From baseball’s Mitchell Report to track star Marion Jones being stripped of her Olympic medals, the awareness of drug use in competitive sports is at an all-time high. So high, in fact, that even professional gaming can’t stay ducked under the radar.

Casting aside for the moment whether or not gaming qualifies as a ’sport,’ there’s no debate to the amount of money being made in professional gaming. Major League Gaming gives up to $100,000 a tournament in prize money, and the other U.S. based major league, the newly minted Championship Gaming Series, has awarded as much as $500,000 in tournaments. The tally gets even higher when expanding to a global view.

And whether or not you count professional gaming as a sport, with that much money at stake, is anyone surprised that accusations of drug use have started to be thrown? According to GamePlayer, an Australian lead gaming site, some of the commonly abused substances include marijuana, amphetamines, Dexamphetamine and Methylphenidate (Ritalin), Caffeine, and FpsBrain.

In a followup to the story, GamePlayer pinged Alex Walker, the director of the Australian World Cyber Games Tournament, who readily acknowledged that players are abusing drugs in order to enhance their performance. Walker notes seeing “a number of players at national tournaments who came in “baked” purely so they could play better.”

As professional gaming grows in popularity, drug use could potentially become an even bigger problem. But at the current profit margin, gaming leagues can ill afford to implement drug testing, and DailyTech notes that a strict drug enforcement policy that includes marijuana could be met with a backlash among gamers.

Thoughts on the subject? Hit the jump and let us know.

Using the same technique they developed to document the harmful effects of tobacco products, a team of researchers found that cigarettes made without tobacco or nicotine may be more carcinogenic because they actually induce more extensive DNA damage than tobacco products.
The technique has been awarded U.S. patent No. 7,662,565.
The research team was led by Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology. Their study will appear in the June 1 issue of Cell Cycle (Volume 9, Issue 11).
Using laser scanning cytometry (LSC) technology to measure DNA damage response to the smoke from commercially available tobacco- and nicotine-free cigarettes, the research team expected to find the alternative products were less hazardous than regular tobacco cigarettes. However, their data suggest that exposure of cells to smoke from tobacco- and nicotine-free cigarettes leads to formation of double-strand DNA breaks (DSBs). Since DSBs are potentially carcinogenic, the data indicate that smoking tobacco- and nicotine-free cigarettes is at least as hazardous as those containing tobacco and nicotine.
The authors conclude that their methodology to assess the potential carcinogenic properties of tobacco smoke, based on measurement of DNA damage response as assessed by LSC, provides a useful addition to the battery of genotoxic tests for probing cigarette smoke hazards. Such tests, which can be applied to evaluate the effects of cigarettes and cigarette surrogate products on human health, can be important tools for regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or, in the case of environmental smoke, by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ortho Evra. What it feels like for a girl…

Ortho Evra birth control patch is the first and only skin patch approved for birth control, and more than 4 million women have used the patch since it came on the market. It is a weekly prescription patch that releases ethinyl estradiol (an estrogen hormone) and norelgestromin (a progestin hormone) through the skin into the blood stream. Ortho Evra is manufactured by Ortho McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc., the part of Johnson & Johnson corporation.

In 2005, the conclusions of an Evra Ortho side effects study conducted by an independent panel of medical experts concluded that the Ortho Evra Patch triples a woman’s risk of developing a fatal blood clot or deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Women who use Ortho Evra are exposed to about 60 percent more total estrogen in their blood than if they were taking a typical birth control pill containing 35 micrograms of estrogen. Which also leads to weight gain, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and in some cases death.

In April 2004, an 18-year-old New York fashion student died while using the Ortho Evra patch. According to officials for the FDA and Ortho McNeil, the death is the first linked to the contraceptive patch. Information from the Medical Examiner’s Office indicates Zakiya Kennedy’s death was caused by a blood clot.
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Just as the patent is about to run out for Prozac, we learn that this worldwide topselling antidepressant isn’t any more effective than its competitors, Paxil and Zoloft. These three popular antidepressants, all from the same drug class, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), were shown to be of similar effectiveness in a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, 12/19/01).
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Antidepressants can help reduce risk of repeat heart attacks and cardiac death, according to a study led by Stanford University researchers published Monday.

The findings suggest that patients who have already had a heart attack and suffer from depression should talk to their doctors about taking antidepressants to prevent another cardiac event.
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A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) for treating premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), the second SSRI and second drug approved for this indication.

* Recommended Dosage: 50 mg/day throughout the menstrual cycle or during the luteal phase. If necessary, dose may be increased at 50-mg increments per cycle, up to 150 mg/day when taken throughout the cycle or 100 mg/day when taken during the luteal phase.
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A Prozac price war is predicted by at least one generic drug maker. Approximately 30 current and tentative approvals for generic Prozac (fluoxetine) were entered on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug applications list as of early this month. One fluoxetine maker, Teva, said it expects a price war to ensue with Barr Laboratories and other generic makers of Prozac.
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IN THE BIBLICAL story, God tests his faithful servant Job to see whether Job will stay devoted to God even if God takes everything away from him. Now you don’t lose your family, health and possessions, as Job did, without falling into a terrible funk. It’s possible, then, to understand Job’s story as being about remaining true to God through a devastating depression. Suppose that Job had had a prescription for Prozac to help lessen his pain. Would it have been cheating to take a couple of tablets a day while God was tossing all manner of pestilence at him?
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Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA) and Wyeth (NYSE:WYE) today announced that they have reached agreement on the principal terms of a settlement of the U.S. patent infringement litigation pertaining to Teva’s generic version of Wyeth’s Effexor XR(R) antidepressant pending in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. The parties are currently drafting definitive agreements and intend to submit the settlement agreements to the Federal Trade Commission (”FTC”). The terms of the settlement are confidential and are subject to a number of conditions, including review of the settlement by the FTC and the approval of the District Court.
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Greater efficacy results in lower utilization of healthcare services

Data presented here today shows that Effexor(R) (venlafaxine HCl) for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) was more effective - and less costly - than other commonly used antidepressants. Effexor is marketed by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a division of American Home Products Corporation (NYSE: AHP).
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