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Thursday, November 17, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
New drug helps lower cholesterol
Study shows drug fights heart disease
The Associated Press
DALLAS — A new study shows for the first time that powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs can sharply reduce the risk of death in people with heart disease.
The study found that the drug simvastatin lowered the chance of dying by 30 percent during five years of treatment following heart attacks and angina chest pain.
Experts said the work could have a profound effect on the way doctors treated heart trouble.
"This is a landmark study in the history of medicine," said Joseph Goldstein, a Nobel Prize winner from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Four similar cholesterol-lowering drugs are available. But many physicians are reluctant to prescribe them because there had been no clear proof that they prolong life.
The latest evidence that they work comes from a study conducted in Scandinavia. It was released yesterday at a meeting of the American Heart Association and is to be published in the British journal Lancet.
The study does not answer the larger question about the use of these medicines in outwardly healthy people. Some doctors prescribe them to people who have high cholesterol levels but no signs of heart disease, and there is still no evidence that the medicine helps them live longer.
The study was conducted on 4,444 men and women at 94 hospitals in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It was financed by Merck & Co., the drug company that makes simvastatin.
The volunteers were randomly assigned to take simvastatin or dummy pills. Among the key findings after five years of follow-up:
The overall risk of death was 30 percent lower in the group that took simvastatin, and their risk of dying from heart disease was 42 percent lower.
256 patients in the placebo group died, compared with 182 in the simvastatin group.
The need for coronary bypass operations and angioplasty was 37 percent lower in the treated group.
"Cholesterol lowering with this powerful drug prolongs life," said Terje R. Pedersen of Aker Hospital in Oslo, Norway, the study's director.
When the study began, the patients' cholesterol levels were mildly elevated. They ranged from 212 to 309. After taking the drug, their cholesterol level fell by 25 percent. However, their levels of HDL, the good form of cholesterol that protects against heart disease, rose 8 percent.
Currently, about one-quarter of heart patients in the United States are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. Several experts said they expected this to increase substantially as the result of the latest study.
Treatment with simvastatin and similar drugs costs between $1,000 and $2,000 a year, depending on the brand and dose used.
Teenaged crowd still puffing away
The Associated Press
ATLANTA — A study shows young people are smoking as much as they did a decade ago despite efforts to warn them away from cigarettes, a federal health representative said yesterday.
"We have made no progress in discouraging teen-agers from taking up the habit," said Michael Eriksen, director of the Office on Smoking and Health in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC released two surveys on smoking on the eve of the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout.
One, by the University of Michigan, showed that 19 percent of high school seniors smoked daily in 1993, up from 17.2 percent in 1992. It reported that daily smoking for high school seniors has been fairly stable since 1984, when it was 18.7 percent.
The other survey, conducted by the CDC, showed that cigarette consumption by people over 18 is decreasing.
Sufferers of chronic pain may find relief in implants
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — People suffering from chronic pain gained substantial relief from cow cell implants that pumped out natural painkillers, a small, preliminary study found.
The study involved nine patients, eight of whom had cancer. Seven patients gained relief.
Patrick Aebischer, professor of surgery at the Lausanne University Medical School in Switzerland, was involved in the study.
One patient who had not been helped by standard painkillers has been pain-free for a year, he said. Two others whose pain had not responded to standard painkillers said their pain had been cut at least in half.
Some or all of the relief may have come from just the psychological boost of being treated, Aebischer said.
If further study bears out the initial promise, such implants might be useful for treating many kinds of chronic pain that resist treatment, Aebischer said.
Aebischer worked with scientists from CytoTherapeutics Inc. of Providence, R.I. He discussed the results yesterday at the annual meeting of
the society for Neuroscience, in Miami Beach.
Gavril Pasternak, professor of neurology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, called the approach intriguing.
While its usefulness for treating chronic pain in general remains to be determined, it may prove valuable for some patients, he said.
The painkilling implants contained cells from the adrenal gland, which sits atop the kidney.
Scientists wanted to show that animal cells could work in people without the use of drugs to prevent rejection of the cells, Aebrischer said. Animal cells eliminate the problem of limited supply from human donors.
To avoid the need for anti-rejection drugs, scientists packed the calf cells into white plastic tubes about 2 inches long and about the width of a pencil lead.
The tubes contained tiny pores that were big enough to let painkilling substances called enkephalins and endorphins leak out but small enough to keep proteins of the immune system from getting in. So the immune system did not reject the implants, Aebischer said.
The Supreme Court will soon decide if it is constitutional for the government to prohibit browers from listing alcohol content on beer labels. The alcohol content of selected beers;
Beer alcohol content varies
SOURCE: Modern Brewery Age
Alcohol benefitting health may be a bar stool fantasy
DALLAS — Doctors have some sobering news for those people who think a little alcohol is good for their health: Anything more than a drink a day may be too much of a good thing.
The Associated Press
Men who had two to four drinks a week had the lowest rate of death from all causes during an 11-year study, researchers said yesterday.
Many studies over the past 20 years have shown that people who drink moderately reduce their risk of dying from heart disease by about 40 percent. The evidence has become so convincing that some heart specialists have cautiously recommended moderate drinking for good health.
But while heart disease is the nation's leading killer, it is not the only one. Some fear that alcohol's benefits for the heart could be offset by its other hazards, such as cancer and accidents.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School examined the effects of drinking on all causes of death, not just heart disease, in 22,071 male doctors. Over an 11-year period, they compared the risk of death in the drinkers with that of people who seldom or never drank.
They found that men who had two to four drinks a week had the lowest death rate — about 22 percent lower
than those who shunned alcohol. Men who had up to six drinks a week also ran a lower risk than the non-drinkers.
But by the time the men averaged one drink a day, the benefits of alcohol were wiped out. Their risk of dying was identical to that of those who did not drink at all.
Beyond a drink a day, the risk went up sharply. Those who averaged two or more drinks a day had a death rate that was 63 percent higher than that of the nondrinkers.
The researchers found that the lower risk of dying from heart disease was offset by an increase in cancer in those who had more than a drink a day. Most of the increase was in throat, gastric, urinary tract and brain cancer.
"Alcohol has complex health effects, with health benefits and hazards even for moderate drinkers",
said Harvard's Carlos A. Camargo JR., who directed the analysis. "Clearly people should drink less than two drinks a day and probably less than one a day."
But Camargo said other studies suggest that women can safely drink only about half as much as men.
The study was conducted only on men, so the researchers cannot say for sure how much drinking is safe for women.
Deaths may be linked with new asthma drug
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Asthma sufferers have been dying since a new drug hit the market in April, some apparently because they mistakenly believed the long-lasting drug would immediately relieve their breathing problems.
Twenty deaths have been reported to the Food and Drug Administration by users of Serevent. It is not yet clear how many are linked to misuse of the drug, but manufacturer Glaxo Inc. is warning patients and doctors to use it properly.
Serevent is very effective at preventing asthma attacks, and its effects last longer than other drugs. But it doesn't treat actual asthma attacks because it takes at least 30 minutes to begin working.
"It's very, very important that people understand Seventen is not for acute asthma," Ramona Jones of manufacturer Glaxo Inc. said yesterday. Instead, she said, "It's so important for people to have that short-acting bronchodilator in case they get in trouble."
Glaxo also issued an expanded warning that its migraine drug Imitrex should never be given to patients with coronary artery disease. Glaxo received a second death report among such patients, although it isn't sure Imitrex is to blame. Still, it urged doctors to check for undiagnosed heart disease and, if a suspected patient passes a heart screening, to administer the first dose in their offices in case of a reaction.
Glaxo also is warning asthma doctors about the Serevent problems and last week began meeting with the Food and Drug Administration about strengthening Serevent's patient warning label.
The FDA emphasizes that it can't yet prove a connection with the 20 deaths because asthma by itself can be deadly. But improper Servevent use is suspected because many of the reports list asthma or "no drug effect."
as the probable cause.
Asthma is an inflammatory lung disease characterized by attacks in which the airways become blocked and patients can't breathe. Some 10 million Americans have asthma, and about 5,000 die each year.
Quick-acting bronchiliators, medicine inhaled straight into the lungs to widen airways, alleviate attacks. The most popular is Albuterol. Yet they only last about four hours, so patients often awaken during the night, wheezing as the drug wears off.
Serevent, or salmeterol xinafoate,
is the nation's only long-lasting bronchilodilator. It is for patients with moderate asthma who have stabilized the disease with other drugs. They inhale two puffs in the morning and two at night, 12 hours apart.
Find anything from a 1949 book about cheese to a picture of Marilyn Monroe dressed in a potato sack to satisfy your antique-hunting pangs.
QUANTRILL'S ANTIQUE MALL AND FLEA MARKET SINCE 1971
811 New Hampshire
842-6616
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