Four deaths are linked to improper use of a painkiller, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are warning doctors about it.

In a letter from the drug manufacturer, Cephalon Inc., the company said the deaths were the result of improper dosing of its drug called Fentora

The number of serious injuries and deaths reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from widely used medicines almost tripled between 1998 and 2005, an analysis of U.S. drug data found.

The report in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association, says that the number of deaths and serious injuries from prescription and over-the-counter drugs climbed from 34,966 to 89,842

A recent study by Australian scientists has shown that women who prefer to have an epidural anesthesia to relieve labor pains are more likely to face short- and long-term breastfeeding problems. More specifically, the researchers found that women who received an epidural with the narcotic fentanyl seemed to have more problems with breastfeeding than women who went without an epidural.

Researchers reported that out of the 1,260 women they studied, 33 percent had an epidural. All of the epidurals included fentanyl and an anesthetic called bupivacaine

An Australian study says that women who opt to have an epidural during childbirth are more prone to breast-feeding problems in their first week. They are also more likely to stop breast-feeding in less than six months.

The study can be read in the Dec. 11 issue of the International Breastfeeding Journal

According to a recent study by Australian scientists, women who prefer to have an epidural anesthesia to relieve labor pains are more likely to have problems in the first week after birth and could reduce a woman's ability to breastfeed.

Epidural anesthesia is a form of regional anesthesia involving injection of drugs through a catheter placed into the epidural space. The injection can cause both a loss of sensation (anesthesia) and a loss of pain (analgesia), by blocking the transmission of pain signals through nerves in or near the spinal cord