Drugs Section Editor: Dr Chandra M Gulhati Editor, MIMS, New Delhi Drugs play a vital role in the prevention and treatment of most diseases. They should be taken only on prescription by a registered medical practitioner. By and large, all drugs are potent weapons with a double edge: judicious and appropriate use can give relief, reckless “self-prescription” can be dangerous. Therefore, medicines should only be taken as directed by the doctor. According to government rules, manufacturers and drug stores are obliged to give a product information leaflet with the purchase of every medicine. In practice, this not being done. Therefore, most people are not aware of essential information on the drugs that they consume. In order to help such people we are developing a database on drugs being sold in India that provides important information that is the name of the medicine, the name(s) of various brands under which the medicine is being marketed, the use(s) of the medicine, side-effects which might occur, situations when the drug can be used but with utmost care, and situations when the drug must not be used. We have already listed nearly all single ingredient medicines. Now, we are in the process of adding multi-ingredient drug combinations that contain more than one medicine. We hope you will find this section useful. Topics & Information Frozen shoulder Medical treatment for cancers Weight loss Lupus Birth control pills (Oral Contraceptives) Hepatitis C More »