Year: 2012

New Cases, Death Rate Slows in Fungal Meningitis Outbreak

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New Cases, Death Rate Slows in Fungal Meningitis OutbreakIf there's any positive news to be known about the fungal meningitis outbreak, linked to tainted injectable medications manufactured by the New England Compounding Center, NECC, is that at long last the reports of new infections and deaths having occurred are coming in more slowly. A consumer watchdog group, Public Citizen, has written a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking it to revisit 16 compounding pharmacies to which the agency had issued warnings from 2003 through 2012, in an effort to prevent any such health tragedies in the future.

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More House Republicans see Obama tax hikes as part of "cliff" deal

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A small but growing number of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives believe tax hikes on the rich like those favored by President Barack Obama will be part of a final deal to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff. “I wouldn’t have a problem with letting those tax rates go up,” provided they are coupled with spending cuts, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho told Reuters Thursday. …

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Debt limit hike must be part of fiscal cliff deal: Reid

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. debt ceiling increase must be part of any deal to resolve the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts, the top Democratic senator said on Thursday, further complicating talks to stave off the austerity measures. President Barack Obama will not sign any agreement that does not contain a debt limit hike, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told reporters after meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. That demand was underpinned with the White House warning Republican lawmakers that the $16. …

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FDA approves Exelixis’ cabozantinib for thyroid cancer

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Exelixis Inc’s cabozantinib as a treatment for medullary thyroid cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. Cabozantinib, the company’s lead product candidate, is an oral drug designed to limit blood supply to tumors as well as block two segments of a pathway used by cancer cells to grow and spread. The FDA announcement came shortly after the close of stock market trading in New York, where Exelixis shares eased slightly on the day at $5.24 per share. …

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U.S. diets not up to U.S. standards: study

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a broad comparison of U.S. dietary standards and real Americans’ eating habits, researchers found that people fall short of nutritional recommendations overall, but some groups are worse than others. Among the findings, researchers said that children and the elderly seemed to eat a healthier diet than younger and middle-aged adults, and women had a better diet than men. Hispanics also tended to have better quality diets than either blacks or whites. …

Drug, alcohol abuse tied to early-life strokes

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Younger adults who suffered a stroke were often smokers or had abused drugs or alcohol, in a new study from Ohio and Kentucky. Although strokes are often thought of as a condition of the elderly, researchers said long-term changes in the heart, arteries and blood as a result of drug abuse or heavy drinking may put users at higher-than-average risk earlier in life. It’s also possible that some drugs, particularly cocaine and methamphetamines, may trigger a stroke more immediately, according to Dr. S. …

Study finds herbalists at higher urinary cancer risk

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A small new study from Taiwan links a widely banned substance traditionally used in Chinese medicine to an elevated risk for kidney and bladder cancers among professional herbalists. Herbs, such as fang chi, that contain the plant-derived aristolochic acid, are known to cause cancer as well as kidney failure, and the current study suggests that working with these herbs raised urinary cancer rates among Taiwanese herbalists who handled fang chi before its ban in 2003. …

Ranbaxy halts generic Lipitor production after recall: FDA

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(Reuters) – Indian generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories will stop manufacturing its version of Pfizer Inc’s cholesterol fighter, Lipitor, while it gets to the bottom of the cause of a recent recall, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on its website. Earlier this month, Ranbaxy recalled certain lots of the widely used cholesterol lowering medicine known generically as atorvastatin at doses of 10 milligrams, 20 mg and 40 mg after the company discovered contamination with tiny glass particles. …

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FDA advisory panel backs J&J tuberculosis drug

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(Reuters) – An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday voted that an experimental Johnson & Johnson drug for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis appears to be safe and effective, but highlighted potential heart and liver-safety issues. The medicine, called bedaquiline, targets adenosine triphosphate synthase, an enzyme the tuberculosis bacterium needs to generate its energy. If approved, J&J said it would be the first drug in 40 years with a new mechanism of action against tuberculosis. …

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J&J says it won’t enforce AIDS drug patent in Africa

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LONDON (Reuters) – Generic manufacturers are to be given a free rein to make cheap copies of Johnson & Johnson’s HIV/AIDS drug Prezista for sale in Africa and other poor countries. U.S. healthcare group J&J said on Thursday it would not enforce patents, provided generic firms made high-quality versions of the drug – known generically as darunavir – for sub-Saharan Africa and Least Developed Countries. Prezista is a relatively new drug used when patients develop resistance to older antiretrovirals. …

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