Think Bigg

Perhaps the story of Anna Nicole Smith might have ended differently if she had access to a reliable online prescription drug interaction checker?

Okay, perhaps not. But you can certainly make use of a variety of helpful online tools to check out your prescriptions for adverse drug interactions.

Why bother? According to the Washington Post,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that deaths from accidental drug interactions rose 68 percent between 1999 and 2004, continuing a steady climb since the early 1990s. Unintentional drug poisonings accounted for nearly 20,000 deaths in 2004, said the CDC, making the problem now the second-leading cause of accidental death in the United States, after automobile accidents. “Prescription drugs, especially prescription painkillers, are driving the prolonged increase,” the report stated.

Luckily there are lots of online resources to help. The University of Maryland Medical Center might be my first stop, if for no other reason than university doctors seem smarter than most. On the negative side, the results tend to be what you’d expect from medical school professors, and so can be a bit hard to parse through.

Drugstore.com also has its own tool, as does Drugs.com, Eckerd Pharmacy, and Discovery Health.

The quality of the information probably varies site by site, so as always, don’t take what you read online at face value — always remember to use the information to check with your doctor!

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