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Heavy boozers are imbibing more frequently and knocking back more alcohol per binge than previously thought, according to new government data that looked, for the first time, at the detailed habits of binge drinkers.

The journal Science has now fully retracted a paper it published in 2009 that linked chronic fatigue syndrome to the retrovirus XMRV.

Johnson & Johnson said it recalled about 12 million bottles of Motrin brand painkillers because some pills may not dissolve quickly, delaying pain relief.

As Dow Jones Newswires reports, it’s not a consumer-level recall, so people aren’t being asked to get rid of or return unused products. There are no safety concerns with the pills, some of which were distributed in the U.S.

The problem of antibiotic resistance tends to reach public consciousness in a scattershot manner — when ground turkey is recalled because it’s tainted with salmonella that can’t be treated by common drugs, for example. But it’s hard to get a comprehensive picture of the extent to which certain infections have become impervious to treatment.

Venture philanthropy — the model used to accelerate research and drug development in diseases such as multiple myeloma and cystic fibrosis — is now being applied to a new arena: chronic fatigue syndrome.

Scott A. Carlson, executive director of the newly launched Chronic Fatigue Initiative, tells the Health Blog the Hutchins Family Foundation is providing “over $10 million” in funding for projects through 2014, with the possibility of more depending on the findings.

Last September, an HHS advisory committee recommended that all newborns be screened for critical congenital heart disease — a leading cause of death in infants younger than one year of age. The head of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, hasn’t yet adopted the recommendation, requesting input on how to actually implement screening.

In 2009 the FDA recalled an over-the-counter weight-loss supplement called Pai You Guo because it contained two drugs — sibutramine, the active ingredient in the now-defunct Abbott drug Meridia, and phenolphthalein, an ingredient removed from over-the-counter laxatives after it was pegged as a potential carcinogen.

Pai You Guo can significantly raise blood pressure and pulse rate and might harm patients with a history of heart problems, the FDA said.

Hospitals are offering a new service to cancer patients: navigators to help them steer through the often-overwhelming maze of decisions, doctor visits and treatments, today’s Informed Patient Column reports.

Researchers across the country have been studying patient navigator programs for several years in an attempt to determine how best they can help patients — and how exactly they should be designed and staffed. A new supplement to the journal Cancer is devoted to the issue.

Viagra Protection: A federal judge ruled yesterday that a Pfizer patent on the erectile-dysfunction treatment Viagra is valid and enforceable, protecting the blockbuster drug against generic competition until 2019, the WSJ reports. Teva Pharmaceutical had proposed a generic version of the drug, arguing that certain claims of that 2019 Pfizer patent were invalid, the paper says.