Roche Suspends Tamiflu Shipments to U.S. Private Sector
Swiss drug maker Roche said Thursday that it was temporarily halting shipments of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu to private sector recipients in the United States.
The move is intended to prevent hoarding of the drug and to guarantee there's enough to treat conventional flu cases this winter, The New York Times reported.
Companies have been stockpiling Tamiflu in order to give it to their employees in the event of an avian flu pandemic, Roche said. This stockpiling threatened to reduce the availability of Tamiflu to treat regular flu.
"At the present time, we do not have an avian influenza pandemic in the United States. However, we need to make sure that people exposed to this year's seasonal flu viruses will have access to Tamiflu," George Abercrombie, president of Roche's U.S. subsidiary, said in a statement.
This suspension of sales to the private sector won't affect U.S. government orders for Tamiflu.
Stockpiling also led Roche to suspend Tamiflu shipments in Canada, and there were reports the company was limiting Tamiflu supplies in Germany and Switzerland. The Swedish government is also limiting how much Tamiflu doctors can obtain, the Times reported.
The surging demand for Tamiflu is the result of increasing fears about the global spread of bird flu. Health officials hope that Tamiflu can help blunt the impact of a bird flu pandemic.
In related news, Russia announced Thursday that it had a new outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in chickens and ducks in a Siberian village of Rotovka, the Associated Press reported.
This lethal strain has also been found in birds in Croatia, Romania, Russia and Turkey, raising concern that it could spread across Europe. The H5N1 strain has killed at least 62 people in Asia since 2003.
U.S. Advisers Recommend Hep A Shots for All Kids
Hepatitis A vaccinations should be given to all children between 1 and 2 years old, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended in a unanimous vote late Wednesday.
The committee helps set U.S. guidelines and its recommendations are often adopted by federal health officials and heeded by doctors, the Associated Press reported.
Currently, the U.S. government recommends hepatitis A vaccinations for children in 17 states that had the highest rates of the disease. However, the impact of those vaccination campaigns seems to have leveled off and some health officials are worried that hepatitis A infection rates may rebound.
It's believed that expanding the vaccination effort across the United States may prevent 100,000 hepatitis A cases and 20 deaths in the lifetimes of children vaccinated in a single year, the AP reported. The direct cost of the vaccination program would increase from $22 million to $134 million.
Children account for about 25 percent of hepatitis A cases, but many adults contract the disease from infected children. While rarely fatal, hepatitis A attacks the liver and can cause diarrhea, fever and jaundice.
U.S. Reverses Psychiatric Drug Test Policy
The U.S. government has reversed a recently adopted policy that required long-term studies of new psychiatric drugs before they're allowed on the market, the Washington Post reported.
This policy reversal came after an expert panel unanimously voted against requiring long-term studies as a condition of approval for such drugs. The expert panel said that while such studies are necessary, delaying decisions on new drugs would hurt patients.
The experts made the new recommendation after they were inundated with complaints from the drug industry, patient advocates and academic researchers.
The critics said requiring long-term studies on new psychiatric drugs would provide little new information on the drugs and would cause drug companies to scale back on the development of new drugs, due to potential increases in cost and risk, the Post reported.
The FDA had started to implement the new plan over the previous six months. The plan said drug companies had to conduct studies for as long as six months before seeking FDA approval for new drugs.
Number of Diabetic Americans Continues to Rise
Close to 21 million Americans -- seven percent of the population -- now has diabetes, up 2.6 million from just three years ago, according to new statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Close to 6 million Americans may have diabetes and not know it, the CDC noted in its 2005 National Diabetes Fact Sheet released Wednesday. Another 41 million suffer from what experts call "pre-diabetes" -- a condition greatly increasingly risks for the type 2 form of the disease.
"Diabetes is a leading cause of adult blindness, lower-limb amputation, kidney disease and nerve damage," CDC diabetes program director Dr. Frank Vinicor said in a prepared statement. "Two-thirds of people with diabetes die from a heart attack or stroke."
According to the CDC, diabetes remains the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. The disease is hitting minorities especially hard, with Hispanics and blacks facing about twice the risk of becoming diabetic compared to whites. Medical expenditures and lost worker productivity means diabetes costs the country more than $132 billion annually, the CDC added.
FDA Warns of Glucose Meter Foul-Up
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has notified patients and health care providers that blood glucose meters made by Abbott Diabetes Care of Alameda, Calif., can unintentionally be switched from one unit of measurement to another, resulting in an inaccurate blood glucose interpretation by the user.
The agency warns users in the United States to make sure that their meter reading is displayed as mg/dL because an inaccurate reading can lead to taking the wrong dose of insulin or dietary changes, resulting in higher levels of sugar in the blood or hyperglycemia. Several cases of hyperglycemia, a serious and even life-threatening condition, have been reported, according to a prepared statement by the FDA.
The meters are designed to report blood glucose levels in two different measurements -- the U.S. standard, milligrams per deciliter or mg/dL, and the foreign standard, millimoles per liter or mmol/L -- and can be accidentally switched from one measurement to the other when a user is setting the time and date for the meter or if a meter is dropped or a battery replaced.
For information on how to change the meter reading back to mg/dl, users should refer to their owner's manual or contact Abbott Diabetes Care at 1-800-553-4105 (open 24 hrs. per day) or AbbottDiabetesCare.com. Doctors and consumers who have experienced a problem with any of the affected glucose meters should call the FDA (1-800-332-1088), or Abbott.
Food Fact:
Balanced diet?
Eat more blueberries, and you may be less prone to falls. Researchers at Tufts University fed antioxidant-rich extracts of blueberries, strawberries or spinach to rats for eight months -- and those that received blueberry extracts displayed better balance when walking over small rods. Similarly, the deep blue color of this all-American berry comes from anthocyanin, a powerful plant pigment believed to reduce some of the cognitive problems associated with aging.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Less is more.
Surprise! A few short exercise sessions a day can be as valuable as one longer session. The key to making exercise a habit is to fit it comfortably into your schedule. If you can't find a 30-minute block of time, try three 10-minute stints over the course of the day.
FAQ of the day:
Is a "plant-based" diet the same as "vegetarian"?
Nutritionists use the term "plant-based" for a diet that gets most of its calories from plant foods, but may include some animal foods. In some parts of the world, what nutritionists have called plant-based diets will include red meat like beef or pork, but eaten rarely, or in very small amounts. Vegan diets, which include no foods of animal origin, are plant-based by definition. So are lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets, which include dairy foods and eggs, as well as diets that include fish, shellfish and poultry. Population studies have demonstrated a significant link between plant-based foods (whole grains, vegetables, fruits, beans, soy) and a reduced risk of developing cancer and coronary heart disease.
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