Bare Metal Stents Better for Surgery Candidates: Study
While cardiac stents covered with a drug are more effective at keeping diseased arteries propped open, heart patients who undergo non-cardiac surgery after getting a stent would do better with a bare metal one, researchers at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia have found.
A stent is a metal mesh tube designed to be inserted into a once-clogged artery to keep it from re-clogging and narrowing. But a drug-releasing stent could lead to clotting inside the stent, especially when surgery is performed within weeks of a stent placement, the researchers found. Just before their procedures, surgical candidates often are told to stop blood-thinning medicines, compounding the problem, the researchers said.
The scientists studied 60 patients who averaged 68 years old. Some 27 percent of these patients had been diagnosed with diabetes, which can complicate surgery.
Results of the research were to be announced Friday at a meeting of the Society for Cardiovascular Angioplasty and Interventions, in Orlando, Fla.
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Scientists Create Artificial Blood Derived From Plastic
An artificial blood derived from plastic molecules has been developed by British researchers at Sheffield University, BBC News reported Friday.
The plastic molecules have an iron atom at their core that functions much like hemoglobin found in human blood. Hemoglobin carries oxygen to tissues throughout the body.
The new blood, which could be used as a substitute in an emergency, does not need to be cooled and keeps longer than real blood, the researchers said.
"This product can be stored a lot more easily than blood, meaning large quantities could be carried easily by ambulances and the armed forces," Dr. Lance Twyman, one of the university's researchers, told BBC News.
The scientists are looking for more funding to develop a prototype suitable for biologic testing, the network said.
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Drug Maker Cites Shortage of Child Vaccine Combo
Children who need to be immunized against four childhood diseases will probably need an extra shot this year because there's a shortage of a combination vaccine, the shot's maker says.
Merck & Co. said its ProQuad immunization, which guards against chickenpox, measles, mumps, and rubella, will be unavailable from mid-summer until at least the end of the year, the Associated Press reported.
But the company does have two vaccines that prevent the same diseases, the M-M-R II for measles, mumps, and rubella; and Varivax for chickenpox. The ProQuad vaccine requires more of the scarce chickenpox virus in the manufacturing process than the Varivax shot, the AP reported.
U.S. government guidelines suggest that children be vaccinated for the diseases twice -- at ages 12 months to 15 months, and again at ages 4 to 6 years old, the wire service said.
Merck is the only source in the United States for vaccines against the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox in children and can cause shingles in adults who had chickenpox as children.
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Hotter Temperatures Forecast for Eastern U.S.
Summer temperatures in the eastern United States will be about 10 degrees hotter than in recent years by the mid-2080s, a new NASA study says.
Previous estimates predicted too many summer days of rain, which keeps temperatures down, according to the new report from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Authors Barry Lynn and Leonard Druyan warned that the report was a wakeup call for government efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions and prevent continued global warming. "It's going to be a lot more dangerous for people who are not in the best of health," said Lynn, quoted by the Associated Press.
Temperatures on average summer days in the 2080s will soar to 102 in Jacksonville, Fla., 100 in Memphis, 96 in Atlanta, and 91 in Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to the forecast, published in the journal Climate.
Other experts gave the report mixed reviews, the wire service reported. Some climate scientists noted that recent summers in the eastern United States have been somewhat wetter and cooler than forecast.
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U.S. Vets Lack Suicide Prevention Resources: Report
U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan don't have enough 24-hour mental care services available and therefore are at an increased risk of suicide, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report concludes.
Many of the VA's 1,400 clinics have improperly trained workers and lack a 24-hour staff and adequate mental health screening services, the report found.
About one-third of veterans returning from duty say they have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, the Associated Press reported.
The department's report, calling for additional staffing and better professional training, said about 1,000 veterans who get VA care commit suicide each year, adding that there are as many as 5,000 suicides annually among all living veterans, the AP said.
In a written response to the VA inspector general's report, the department's acting undersecretary for health, Michael Kussman, said the VA had recently assigned suicide prevention coordinators at each of its medical centers, the wire service said.
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OxyContin Execs Plead Guilty to Misleading Public
Purdue Pharma, which makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin, and three of the company's current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal charges that they misled the public on the risk of addiction and abuse associated with the drug, a U.S. federal prosecutor announced.
The company and its executives will pay $634.5 million in fines, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said in the news release, according to the Associated Press.
Since the drug was introduced in the United States in 1996, OxyContin abuse and addiction has become a widespread problem in the country.
However, for many years Purdue Pharma claimed that the time-release formulation of OxyContin meant that the drug was less likely to cause abuse and addiction than other painkillers such as Vicodin or Percocet, The New York Times reported.
In order to settle criminal and civil charges related to the "misbranding" of OxyContin, Purdue has agreed to pay the fines, and three former and current executives, including its president and top lawyer, will also pay fines, federal officials told the Times.
The plea comes two days after the Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin, the AP reported.
Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said in a prepared statement, "The $634 million in criminal and civil penalties -- including guilty pleas by three current and former Purdue Frederick executives -- for misbranding the potent narcotic Oxycontin send an important message to the drug industry that this kind of malicious, death-dealing behavior will not be tolerated."
Margaret O.K. Glavin, associate commissioner for regulatory affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said in a statement: "FDA will not tolerate practices that falsely promote drug products and place consumers at health risk. We will continue to do all we can to protect the public against drug companies and their representatives who are not truthful and bilk consumers of precious health care dollars."
The FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations headed the investigation, the agency said.
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