Dangerous drug combos pose risk for elderly

By Julie Steenhuysen – Tue Dec 23, 5:02 pm ET

Reuters – File photo illustration of assorted pills. (Jacky Naegelen/Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Older adults in the United States are popping prescription pills, over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in record numbers, and in combinations that could be deadly, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

They said more than half of U.S. adults aged 57 to 85 are using five or more prescription or non-prescription drugs, and one in 25 are taking them in combinations that could cause dangerous drug interactions.

"Older adults in the United States use medicine and they use a lot of it," said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau of the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"While medications are often beneficial, they are not always safe," she said in a telephone interview.

She noted a recent report that estimated U.S. adults over 65 make up more than 175,000 emergency department visits a year for adverse drug reactions, and commonly prescribed drugs accounted for a third of these visits.

For the study, Lindau teamed up with Dima Qato, a pharmacist and researcher at the University of Chicago. They used data from a national survey of adults aged 57 to 85 and interviews with nearly 3,000 people in their homes to get a read on the medications they used on a regular basis.

They analyzed potential interactions among the top 20 prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the top 20 They analyzed potential interactions among the top 20 prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the top 20 dietary supplements, and found that 68 percent of adults surveyed who took prescription drugs also used over-the-counter drugs or dietary supplements.

Men in the 75 to 85-year-old age group were at the highest risk, they said. "One in 10 men between the ages of 75 to 85 were at risk for a drug-to-drug interaction," Qato said in a telephone interview.

BLEEDING RISKS

Nearly half of the potential drug-to-drug interactions could cause bleeding problems. The blood thinner warfarin, often sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. under the brand name Coumadin, was most commonly cited in potentially dangerous combinations.

Some 2 million Americans take warfarin after a heart attack, stroke or major surgery. The team found warfarin was commonly teamed up with aspirin, a drug often taken to prevent heart attacks that also interferes with clotting.

Warfarin and the cholesterol-lowering statin drug simvastatin, which is sold by Merck & Co under the brand name Zocor, was another combination that could cause potential bleeding risks.

Among non-prescription drugs, they found many people were taking the popular nutritional supplement Ginkgo biloba in combination with aspirin, another potential cause of bleeding.

The team was reassured that they found no instances of people taking absolutely forbidden drug combinations, but the finding of widespread use of drugs that could cause major drug reactions was worrisome.

"We think the patient needs to know about these risks," Qato said.

The researchers recommend patients carry a list in a wallet or purse of all of the drugs and supplements they take.

And they said doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals should remember to ask about all of the medications their patients are taking.

(Editing by Michael Conlon and Eric Beech)

'Space Available: Had Been a Hedge Fund'

By GREGORY MEYER

NEW YORK -- The tide of investors demanding money back from hedge funds is washing into New York-area office buildings, as funds that rented plush space when times were good adopt a sort of austerity.

After driving Manhattan office rents to nearly $200 a square foot, hedge funds are struggling with stingier lenders, investor redemptions and, in many cases, poor returns. As a result, in East Coast hedge fund capitals New York City and Greenwich, Conn., several high-profile hedge funds are scrambling to sublet office space.

"There is certainly a lack of demand from hedge funds," said Evan Margolin, a New York managing director at Studley Inc., a tenant-representation firm. "It's all redemption-driven. Even funds doing well are facing redemptions, and funds not doing well are facing larger redemptions."

In Manhattan, hedge funds Duff Capital Advisors, RiverPark Capital, SAB Capital and Sansar Capital Management are among those with Midtown space to sublet, real-estate brokers say. Twenty-eight miles northeast in Greenwich, Duff Capital and quantitative fund firm AQR Capital Management have spare square footage.

The situation is a far cry from just a year ago when firms were willing to pay millions to outfit office space with backup power systems, in-house gyms and large pantries for catered lunches. A handful of skyscrapers near the southeast corner of Central Park commanded the highest rents, in some cases near $200 a square foot.

"Over the last few years ostentatiousness was in and having space in the top of towers with phenomenal Central Park views was highly coveted," said Ben Friedland, a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. "Now as a money manager in the world we're in you have to weigh what message that gives off."

Posh Sublets

The moves to downsize follow unprecedented pain in the hedge-fund industry.

Funds as a group were down about 18% through November and in the third quarter of this year fund closings exceeded launches for the first time in more than a decade, according to Hedge Fund Research.

SAB Capital Management, founded by Scott A. Bommer, has about 11,000 square feet to sublet on the 21st floor of the General Motors Building, a premium Manhattan tower across New York's Fifth Avenue from the Plaza Hotel. SAB didn't respond to requests for comment.

Amber Capital, a hedge fund run by Michel Brogard and housed inside the slant-roofed Citigroup Center on East 53rd Street in New York City, is seeking subtenants for the 31,000-square-foot floor it leased through 2016, according to a marketing brochure for the space.

Duff Capital, founded by Phil Duff, is trying to sublet about 11,000 square feet on Park Avenue in Manhattan, as well as 15,000 square feet in the former Greenwich headquarters of tobacco company UST Inc. Duff Capital is reducing space and "looking at various options," a firm spokeswoman said. She wouldn't give a reason behind the moves.

AQR, with assets of more than $20 billion, is based in Greenwich Plaza, a 300,000-square-foot office complex next to the Greenwich train station. It shares the building with hedge-fund tenants including Lone Pine Capital, JD Capital Management and FrontPoint Partners, which was co-founded by Mr. Duff. AQR has been attempting to sublease 65,000 square feet in another Greenwich office building. A source with knowledge of the firm said it is pruning operations for the first time since it was founded.

Thinking Short Term

Hedge funds are plunging into subleasing just as the Manhattan office market softens. The island's vacancy rate for Class A buildings in November was 8.7%, the highest level in more than three years, according to Colliers ABR Inc. Sublease availability is up nearly 150% for the year to date, the real-estate firm said.

Hedge funds that need to renew leases are in many cases looking for short-term extensions on the expectation rents will drop. Over the years, rent wasn't the biggest factor for hedge funds scouting office space "because if the business was working, the rent was a small component of their profits. It made no difference whether they paid $100 a foot or $150 a foot," Mr. Margolin said.

—Joseph Checkler contributed to this article.

Write to Gregory Meyer at greg.meyer@dowjones.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122990717859125433.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Holes in Earth's magnetic cloak let the sun in

By Clare Baldwin

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Earth's protective magnetosphere has two large holes that are letting in disruptive solar winds, scientists said on Tuesday.

Understanding how these holes form will help them better predict the electrical storms that cause power grid blackouts and the aurora, activity that will peak in 2012 as sunspots hit their maximum level.

Scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco said they had been entirely wrong about how solar particles that cause the storms were entering the Earth's magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind.

Scientists once believed that the particles entered when the sun's magnetic field was aligned opposite to that of the Earth's. But findings presented at the meeting show that 20 times more solar particles enter the Earth's magnetic field when it is aligned in the same direction as the sun's magnetic field.

The alignment causes the two magnetic fields to connect and tears holes in the Earth's magnetic field over the poles.

"What we observed was the breach in the levee," said Jimmy Raeder, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire. "This has taken us completely by surprise."

In June 2007, NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft probes flew through one of the tears just as it was opening. Sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, said Raeder.

"The opening was huge -- four times wider than Earth itself," said Raeder. "This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible."

Most of the particles are deflected back into space, but some circulate in the magnetosphere, get energized, and cause electrical storms that trigger power grid outages, cause problems for aircraft flying over the poles, and can damage satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

"There's a bigger risk because we have more stuff in space now," said Raeder.

Scientists said that the majority of solar storms take place midway through and on the tail end of the solar cycle. This 11-year cycle of activity is at its minimum now and electrical storms will be at their peak in 2012.

(Editing by Maggie Fox, Editing by Sandra Maler)

UBP confirms $700 million exposure in Madoff case

GENEVA (Reuters) - Swiss private bank 

Union Bancaire Privee (UBP) was quoted on Thursday as saying that it had a $700 million exposure to the alleged $50 billion securities fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff.

The Geneva-based bank that invests in funds of hedge funds denounced the "massive fraud" but said its exposure was less than 1 percent of its portfolio, which was some 126 billion Swiss francs ($117.2 billion) as of June 30.

Christophe Bernard, responsible for UBP investment policy, told the daily Le Temps: "The exposure of the accounts under our discretionary management mandate and our funds of alternative funds is 700 million dollars, or 800 million Swiss francs."

"The financial solidity of the bank is not affected and remains top flight," he added.

The daily Le Temps, citing unnamed banking sources, had previously estimated UPB's losses at some 1 billion Swiss francs.

The bank did not have any investments of its own with Madoff, whom it had last visited in late November, according to Bernard.

UBP had done its "due diligence," fulfilling its fiduciary duty, and had had faith that the SEC's surveillance was strict.

Dinvest Total Return, its main fund of alternative funds, lost 3 percent, bringing its loss to 21 percent for the year, he said.

Overall, its alternative portfolios hit by the alleged fraud had exposure of 2 to 5 percent, he said.

"On the other hand, we have reduced significantly the weight of hedge funds in the portfolios of our clients," he added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay)