos, MD, and colleagues from the Netherlands' Erasmus Medical Center write in the Dec. 26 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association . Assessing Stroke Risk Patients who have sma...
Perspective on Herbal Remedies Experts Call for Better FDA Regulation Written by Jeanie Lerche Davis From the WebMD Archives Dec. 18, 2002 -- Herbal medicines come under scrutiny in a leading medical journal this week. Millions are trying echinacea, ginkgo biloba , St. John's wort, and many, many more. But researchers pose serious questions regarding their quality, safety, and effectiveness. "We are in the midst of a public health experiment that much of academic medicine has failed to acknowledge until recently," writes Stephen E. Straus, MD, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine , a branch of the National Institutes of Health. In the Dec. 19 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine , Straus and others voice their opinions about herbal medicines . One big problem: Herbal products are regulated as dietary supplements and are therefore not subject to quality and safety requirements that other drugs must meet. "With herbal ...
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