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Crucial new research has failed to discover a link between induced or spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) and the incidence of breast cancer in pre-menopausal women. According to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health, “In this cohort study of young women, we found no association between induced abortion and breast cancer incidence and a suggestion of an inverse association between spontaneous abortion and breast cancer incidence during 10 years of follow-up.” The results of the research were published in the April 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The report examined the health histories of 105,716 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII). All of the women were between the ages of 29 and 46 when the study began in 1993, and they were each subject to follow-up examinations at two-year intervals until 2003. A total of 16,118 women, or about 15 percent of the cohort, reported a history of induced abortion, while 21,753 of them (21 percent) had a history of miscarriage. During the course of the decade-long study, there were 1,458 new cases of breast cancer reported among the women.
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A study published in this month’s American Journal of Hypertension called into question the effectiveness of a new blood-pressure drug known as aliskiren. Dr. Jean E. Sealey of New York Presbyterian Hospital and Dr. John H. Laragha at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York reviewed six different clinical trials regarding aliskiren and determined that the new drug is no more effective than previously existing treatments for hypertension.

According to the authors, “A review of six clinical trials of aliskiren involving [more than] 5,000 patients with mild to moderate hypertension indicated that this first of a new class of orally active antihypertensive drugs is no more effective than angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (CEIs), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), or diuretics for lowering blood pressure.”
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In a high-profile meeting this week, an expert panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised significant concerns about the use of the anemia drug erythropoietin in treating cancer patients. According to the findings of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, the drug, sold by Amgen as Aranesp and by Johnson & Johnson as Procrit, is severely overused in cancer patients and should have new restrictions and guidelines placed on its administration.

Erythropoietin is in a class of drugs known as erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, or ESAs, which are intended to reduce the need for red blood cell transfusions in patients suffering from anemia. (Transfusions are considered a high-risk treatment.) The drug was initially approved for patients suffering from kidney failure, but its approved usage was expanded in 1993 to include cancer patients who were suffering from chemotherapy-induced anemia.
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