In many cases, doping increases the amount of hemoglobin in the bloodstream. Hemoglobin is an oxygen-carrying protein in the blood. Increasing hemoglobin allows higher amounts of oxygen to reach and fuel an athlete’s muscles. This can improve stamina and performance, particularly in long-distance events, such as running and cycling.

Doping is banned by the International Olympic Committee and other sports organizations and is considered to be illegal.

Types of Doping

The three most common types of blood doping are:

• Blood transfusions
• Injections of erythropoietin (EPO)
• Injections of synthetic oxygen carriers

Here are some more details about each of these types of blood doping:

Blood transfusions. In normal medical practice, patients may undergo blood transfusions to replace blood lost due to injury or surgery. Transfusions also are given to patients who suffer from low red blood cell counts caused by anemia, kidney failure, and other conditions or treatments.

Blood transfusions are used by athletes to boost performance. The main types are:

Autologous transfusion. This involves a transfusion of the athlete’s own blood, which is drawn and then stored for future use.

Homologous transfusion. In this type of transfusion, athletes use the blood of someone else with the same blood type.

EPO injections. EPO is a hormone produced by the kidney. It regulates the body’s production of red blood cells.

It’s hydroxyurea.

Hydroxyurea was developed in 1869 and more than a century later, in 1998, was approved for treatment of sickle cell disease. Hydroxyurea helps reduce the frequency of painful crises and the need for blood transfusions in people with sickle cell disease.

Still, patients and families as well as their healthcare providers have been discouraged because it has been 14 years since the approval of hydroxyurea and we’ve had no new drugs for treating those with sickle cell disease.

So you can imagine how excited I was to attend the First Annual Sickle Cell Disease Therapeutics Conference (http://www.scdconference.com/) on September 19 and learn about the new drugs in development for sickle cell disease

Chances are, you’re one of many Americans who don’t have to heart to toss out expired pain relievers, cough syrup or sleeping pills. But you can’t seem to throw them away because you suspect they might still be okay to take. Well, according to recent studies, some medications are still potent after 50 years—so maybe you shouldn’t!

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A new analysis of eight prescription drugs that have well-surpassed their discard date, some by as much as 40 years, has found that these drugs are just as potent as the day they were manufactured.

Researchers California Poison Control System, UC San Francisco, and UC Irvine tested  the effectiveness of eight drugs that had been sitting around, unopened, in pharmacies for years after they had supposedly gone bad.

These drugs were not just a few years past their prime, these medications were a full 28 to 40 years past their official expiration dates.

The eight drugs contained a total of 15 active ingredients. The researchers couldn’t find a standard test for one of them (homatropine), so they focused their analysis on the other 14.

The tablets and capsules were dissolved and subjected to chemical analysis using a mass spectrometer. That revealed how much of the active ingredients remained in the pills.

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A new CDC study shows the number of people who abused prescription pain killers for more than 200 days in the last year rose by nearly 75% between 2002-03 and 2009-10. But estimates for overall past-year abuse have stayed about the same since 2002.

“This finding is important because it parallels increases in overdose deaths, treatment admissions, and other negative effects associated with opioid pain relievers in recent years,” researcher Christopher M. Jones, PharmD, MPH, of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC, writes in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Deaths from overdoses involving prescription pain killers, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone, increased by 109% during the same time period.

In the study, researchers compared data on prescription pain killer use gathered by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2002-2003 and 2009-2010.

People who used prescription pain killers were asked to state the number of days they used pain killers for nonmedical reasons in the last year.

Daily aspirin use was associated with a higher-than-expected increase in the risk for major bleeding in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The risk for serious bleeds was five times higher than has been reported in clinical trials of daily low-dose aspirin, says researcher Antonio Nicolucci, MD.

He noted that while daily aspirin therapy has been proven to lower the risk for a second heart attack or stroke in people who have already suffered one, the treatment’s usefulness for preventing a first heart attack or stroke is not so clear.

“People with a moderate-to-high risk for having a major cardiovascular event probably benefit from aspirin therapy, but the risks may outweigh the benefits for people with a lower risk,” Nicolucci says.

Diabetes Linked to Bleeding Risk

Researchers were surprised to find that patients with diabetes had a 36% increased risk for these potentially life-threatening bleeding episodes even when they did not take aspirin. Aspirin use did not appear to influence this risk for people with diabetes one way or another.

Diabetes is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke, and low-dose aspirin is recommended for most diabetic men over age 50 and diabetic women over 60 when other heart disease and stroke risk factors are present.

Typically, some medications can eliminate any sign of HIV from the bloodstream, but the virus that causes AIDS never vanishes for good. Instead, it hides in the body, waiting to strike again.

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It’s too early to know if the approach will actually help patients get rid of the virus forever. The optimistic hopes of scientists, who are forever seeking an AIDS cure, could be snarled by side effects or some other medical hitch.

But the findings are a promising start, said study author Dr. David Margolis, a professor of medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“We just wanted to show that we could get the virus to come out and show itself,” he said. “This doesn’t tell you that we have a cure for AIDS that everyone can take tomorrow. It begins us on a road to accomplish that goal.”

At issue is HIV’s ability to hide in the body. Scientists suspect that the virus “hijacks” certain kinds of immune cells — the ones that remember how to deal with certain kinds of germs — and lurk inside them. Thanks to this hijacking ability, medications and the immune system itself can’t find and kill the virus or prevent it from multiplying.

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An advisory panel voted 20 to two to approve the drug in February, the first time the FDA voted to approve a weight-loss drug in more than a decade. Originally known as Qnexa, the FDA required Vivus, the manufacturer of the drug, to change its name in order to prevent its confusion with other drugs with similar-sounding names. Data presented by the company showed that it helped patients lose about 10 percent of their body weight.

The committee’s recommendation and Tuesday’s approval by the FDA drew both praise and criticism, reflecting concern over the drug’s side effects as well as the need to give patients more choices beyond diet, exercise and bariatric surgery.

“Considering the heavy toll of obesity in our society, this agent has tremendous potential,” said Dr. Chip Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehab and prevention at the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.

“I do think it will help a subpopulation lose weight. However, I am concerned that mass marketing of this drug will perpetuate the magic bullet approach to weight loss, which is limiting and does not address the root problem,” said Dr. Gerard Mullin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

About one-third of Americans are obese, and many have chronic, expensive medical conditions as a result, such as heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. Until recently, the array of available options has been frustratingly sparse for many doctors and their patients: diet, exercise and, for those overweight enough to qualify, bariatric surgery.

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Using a large national database, FDA researchers analyzed prescription drug trends among children ages up to age 17 between 2002 and 2010 on an outpatient basis.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that the number of overall prescriptions for this age group decreased by 7 percent, in contrast to the 22 percent increase in prescriptions given to adults over the same period. However, the authors noted that their research did not track whether the drugs were actually used, only that they were prescribed.

There were also significant decreases in the number of antibiotics, allergy medicines, pain medicines, drugs used to treat depression and certain cough and cold medications prescribed for children.

But ADHD prescriptions increased by 46 percent, and there were also higher numbers of medications prescribed for asthma and birth control.

“Identification of drugs with the highest numbers of patients exposed can help focus research efforts on those drugs that could have a large impact on the pediatric population, ” wrote the authors, led by Grace Chai of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Contraceptive prescriptions also skyrocketed, increasing among adolescents by 93 percent.

The study did not offer in-depth analysis of reasons behind these trends, but the authors did suggest that birth control use could actually be explained by a number of factors. Recent surveys did not find much of an increase in the number of girls using birth control, so the trend may be the result of longer use or using these medications for other reasons, such as acne.

They also found that a considerable number of infants less than 1 year old were prescribed acid reflux-controlling proton pump inhibitors — particularly Prevacid — although these medications are not FDA-approved for use in children this young.

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Adderall is also used to treat narcolepsy. The drug, made by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, is currently in short supply in the United States.

The counterfeit versions of Adderall are ineffective and potentially harmful, the FDA warned Tuesday.

Authentic Adderall contains four active ingredients: dextroamphetamine saccharate, amphetamine aspartate, dextroamphetamine sulfate, and amphetamine sulfate. Preliminary laboratory tests by the FDA found that the counterfeit version being sold as Adderall 30-milligram (mg) tablets contains tramadol and acetaminophen, ingredients in medicines used to treat acute pain.