77
votes
Do ibuprofen or paracetamol cause hearing loss?
Yes.
That is: They can cause hearing loss. They are properly classified as ototoxic agents.
Paracetamol/Acetaminophen is certainly not entirely harmless. In fact it is properly classified as an ...
- 43.7k
74
votes
Do the majority of doctors in the USA support hydroxychloroquine use for covid-19?
The only way to settle this is to find and cite a study or survey that supports or refutes the claim that "the majority of doctors in the USA support the use of hydroxychloroquine against COVID ...
- 5,038
67
votes
Are 99% of US beef cattle given steroids to promote faster growth?
TLDR: roughly true, although the overall percentage of US feedlot cattle given such implants is around 90%, not 99%, according to 2013 USDA data, although it's higher in some US regions, for some ...
- 55.2k
58
votes
Are EpiPens still effective past expiration date?
Yes, there was such a study, if by "medically effective", you mean something like "better than not using any epinephrine treatment".
From the NIH, a study first published in the Journal of Allergy ...
- 4,350
41
votes
In the past did Martin Shkreli offer free medication for those who could not afford it?
Yes, with a number of caveats.
Shkreli's company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, promised to give free access to Daraprim to some patients in need after the initial price-hike controversy arose.
Here is a ...
- 138k
37
votes
Is hydroxychloroquine + zinc + antibiotics an effective treatment for COVID-19?
There is no perfect study yet, but the best evidence we have says HCQ doesn't work
There are well-known rules for judging the quality of evidence in clinical studies. Since discussion this highly ...
- 55.6k
35
votes
Accepted
Has LSD 'been widely used in hospitals for the treatment of mental disorders'?
Yes, LSD has a history of psychiatric use
In terms of the number of doses administered in an official clinical setting, it might not fit the definition of widely, but it has been tried out for wide ...
- 43.7k
31
votes
Accepted
Was very little or no new medication developed in the USSR?
Concerning the claim in the question headline: it might be difficult to properly define "very little", compare that to Western medicine. Then start an argument about what counts statistically as…
...
- 43.7k
23
votes
Accepted
Multiwave Locked System (MLS) laser therapy - is it any better than just infrared light?
Partial answer:
Dr Harriet Hall has covered LLLT in an article on Skeptic magazine. To summarize, she writes that there is not enough evidence to support the claims.
In her article, she quoted this ...
- 2,559
21
votes
Do ibuprofen or paracetamol cause hearing loss?
The referenced study is likely "Analgesic Use and the Risk of Hearing Loss in Women" in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The conclusion states
In conclusion, this prospective study ...
- 43.5k
20
votes
In the past did Martin Shkreli offer free medication for those who could not afford it?
The closest I could find was this (see also here):
He also promised: "If you cannot afford the drug we will give it away for free."
This was after the backlash because of the severe price ...
tim♦
- 51.2k
18
votes
Accepted
Can honey help heal wounds?
In short, yes. Picking one of the first recent publications to come up in my search for "honey wound healing", I give you Honey and Wound Healing: An Update (DOI 10.1007/s40257-016-0247-8), which "...
- 852
17
votes
Is hydroxychloroquine + zinc + antibiotics an effective treatment for COVID-19?
A double-blind, randomized, controlled trial was just published today in NEJM: A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19. This is a trial where ...
- 43.5k
16
votes
Accepted
Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy lead to children developing autism?
Unless otherwise noted, quotes are taken from the associated review article.
Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy lead to children developing autism?
NO.
[acetaminophen] is one of the most ...
- 4,714
15
votes
Accepted
Does drinking distilled kerosene cure cancer?
tl;dr- No, drinking distilled kerosene doesn't cure cancer as far as any modern research can tell. Some studies have suggested that it might cause cancer in some cases, though the general scientific ...
- 4,041
13
votes
Does the US no longer make antibiotics?
Yes and No... mostly yes, most manufacturing sites are outside the US.
Pharmaceutical drugs in general
Looking first at pharmaceutical drugs in general there is the FDA Safeguarding Pharmaceutical ...
- 1,827
12
votes
Accepted
How are vaccines tested for very young children or infants?
It seems a bit weird for any parent to want to sign their newborn up for drug trials.
Weird or not, that's how it's done. If your kids are at risk of a dangerous disease, free vaccination and ...
- 1,215
12
votes
Do African countries using Ivermectin have a better Covid-19 situation?
The first really important question is what exactly it means that those countries use ivermectin or are part of APOC. Both papers seem to assume that this status is binary, a country is either in the ...
- 43.5k
9
votes
Does storing medicine at recommended temperatures prolong its life?
Let's start with a simpler question, and build up.
Do drugs last longer than the expiration date?
Yes, for most but not all drugs.
The American Medical Association were concerned about the wastage of ...
- 138k
8
votes
Accepted
Does Paracetamol reduce fever?
The paper "Aspirin compared with acetaminophen in the treatment of fever and other symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection in adults", published by the NIH, tested the efficacy of Aspirin, ...
- 2,929
8
votes
Accepted
Do the recent changes in US drug policy correlate with an increase in people moving from prescribed opioids to heroin?
There's a lot of literature on this apparently, and I've only looked at one (55-page) 2018 NBER paper. There is some (correlational) evidence that the "pill mill" crackdown contributed to the switch ...
- 55.2k
8
votes
Have COVID-19 vaccination trials started in Seattle?
I decided to go and look on the website for the research institute in Seattle and they confirm that testing is indeed underway.
On March 16, 2020, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research ...
- 2,608
8
votes
Did the drugs against COVID-19 whose EUA was revoked lead to a huge decline in hospitalization rates in Florida?
Did the drugs against COVID-19 whose EUA was revoked lead to a huge decline in hospitalization rates in Florida?
The FDA found that the treatment was effective enough to allow emergency use for ...
- 15.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Does abuse of 'study drugs' increase school performance or learning?
TLDR version: the jury's still out. There's limited evidence of improvement in narrow tasks, mainly in memory (particularly on stimulants) and in some sub-groups of individuals. There's also a ...
- 55.2k
7
votes
Do antibiotics weaken your immune system?
How much antibiotics affect gut flora is open subject, there are studies showing there is long lasting negative effect. Eg. "Gut microbiota disturbance during antibiotic therapy: a multi-omic approach"...
- 26.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Is the same hep C medicine available for 900$ in India and 84000$ in the United States?
The image is incorrect in its description, but on target for costs being different in the USA and India, but jumps to hyperbole for its reasoning.
The pill in question is Sovaldi, manufactured by ...
- 1,253
7
votes
Does Modafinil make you smarter?
It depends what you mean by "smarter" but there are real beneficial effects in some areas
Modafinil is widely believed (and widely used) to create some sort of cognitive enhancement. But the evidence ...
- 55.6k
6
votes
Is nitrous oxide not used during labor in US hospitals because it is cheaper?
Is it true that laughing gas is not used to reduce labor pains because it is cheap?
There seems to be a range of factors contributing to why N2O is not readily available in the US.
Nitrous Oxide for ...
- 2,020
6
votes
Has shea butter been clinically proven to help?
Just to focus on one of the specific claims, a journal article from 2009 describes what the authors believed to be the first clinical application of shea butter to treat eczema (aka atopic dermatitis)....
- 7,164
5
votes
Does alcohol-free "essential oil" mouthwash kill bacteria in your mouth?
Essential oils can definitely kill bacteria; however, the other complicating factor related to alcohol is the biofilm.
Penetrating the plaque biofilm: impact of essential oil mouthwash.
This suggests ...
- 151
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible