| European Commission Approves GARDASIL(R), Merck's Cervical Cancer Vaccine
GARDASIL(R) (Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (Types 6, 11, 16, 18) Recombinant Vaccine), the cervical cancer vaccine from Merck & Co., Inc., has been granted a license by the European Commission. GARDASIL has been approved as the first and only vaccine in the European Union (EU) for use in children and adolescents aged 9 to 15 years and in adult females aged 16 to 26 years for the prevention of cervical cancer, high-grade cervical dysplasias/precancers (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 2/3)), high-grade/precancerous vulvar dysplastic lesions (VIN 2/3) and external genital warts (condyloma acuminata) caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6, 11, 16 and 18. This license applies to the 25 countries that are members of the EU, including the five largest which are France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Back problems are second only to colds and flu as
Back problems are second only to colds and flu as the most common reason why people go to their doctors, according to the American College of Rheumatology. The National Institutes of Health report that back pain will affect nearly 90 percent of Americans in their lives - most for the first time in their 30s. The most common pain occurs in the lower back and disables 5.4 million Americans and costs at least $90 billion in medical and nonmedical expenses (such as loss of work and worker's compensation claims) every year. Maddeningly, most back pain has no specific cause, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. Furthermore, comparative research has shown that people with no pain or symptoms often have the same amount of pathology in their spines as do those with symptoms.
Pfizer Celebrex Lawsuits - 1500 and Counting
The first Celebrex trial, originally set for June 6, 2006, has been delayed indefinitely, reportedly to give attorneys more time to gather information. Although no new trial date has been set, legal analysts now predict that Celebrex trials will begin in early 2007. The delay was requested by a federal judge in San Francisco, where Pfizer is facing around 1,500 lawsuits related to its painkillers Celebrex and Bextra, according to Bloomberg News. In light of the studies on Celebrex that have surfaced over the past year, any media update should say 1,500 lawsuits and counting. The lawsuits filed actually list defendants involved in the development, manufacturing and distributing of Celebrex as Pfizer Inc, Pharmacia Corp, Monsanto Co, and GD Searle & Co. On August 30, 2006, Health Day News doused Pfizer's last hope of ever finding a reason to justify the over-prescribing of Celebrex when it reported that the "final word on whether the cox-2 painkiller Celebrex might be used to prevent colon cancer is a definite "no," according to the long-awaited results of two major studies." "Both of the three-year trials found that the drug reduced the occurrence of precancerous polyps called adenomas in people at risk for colon cancer," Health Day wrote, "but it more than doubled patients' risk for heart attack and other serious cardiovascular events." "The message is that celecoxib has no role as a chemotherapeutic agent -- in people with adenomas or in people among the general population," said Dr Bruce Psaty, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and health services at the University of Washington in Seattle, who co-authored an editorial on the two studies, published in the August 31, 2006, New England Journal of Medicine.
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