FINDINGS

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Bad Drug Reactions Found to Be Common

Harmful reactions to some of the most widely used medicines, including insulin and a common antibiotic, send more than 700,000 Americans to emergency rooms each year, landmark government research shows.

Accidental overdoses and allergic reactions to prescription drugs have been the most frequent causes of serious reactions, according to the study.

The authors and other experts agreed that the 700,000 estimate is conservative, because bad drug reactions are probably often misdiagnosed.

The study found that a small group of pharmaceutical warhorses were most commonly implicated, including insulin, for diabetes; warfarin, for clotting problems; and amoxicillin, a penicillin-like antibiotic used for all kinds of infections.

Those 65 and older faced more than double the risk of requiring emergency-room treatment and were nearly seven times as likely to be admitted to the hospital as younger patients.

The results, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, represent data from 2004-2005, the first two years of a national surveillance project on outpatient drug safety.

New Drug Approved For Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetics gained a new way of controlling their blood sugar yesterday with federal approval of a novel pill for Type 2 diabetes, which affects about 20 million Americans.

The Food and Drug Administration said it approved Januvia, which enhances the body's own ability to lower blood sugar levels, after clinical trials showing that the new pill works just as well as older diabetes drugs, but with fewer side effects such as weight gain. The drug is made by Merck and Co.

Merck is expected to charge $4.86 for the once-daily tablet. Older diabetes drugs can cost 50 cents a day.

Januvia, whose chemical name is sitagliptin phosphate, works with a one-two punch: It increases levels of a hormone that triggers the pancreas to produce more insulin to process blood sugar, while simultaneously signaling the liver to stop making glucose. Novartis AG hopes to win FDA approval for a similar drug later this year.

Decisions on Bird Flu Remain to Be Made

A third of countries trying to plan for a pandemic of bird flu have not made any decision on who would be first in line for vaccinations and antiviral drugs, U.S. and Israeli researchers said.

And not a single country has guidelines on how to distribute limited numbers of ventilators and face masks in case of a global epidemic, the survey of 45 national plans showed.

The H5N1 avian influenza virus still mostly infects birds, but it continues to infect the occasional person and has killed 151 people in nine countries.

Lori Uscher-Pines of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, who helped conduct the study, said it is difficult to set priorities when a pandemic is so unpredictable.

To start a pandemic, H5N1 or any other flu virus would have to first acquire the ability to pass easily from person to person.

The teams at Johns Hopkins and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel reviewed 45 national pandemic influenza plans.

Writing in the Public Library of Science's online journal, PLoS Medicine, they said 28 plans listed groups to receive vaccines in a pandemic and 22 prioritized groups to get antiviral medications.

-- From News Services