UPDATES:SIDE-EFFECT ROUNDUP

Diagnosis can take away from you one of the most precious things you have: your sense of well being, of trusting your body, of being healthy without having to worry about your health. A visit to a doctor mostly turns up something wrong. The doctor is trained to nose out illness and abnormalities, and this he will usually do. Now something has changed. You have a disease. Your view of yourself has another dimension, that of an ill person.

* Permanent hearing loss due to the measles and rubella vaccination has been reported in a 27 year old woman a month after she received her jab. The New England Journal of Medicine, 11 July 1991.* Depot medroxy progesterone acetate (DMPA), an injectable progestogen contraceptive widely used in many countries, has been found to decrease bone density in certain parts of the body to levels below those of other premenopausal women and could be a risk factor for osteoporosis in later life. British Medical Journal, 6 July 1991.

* Clozapine, the new controversial drug for schizophrenia, has caused its first fatality. Doctors treating the 45 year old patient concluded that the drug, in combination with other drugs like carbamazepine, had a “direct toxic effect on the bone marrow.” They conclude that this combination should be used only when absolutely necessary in schizophrenia The Lancet, 27 July 1991.

* Oxytocin, the drug used to speed things up during labour, has been found to lower foetal brain oxygenation and thus increase cerebral blood volume, in at least two instances. The Lancet, 27 July 1991.

* Several cases have been noted of paraplegia after using myelography (back x-ray) with a water soluble contrast medium. The Lancet, 27 July 1991.

* Fluconazole (Diflucan), the “wonder drug” being used for persistent thrush, and more serious diseases, was blamed for three cases of Stevens-Johnson syndrome (a general condition causing trunk lesions and raised levels in the liver and pancreas). The Lancet, 13 July 1991.