Health Highlights: Dec. 28, 2006

"We found that all statins can cause pancreatitis, so switching from one to another will not help," said Singh. "The data also suggest that pancreatitis can occur after several months of statin use, suggesting that this is usually not an immediate reaction. We also found that patients on both low and high doses developed pancreatitis. Hence, starting at a low dose of statin may not be sufficient to prevent the side effect of pancreatitis."

The findings were published in the current issue ofDrug Safety.

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Herpes Treatment Fails in Animal Tests

Quigley Corp. announced Thursday that tests to determine the efficacy of its herpes treatment for infections of the eye in an animal model proved ineffective.

The company said that tests of QR-435 against herpes keratitis, in which the herpes simplex virus infects the eye, showed that the treatment did not stay in the eye long enough to penetrate the cells to get to the virus. The treatment had eliminated the virus on direct contact in other studies, theAssociated Pressreported.

The drug maker's Quigley Pharma unit will seek other uses for the treatment, including developing the compound to treat respiratory viruses. The compound has been shown to have an effect against influenza viruses, such as the H5N1 strain of the bird flu,APsaid.

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10th Death From Bird Flu in Egypt

A 26-year-old Egyptian man has died of bird flu, the third member of his extended family to die of the virus and the 10th in the country since an outbreak of the virus started in February, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said Wednesday.

Rida Farid Abdel Halim, a brick factory worker from the Nile Delta province of Gharbia, had been in a hospital for 10 days, according to Hassan el-Bushra, WHO's regional adviser for communicable diseases surveillance. A 15-year-old girl from the worker's family died on Monday, and a female relative died the day before, raising concerns about the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

Before the latest three deaths, only one person had died of the disease in Egypt since May.