Health Highlights: May 31, 2003

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of The HealthScout News Service:

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‘Hearing Cell’ Regenerated for the First Time

The cells inside the ear that actually create the sensation of hearing have been made to regenerate in mammals, and scientists say this breakthrough offers hope for millions of people who have hearing loss.

The Associated Press reports that the new sound-sensing cells, known as hair cells, were grown in the ears of guinea pigs by researchers from the University of Michigan. The cells were grown inside the ear’s spiral-shaped chamber known as the cochlea.

This first-of-a-kind development could some day mean treatment for more than 30 million Americans who suffer significant loss of hearing. Scientists say that 90 percent of them have hearing loss from damaged hair cells, and until now, these cells would not regenerate on their own.

The cells are critical to hearing, the AP reports, because they convert sound waves into nerve impulses that go to the brain.

The findings are in the June 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

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Additional Mad Cow Tests on Canada Herds Prove Negative

The tide may be turning in Canada’s favor as it continues to cope with one of two major health problems.

The Associated Press reports that the latest tests for Mad Cow disease on three herds were negative, keeping the number of confirmed cases to just one, discovered two weeks ago.

Additionally, a Canadian inspector says the investigation could wrap up in a week. The United States has banned all imports of Canadian beef since the Mad Cow case was announced May 20.

The scientific name for Mad Cow disease is ovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Its virulent nature in cattle apparently comes from certain types of feed, and the human form of BSE is the fatal brain-wasting illness variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Outbreaks of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have occurred during the past three years in the United Kingdom and Europe. Scientists theorize that! humans contract the illness by eating some meat products from infected animals.

Mad Cow disease is only one health concern in Canada. The other, severe respirtatory syndrome (SARS), has caused quarantine measures to be initiated in Ontario, especially in its largest city, Toronto. (see story below)

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Lawsuit Shines Light on Drug Company Tactics

An array of doctors earned thousands of dollars — many as much as six-figure sums — from a drug company to talk up a then-new drug to their peers, urging that it be prescribed for uses beyond those approved by the Food and Drug Administration, reports the New York Times.

The tactic came to light in court papers filed in the case of a whistleblower who claims the drug company — Warner-Lambert, now owned by Pfizer — illegally marketed the drug Neurontin, which has brought in more than $2 billion in revenue. By law, drug companies cannot market a drug for unapproved uses, but it’s legal for doctors to prescribe a drug as they see fit, according to the Times.

Besides paying doctors to speak to other physicians, the drug company paid doctors to attend speeches by these doctors, apparently hoping they’d be convinced to broaden their prescription practices for Neurontin, the court papers show.

The company also paid doctors to prescribe the drug in high doses and to write reports on how well the drug worked for patients, and it paid to publish at least one medical textbook that discusses Neurontin, the filings indicate.

Until 2002, Neurontin was approved only to treat epilepsy when a patient’s primary drug did not work. Since then, the FDA also has OK’d its use by shingles patients for pain. However, in the year 2000, 88 percent of Neurontin prescriptions were for uses not approved by the FDA, the Times reports.

A Pfizer representative told the Times that the lawsuit focuses on events that happened several years before it acquired Warner-Lambert and that Pfizer adheres to “the highest ethical standards.”

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SARS Cases Fall in China, Rise in Toronto

China has nearly tamed its SARS epidemic, with new cases dwindling and no evidence of a feared spread to the countryside, a senior health official said Friday. The official also denied claims that China tried to hide early indications of the virus.

Encouraging news also came Friday from Singapore, where the World Health Organization removed that country from its list of SARS-affected nations, saying no new cases have been reported there in 20 days — double the maximum incubation period for the virus, reports the Associated Press.

But in Canada, Toronto’s case cluster of the deadly disease has almost tripled, from 12 to 33 probable cases, and the number of people quarantined has almost doubled.

China’s executive deputy health minister, the highest-ranking official to respond to the cover-up charges to date, said an article in the People’s Daily newspaper in early February reported on a pneumonia with symptoms now associated with SARS that already had killed five and sickened 305 people in Guangdong province — the area in which the WHO believes SARS originated. The official repeated China’s contention that any underreporting should be blamed on an inadequate public health network in the country.

China reported seven new SARS cases in the 24 hours ending Friday morning, six of them in Beijing. A total of 5,600 cases and 328 deaths have been reported nationwide since the epidemic began, The New York Times reports.

Daily reports of new SARS cases nationwide averaged 151 in early May but fell to 14 in the final third of the month as the epidemic “started to be effectively controlled,” said Gao Qiang, the health minister. The disease has largely been confined to Guangdong, Beijing and a few provinces near the capital, he said, and “there has not been large-scale spread in rural areas.”

In Toronto, however, Health Canada’s reversion to World Health Organization guidelines for case definitions has resulted in 33 probable and 29 suspect cases of SARS in the latest cluster.

The Toronto Star also reports there are 29 SARS patients still in the hospital — five from the first outbreak and 24 from the current outbreak; 12 are in critical condition. In addition, there are 107 people under investigation for potential SARS.

More than 7,000 people are in quarantine in Ontario, including 396 health-care workers. And more than 3,100 health-care workers from two hospitals are in working quarantine, the Star reports.

Meanwhile, Taiwan reported seven new SARS cases and no deaths Friday, its lowest daily number in three weeks, the Associated Press says. In Hong Kong, officials reported four more cases Friday and one fatality, raising the death toll there to 274.

Worldwide, SARS has killed at least 755 people out of more than 8,300 people infected, the vast majority of them in Asia.

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