http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Scientists have used the venom of Africa's lethal black mamba to produce a surprising outcome in mice which they hope to replicate in humans—effective pain relief without toxic side effects. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-mamba-venom-pain-relief.html Medical research Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:23:56 EST news268500223 During the six years following the withdrawal of the analgesic co-proxamol in the UK in 2005, there was a major reduction in poisoning deaths involving this drug, without apparent significant increase in deaths involving other analgesics. These are the findings of a study by Keith Hawton of the University of Oxford, UK and colleagues and published in this week's PLoS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-fall-deaths-involving-painkiller-co-proxamol.html Medications Tue, 08 May 2012 17:00:04 EST news255711866 Across U.S. outpatient clinics between 1997 and 2008, opioid prescriptions for chronic abdominal pain more than doubled, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-opioid-painkillers-abdominal-pain.html Medications Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:41:23 EST news241796476 US Marines badly wounded in Afghanistan may get a "lollipop" with a powerful pain killer from now on instead of the traditional shot of morphine, a Marine Corps spokesman said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-wounded-marines-lollipop-ease-pain.html Medications Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:49:37 EST news239377745 While some pain killers need to be injected into the damaged tissue in order to work, topical anaesthetics only need to be spread on the surface. The earliest examples of "topical" anaesthetics contained cocaine, but now a new systematic review has shown that newer agents that don't contain cocaine can effectively treat pain caused by torn skin. This makes these pain killers an attractive choice for doctors who need to sew-up a patient's skin wound. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-non-cocaine-topical-anaesthetics-pain-skin.html Medical research Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:20:01 EST news230982087