2 days agoKatharine Da CostaHigh strength nicotine pouches that are being sold illegally in the UK could cause inadvertent overdosing and harm to teenagers and young adults, experts have warned.

27 minutes agoAsha PatelBBC News, Nottingham

The study may suggest that other researchers should be less optimistic about the prospects for treating a range of other conditions with newer weight-loss drugs.The idea was so tantalizing. Drugs in the GLP-1 class, which includes Wegovy and Ozempic, have proved miraculous in treating weight loss and other diseases. And some researchers hoped that the drugs could also help with some of the most difficult diseases to treat — those of the brain, like Parkinson’s.But now, at least for Parkinson’s, that hope seems dimmed. A rigorous study that randomly assigned Parkinson’s patients to take exenatide, a relative of Ozempic, showed absolutely no benefit or slowing of the course of the degenerative disease after 96 weeks.And there were no effect on patient symptoms, no effect on brain scans, no subgroup that showed any benefit. No matter how the researchers sliced the data the results were the same.The study, published Tuesday in The Lancet, is bad news for the half million Americans who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Symptoms include tremors, stiffness and difficulty with balance. Patients also may develop dementia. Treatments, including medications and deep brain stimulation, can help with symptoms. But no treatment has been shown to slow the disease’s progress.“It’s hugely disappointing,” said Dr. Thomas Foltynie of University College London, who led the trial. “We were expecting we would come through and we would get a positive result.”Parkinson’s experts shared his sentiment.“This is a sobering moment,” said Dr. Michael S. Okun, a Parkinson’s disease expert at the University of Florida and the national medical adviser for the Parkinson’s Foundation. “This is a really well done study and it came up empty-handed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Lawyers for convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby have applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to investigate her case as a potential miscarriage of justice, the organisation said.

Q: Sometimes I feel really anxious the day after I drink. Can alcohol cause a panic attack?The short answer is yes.Panic attacks — sudden waves of overwhelming fear and apprehension, along with physical symptoms like chest pain and tightness, sweating, a racing heartbeat, nausea, difficulty breathing, feeling faint or numbness in the arms and hands — are intense episodes of anxiety.And alcohol and anxiety are considered “two sides of the same coin,” said Dr. Alëna Balasanova, an associate professor of psychiatry and the director of addiction psychiatry education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.While drinking is often used as a social lubricant or a way to relax and unwind, scientists have found that alcohol can ramp up feelings of anxiety. These feelings can result when alcohol is metabolized by the body, a process that can take a day or longer to complete. Regular, heavy drinkers may experience higher levels of anxiety, particularly after the alcohol wears off.“I don’t want to scare people to think that if you go out and you have a few glasses of wine, that you’re going to have a panic attack,” Dr. Balasanova said. “But certainly the risk is always there.”And that risk is higher if you already have an anxiety disorder.Ideally, “people who are prone to anxiety should avoid heavy drinking, or drinking at all, even if alcohol seems to alleviate anxiety in the short term,” said Jennifer E. Merrill, an associate professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

But there have been plenty of other illnesses to go around.This winter’s Covid wave in the United States has been the gentlest to date, in a welcome reprieve.

NHS England has been urged to publish a full report after a major investigation into the care received by Nottingham triple killer Valdo Calocane.

The fallout from the F.D.A.’s rejection of a new treatment for PTSD worries researchers and experts who fear other psychedelic drugs in the pipeline could be jeopardized.After more than three decades of planning and a $250 million investment, Lykos Therapeutics’ application for the first psychedelic drug to reach federal regulators was expected to be a shoo-in.Lykos, the corporate arm of a nonprofit dedicated to winning mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that its groundbreaking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder — MDMA plus talk therapy — was significantly more effective than existing treatments.At a pivotal public hearing last summer, two dozen scientists, doctors and trauma survivors told an F.D.A. advisory panel how MDMA-assisted therapy had brought marked relief from a mental health condition associated with high rates of suicide, especially among veterans.Then came skeptics with disturbing accusations: that Lykos was “a therapy cult,” that practitioners in its clinical trials had engaged in widespread abuse of participants and that the company had concealed a litany of adverse events.“The most significant harms in Lykos’s clinical trials were not caused by MDMA, but by the people who were entrusted to supervise its administration,” Neşe Devenot, one of the speakers opposed to Lykos’s treatment and a writing instructor at Johns Hopkins University, told the committee.Dr. Devenot and six others presented themselves as experts in the field of psychedelics, but none had expertise in medicine or therapy. Nor had the speakers disclosed their connection to Psymposia, a leftist advocacy group whose members oppose the commercialization of psychedelics and had been campaigning against Lykos and its nonprofit parent, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

20 minutes agoShona Elliott and Ruth CleggBBC News Investigations

Nearly 700,000 women are to be recruited to take part in an NHS artificial intelligence (AI) breast cancer screening trial in England.