Aspirin warning

Asthma sufferers are warned against using aspirin as a pain reliever because potentially life-threatening reactions to the drug appear more common than was previously thought. Risks from paracetamol appear far lower. Drugs to relieve pain and fevers are often bought by people self-medicating, so it is particularly important for health professionals to alert patients diagnosed with asthma to the risks, say the authors.

Addiction help

Scientists are paving the way for medicines that could help remove cravings in drug addicts and improve education prospects of people with learning difficulties. They believe that similar changes in the brain help cause cocaine addiction and impair learning and memory processes. Work at Edinburgh had suggested that removing the protein from mice severely limited their ability to learn; apparently because it interfered with the way brain synapses changed electrical activity into chemical activity. Work in the US exposing mice to cocaine reduced levels of the protein in parts of the brain linked to movement and emotional response. — Agencies