Health Highlights: Feb. 24, 2003
Health Highlights: Feb. 24, 2003
source: HealthScoutNews
The latest news from the world of health and science:
Supreme Court Rejects Abortion Counseling Appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected today an appeal of an Indiana law that requires women to get in-person counseling before they can have an abortion.
The court offered no comment in turning down the appeal from an Indiana doctor who performs abortions and women’s health clinics in the state. They contend that the in-person counseling requirement is too onerous, the Associated Press reports.
A lower court judge previously found that the in-person counseling requirement would prevent an estimated 10 percent to 12 percent of women who wanted abortions from getting them.
The Indiana law requires that abortion providers tell a woman in person about medical risks and alternatives to abortions at least 18 hours before she has the abortion.
The Supreme Court decision means the Indiana law will take full effect for the first time since it was passed by the state Legislature eight years ago, the AP reports.
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Genital Herpes Drug Trial Suspended
Late-stage clinical trials of the experimental genital herpes drug resiquimod have been suspended after preliminary data suggested dosing levels used in the trials were inadequate, say Eli Lilly and Co. and 3M.
The data didn’t indicate any safety concerns with the drug, says a Lilly news release.
The ongoing clinical trials for resiquimod have been discontinued while the two companies evaluate the Phase III trial results, along with the more positive results seen in earlier Phase II clinical trials.
Following that evaluation, the companies will decide whether to conduct additional studies of the drug.
Lilly and 3M had planned to submit resiquimod for U.S. regulatory approval in 2004. The companies agreed in 2001 to collaborate on Phase III clinical trials to investigate the 3M-developed compound as a treatment for genital herpes.
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Eggs May Help Protect Against Breast Cancer
Harvard Medical School researchers say they’ve found evidence that suggests teenage girls who regularly eat eggs are less likely to develop breast cancer later in life, BBC News reports.
Other types of foods containing vegetable fat and fiber may also have a protective effect, says the study in the journal Breast Cancer Research.
The researchers asked 121,707 women about their eating habits when they were teenagers. They found that women who ate more eggs, vegetable fat and dietary fiber between the ages of 12 and 18 were less likely to develop breast cancer.
High levels of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals in eggs may protect these women, the study suggests.
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AIDS Vaccine Proves Mostly Ineffective
The first large-scale clinical trials of an AIDS vaccine show the inoculation is largely ineffective in protecting people from the AIDS-causing HIV virus, The New York Times reports.
But the research does offer some hope. The shot did appear to significantly lower the infection rate among African-Americans and other non-Hispanic minorities, according to the company that produces the AIDSvax vaccine, Brisbane, Calif.-based VaxGen.
Among all participants in the three-year trials, 5.7 percent of those given the vaccine became infected with HIV, compared to 5.8 percent who received a non-medicinal placebo. But among blacks, Asians, and other minorities, only 3.7 percent became infected, compared with 9.9 percent in the placebo group.
Researchers — while conceding that minorities made up a rather small number of the clinical trial participants — say they are at a loss to explain the apparent differences in responses among racial and ethnic groups, the newspaper reports.
The trials took place at 59 sites, mostly in the continental United States. They involved 5,400 volunteers, 5,100 of whom were gay men who reported having sex with many partners. None of the participants was infected with HIV when the trials began.
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Family of Botched Transplant Victim Plans Lawsuit: Report
The family of the late Jesica Santillan plans to sue Duke University Medical Center over the botched heart-lung transplant she received, reports MSNBC.
“We’ve started the legal preparations toward a malpractice lawsuit,” family attorney Kurt Dixon told the network. “Duke has already admitted to a tragic error. The question of whether proper procedures were followed, I think that’s been answered and they weren’t.”
The network also reports that Duke doctors appear to have withdrawn life support against the wishes of the girl’s family.
The 17-year-old Mexican immigrant was taken off life support Saturday after being declared brain dead. Two days earlier, she had received her second organ transplants in as many weeks, following an initial surgery in which she received organs of the wrong donor blood type.
An autopsy is planned for this week. Doctors say her brain death was probably caused by the nearly two weeks she spent on life support machines while waiting for a second donor to be found.
Spokespeople for the Duke hospital, which has taken responsibility for the original botched operation, say they’re still at a loss to explain how organs of Type A blood were first transplanted into Jesica, who was Type O. Her body immediately began rejecting the organs, and she spent the better part of two weeks in a coma, from which she never emerged. Tests revealed irreversible brain damage just two days before her death.
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Newspaper: Live Plague Virus Carried on Planes
The Texas Tech University professor who allegedly fabricated a story last month about missing samples of plague bacteria repeatedly carried such samples aboard commercial jets, according to a newspaper report cited by the Associated Press.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that Thomas Butler imported plague samples aboard commercial planes about 60 times over 30 years. While Butler attorney Floyd Holder says the samples were transported properly, he expects additional federal charges to be filed against his client. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dick Baker refused comment on that possibility, the AP says.
Butler was originally charged with falsely reporting 30 samples of plague as missing last month, when he had actually destroyed them, the FBI alleges. Word of the “missing” specimens, originally obtained from the African country of Tanzania, triggered a brief bioterrorism scare.
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